Donald Trump has instituted a new policy that mandates separating children from their parents at the border, and locks the children up in detention facilities -- some of them in tents in the Texas desert under temperatures that exceed 100 degrees. Why is he doing this? To play to his deplorable base and to use those children as hostages to get the unneeded border wall he promised that base.
The American people are not happy about Trump's policy to abuse immigrant children as a political ploy. The general public opposes the policy by 28 points, Independents oppose it by 27 points, and Democrats oppose it by 61 points. Only Republicans have more supporting the policy than opposing it. They support the policy to abuse immigrant children by 14 points.
I don't know how they justify supporting the horrendous policy. Trump doesn't have a conscience, but the Republican base has always claimed that they are the defender of family values. They seem to have abandoned those values. When has separating children from their parents and causing them psychological trauma been a family value?
The Republican base (and their elected officials) have only two values today -- justifying greed, and promoting hate against those who do not look and think like them. Morality is not a consideration.
Republicans must be voted out of power in November -- and they must be kept out of power until they somehow develop a moral compass.
The chart above shows the results of a new Daily Beast / Ipsos Poll -- done on June 14th and 15th of a national sample of 1,000 adults, with a margin of error of 3.5 points.