Trump makes U-turn on illegal immigration

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Take Trump seriously, but not literally, commentators said. It’s all postmodern posturing. All he wants is time to be allowed to play golf, big TV ratings and a trophy wife. The actual work of governing will be a side-show to the baroque, circus carousel of the Trump court.

That orthodoxy on the Donald has time and time been exposed to be naïve at best, at worst blind to everything that he is. He has delivered on all the big campaign promises – the Muslim ban and economic nationalism.

So what of the famous Wall between Mexico and the United States? Now the Wall rhetoric never just involved a commitment to beefing up the (already considerable) physical infrastructure between America and Mexico, it was accompanied, or buttressed even (forgive me) with a commitment to absolute zero tolerance on illegal immigration.

Today, President Trump performed a U-turn on one aspect of that policy commitment, ending the forced separation of children from their parents on arrival. Horrifying accounts have emerged from the detention centres, including testimonies of children in despair, at a loss or hysterical with fear. Predictably, this has blown up very quickly in the press – rather memorably, one TV host broke down as she attempted to read the autocue.

And Trump, with his instinct for shifts in public mood, rolled back on the policy in part. The zero-tolerance approach will be retained but families will now be held together. Hurrah… Not a good look for a guy who has just pulled out of the UN Human Rights Council on the grounds that it is, in Mike Pompeo’s words, “a protector of human rights abusers.” Pot, kettle, black?

We recorded the podcast today. Do listen in below. We discuss the damp squib Grieve amendment farrago in parliament, the landmark Billy Caldwell medicinal cannabis case (which staff writer Finn McRedmond is working up into a long-form feature, with all the inside details and subtleties, to be published tomorrow).

We also talk World Cup euphoria. Reaction is, if you didn’t know already, absolutely mad for the World Cup. No cynicism to be found at the offices. At all. I’ve just ordered three replica 1966 World Cup final ‘Three Lions’ shirts for Iain and Finn for ‘dress down’ Friday. We won’t wear them strictly all the time but only when writing, or podcasting, or tweeting…