At 11 a.m. (ET) yesterday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Trump administration had rescinded the DACA policy that extended protections to nearly 1 million Dreamers. As of 10 a.m. (ET) yesterday, according to a New York Times report, administration officials “privately expressed concern that Mr. Trump might not fully grasp the details of the steps he was about to take, and when he discovered their full impact, would change his mind.”
That’s an extraordinary sentence in its own right. The president is so ignorant that officials in his administration are left to wonder if Trump might abandon his own plans after learning what they are and what they’ll do.
This isn’t how the executive branch of a global superpower is supposed to operate. But in an unexpected twist, as of last night, those fears from administration officials appeared well grounded.
Trump started the day by telling members of Congress that when it came to the DACA policy, they should “get ready to do [their] job.” Soon after, the White House effectively challenged lawmakers to address immigration policy within six months — or else. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, began moving forward with plans predicated on the assumption that Congress would fail, putting in writing that DACA recipients should “prepare for and arrange their departure from the United States.”
But by the end of the day, the president was expressing a very different sentiment via Twitter:
“Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do). If they can’t, I will revisit this issue!”
Oh. So, just hours after the president demanded that Congress tackle immigration, this master negotiators announced publicly that if Congress fails, he’s prepared to “revisit” his needlessly cruel policy? Effectively negating the point of the threat?
Asked this morning what Trump’s message meant, a Justice Department spokesperson told CNN, “You’ll have to ask the president exactly what he meant.”
In other words, the Trump administration has no idea what Trump is talking about — again. It’s entirely possible the president himself isn’t sure, either. Indeed, a note of caution is probably in order: there’s no reason to assume the things Trump says or writes will relate in any way to what his administration will actually do. Between his dishonesty and his general confusion about current events, the president is simply not a reliable source of information on this or any subject.









