Conway: Trump ‘deserves compassion points’ for tearing apart families

The Trump administration has paid only shabby lip service to having compassion for the children and parents they’re ripping apart, and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway exposed that insincerity by lobbying for “compassion points.”

During a lengthy and contentious interview on Monday night’s edition of “Cuomo Prime Time,” Conway cycled through the many lies that Trump and company have used to justify ripping children away from their parents. But host Chris Cuomo confronted her with the reality of massive public resistance.

“You’ve got a big problem with this policy,” Cuomo said. “This is a big problem. You’ve got two out of three people in the country against you on this policy. Two out of three.”

“Christopher, just cut it out and try to unpack this intelligently,” Conway said. “I have already told you, on the compassion side, how we all feel. Then I tried to bring up the facts, you don’t like the facts when it comes to MS-13 —”

“No, but the compassion side is just words,” Cuomo interrupted, “because the president created the situation, Kellyanne, so he doesn’t get compassion points. You don’t get compassion points when you change the policy to separate families.”

Unfortunately for Conway and Trump, one of the worst ways to score compassion points is to refer to them as “compassion points.”

Last Friday, Trump himself made hollow attempts to say that he “hate(d) to see” children being separated from their parents, and over the weekend both Conway and First Lady Melania Trump tried to gaslight their way onto the compassion bandwagon.

But no one is letting them get away with these empty displays, because they are also all lying about the policy, and in Conway’s case, “the compassion side” includes conflating these traumatized children with gang members.

Trump’s habit, though, has never been about scoring points with anyone but his racist fan base. And as long as he’s doing that, it’s up to others to end this cruel episode.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.