On Thursday's Deadline: White House on MSNBC, during a discussion of the White House's efforts to enforce immigration laws, the panel descended into hyperbole as host Nicolle Wallace actually likened the government to the MS-13 gang as she charged that the Trump administration is "terrorizing children" by separating them from their parents, as required by law.
And, following in the footsteps of Kasie Hunt from Tuesday, there was also some anti-Republican Bible thumping as former Time editor/former Kerry State Department aide Richard Stengel suggested that Republicans insert a line from Christian Bible in the Republican Party platform. In addition, former Holder Justice Department spokesman/MSNBC Justice and security analyst Matthew Miller proclaimed that he "read a different Bible than" White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Miller also recalled a theory that Donald Trump supporters are motivated not by wanting to be helped by President Trump, but by wanting him to "punish the people that they don't like," calling the theory "one of the smartest things that I've ever heard anyone say about Donald Trump."
At 4:52 p.m. Eastern, while discussing Sanders answering questions on the issue of separating illegal immigrants from their children during detention, Wallace declared: "It is straight-up inhumane what they're doing. Why not just say, 'Yeah, we're cruel and inhumane -- what's the next question?'"
Miller recalled that his father was a Baptist minister, commented that "I think I read a different Bible than her," and complained that "this is an immoral policy." He then added that "This is inhumane. Cruelty is the intention of this policy … they are intending to be cruel."
Wallace soon compared the Trump administration to the MS-13 illegal immigrant gang as she commented:
The irony of the President running around the country making people afraid of criminal gangs -- and a lot of people are, and that's justifiable -- when the U.S. government is acting like a gang terrorizing children, by ripping them from the arms of their parents.
She then wondered:
What's wrong with the people that work in the administration and watch these pictures and have families of their own, and this will be on their resume forever? "I worked for the administration that was responsible for the policy that ripped young children out of their mothers' arms."
Stengel quoted from the New Testament as he responded: "What you do for the least among us, you do for me, Matthew 25. That should have been part of the Republican party platform for its whole life." He then complained that Trump administration members refuse to "resign" rather than enforce immigration law.
After again complaining that the Trump administration was being "cruel" to illegal immigrants, Miller lamented:
One of the smartest things I ever heard anyone say about Donald Trump is, he may not be able to do anything for the people in the Midwest who supported him -- he may not be able to do anything to improve their lives -- but he can sure do something to punish the people that they don't like. And that's what he's doing here.
