There’s been a lot of controversy in the past week over how the Trump administration is handling undocumented asylum seekers at the border, particularly families with young children, in light of the country’s ongoing struggle to enact effective and meaningful reform of its immigration policy.
The response from left-leaning figures in the media and activist spheres has not been cool-headed.
- Actor Peter Fonda let loose on Twitter making a series of violent verbal threats against the Trump family, going so far as to venture a call to “rip Barron Trump from his mother’s arms and put him in a cage with pedophiles.”Fonda also used sexist expletives to refer to White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. He has since apologized for his online comments.
- Nielsen was the recipient of yet more leftist criticism on Tuesday evening while dining at a Mexican restaurant in Washington, DC. One of the members of the Democratic Socialists of America who protested Nielsen’s appearance at the restaurant, Allison Hrabar, works for the Justice Department.Hrabar spoke encouragingly of ramping up such protests on members of the Trump administration and immigration officials: “‘If you see these people in public, you should remind them that they shouldn’t have peace,’ she said. ‘We aren’t the only ones who can do this. Anyone who sees Kirstjen Nielsen at dinner, anyone who sees anyone who works at DHS and ICE at dinner can confront them like this, and that’s what we hope this will inspire people to do.'”
- Florida Republican congressman Brian Mast’s family was threatened by a caller to the representative’s DC office, purportedly saying, “I’m going to find the congressman’s kids and kill them” and “If you are going to separate kids at the border, I’m going to kill his kids.” The caller has been identified and arrested, and will appear in court next month.
- It’s not just constituents, either. On Tuesday this week, a Congressional intern shouted “Mr. President, f— you!” at the president of these United States. “The F-bomb incident was captured on video as the president walked through the Capital rotunda on his way to the meeting with GOP congressmen,” per the New York Post.
Media complaints about President Trump’s “inflammatory rhetoric” aside, many leftists with an activist bent seemed pretty comfortable using hostile, incendiary language this past week.
