Hillary Clinton: 'What is more uncivil than taking children away?'
She tells me she has raised $1.5m in the days before we meet, to “flood the border with lawyers, interpreters, experienced social workers, psychologists. We just have to get as much expertise down there to force the federal government to give us everything.” It’s the kind of resource-focused, pragmatic response we would expect from someone with a reputation for technocratic efficiency, so I’m a bit taken aback to see tears fill her eyes. When the MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow broke down and wept on air while reporting plans to build “tender age” detention facilities for infants, “didn’t that make you cry?” Clinton challenges me. “Well, I felt exactly the same way.” Dabbing her eyes, she lets rip.
“I mean, you just … who thinks like that? Who does these things? How can anybody look in the mirror? How can they actually live with themselves? If you heard about it in some third-world banana republic, you’d say: ‘That’s horrible! Stop it! Who would do that?’ Now it’s happening in our country, and it’s just so distressing. I think a lot of us keep waiting for the bottom – and it just seems to be bottomless.”
Throughout the presidential campaign, Clinton was criticised for exercising a degree of emotional self-control that looked cold and inauthentic, while Trump’s volatility was taken as evidence that he meant what he said and really cared. Lately, however, Democrats have been provoked to condemn the president with a passion some on the left warn is becoming “uncivil”. I’m curious to know what Clinton thinks of this.
“Oh, give me a break,” she erupts, eyes widening into indignation. “Give me a break! What is more uncivil and cruel than taking children away? It should be met with resolve and strength. And if some of that comes across as a little uncivil, well, children’s lives are at stake; their futures are at stake. That is that ridiculous concept of bothsideism.” She adopts a mockingly prim voice. “‘Well, you know, somebody made an insulting, profane remark about President Trump, and he separated 2,300 children from their families, that’s both sides, and we should stop being uncivil – oh and, by the way, he should stop separating children.’ Give me a break, really,” she growls, rolling her eyes. “I mean, this is a crisis of his making that will damage kids for no good reason at all, and I think everybody should be focused on that until the children are reunited.
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If she decided to call it a day, I begin to say, no one would blame …
“I would,” she interrupts. “I would blame me. Yes. I would. It feels like a duty. It feels like patriotism, and it feels necessary. I’m not going anywhere.”
Obama continues the work. Hillary continues the work. Bill continues the work. Carter continues the work. That’s what presidents do.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/29/hillary-clinton-on-trumps-child-detention-policy-it-keeps-me-up-at-night
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