Besieged by negative press over pictures of frightened children, the president backed off. But his allies remain and the party is still his to command
Portraits of the slave-owning presidents Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson loomed over the Resolute desk, daylight reflecting off its polished surface. Donald Trump sat in a burgundy leather chair, flanked by two of his most loyal lieutenants. Mike Pence wore a grey suit and red tie, Kirstjen Nielsen was dressed in deep blue. Press secretary Sarah Sanders rested her hand on one of two cream sofas at the centre of the Oval Office. Their expressions were grave, the atmosphere sombre.
Like the dogged defenders of a teetering regime, Trump’s inner circle had been forced to a final redoubt. The president spoke for a few minutes before bringing himself to pick up a pen and sign the terms of surrender. The man who once declared he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone without losing any votes had finally met his match: the inviolable innocence of children.
Ostensibly, Trump’s executive order ended the separation of children from their parents at the Mexican border, after days of cascading outrage in America and around the world.
“He had to sign it for one simple reason,” said Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee. “The imagery was so bad that he could no longer justify the policy. You had people out there making complete asses of themselves in front of cameras, from the attorney general to the secretary of homeland security, justifying this inhumanity and blaming the migrants who are coming here seeking asylum.”
It was the week that Trump discovered there are still moral lines that cannot be crossed. America recoiled in disgust at the sights and sounds of children in fenced cages, lying on mats under foil sheets, sobbing and wailing for parents whose whereabouts were unknown. Iris Eufragio-Mancia, an undocumented immigrant from Honduras separated from her son on his sixth birthday, told NBC News: “Those cells are full of tears.” Condemnation came from the Pope, the United Nations and observers who drew parallels with concentration camps.
But what distinguished this from the regular drumbeat of Trump panics was that even some of his most devout supporters had to admit to feeling queasy. His wife went public with concerns; his eldest daughter reportedly lobbied behind the scenes. Otherwise oleaginous Republicans scented danger in the midterm elections, though they danced around criticism of Trump himself. And when a deluge of TV coverage portrayed his government as callous and cruel, the master of the medium knew the game was up.
Some polling started to show even members of his base thought, ‘Well that that may be a little bit too far – maybe' Michael Steele
Steele added: “There’s no doubt it absolutely was the critical piece that changed this around for the president because you cannot argue with the image of a three-year-old child standing at her mother’s side crying as she’s being handcuffed and taken from her no matter how much you try, no matter how much you try to rally your base around it. Some of the polling started to show even members of his base thought, ‘Well that that may be a little bit too far – maybe.’”
There were family separations before Trump but officials usually erred on the side of keeping parents and their children together. The justice department’s announcement in April that all unlawful border crossings would be criminally prosecuted changed that. Now people without documents were sent directly to detention centres and their children and babies put in separate facilities.
The hectic Trump news cycle guaranteed distractions for a while but after Democratic senator Jeff Merkley used Facebook to live-stream his attempt to enter a converted Walmart at the Texas border housing hundreds of children taken from their parents, the issue became inescapable. Official figures showed that more than 2,300 children were separated from their parents between 5 May and 9 June; a secret audio recording captured some crying for “mami” and “papa”.
America looked at itself in the mirror and did not like what it saw. All four living former first ladies spoke out. Church leaders raised their voices. Liberal cable news host Rachel Maddow broke down in tears during a live broadcast. Bruce Springsteen, performing on Broadway, told his audience: “We are seeing things right now on our American borders that are so shockingly and disgracefully inhumane and un-American that it is simply enraging.”
The White House fanned the flames. According to a count by the Washington Post, it changed its story on family separation 14 times before Trump signed the order. Some said the policy was a deterrent to families trying to enter the US; others claimed there was no policy but rather they were enforcing a law that past administrations neglected. Homeland security secretary Nielsen, flying back from New Orleans to face reporters in Washington, declared that “Congress alone can fix it”. It was an unwitting inversion of Trump’s infamous campaign promise: “I alone can fix it”.
One night, Nielsen went for dinner at a Mexican restaurant, prompting chants of “shame” and “end family separation” that forced her to leave with her tail between her legs. And in the week that Democratic senator Kamala Harris described “a human rights abuse being committed by the United States government”, that government announced it was quitting the UN human rights council.
Then there was First Lady Melania Trump, who flew to a children’s detention centre in Texas but upended her mission of compassion by wearing a Zara jacket bearing a slogan: “I really don’t care. Do U?” Her spokeswoman said there was no hidden message; her husband said there was a hidden message about the media.
Steele said: “It’s fucking 90 degrees here in Washington and Texas. I’m sorry, what do you think the response is going to be if you wear a coat like that going to the place you’re going in the midst of the controversy which your husband’s administration is embroiled in? How can you not think that people would say you’re basically flipping off this whole thing?” ... Much more
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