washington, d.c. loves that day. it s a tremendous ceremony. now it s going to be another vile political fight. nancy, the washington post also reporting on the culture war aspect of this. linking the event to the nfl national anthem controversy. let me read that to you. it says, advisers say trump sees this event as a way to associate himself with the flag and patriotism, which will resonate with many americans the way his comments criticizing nfl players for kneeling during the national anthem did. after wading into the anthem debate, according to two former senior administration officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, trump told his aides it s a winning issue for me. what are they going to say? i m being too patriot snikic? i believe in nerk? one official recounted trump saying. give me a break. it s an interesting point, nancy. what are you going to say?
the choice that the president made to chime in on all of this in the last few days was not to discuss the treatment of those children or those people being held or the ways in which that can be improved upon but to suggest that perhaps if you don t like it don t come. yeah, indeed. i mean, look, president trump has done these things. he s not someone to back down. he is not someone to show any kind of weakness, you pointed out earlier. he s taking advantage of this opportunity. he s looking at this as a possibility to show this is a deterrent, to warn people like hey, if you do not like these conditions you can leave. you do not have to come and in his words, quote, problem solved. elliott, let s talk about what problem solved actually looks like. because the president what he sees the problem to be is very different from what a lot of other people see the problem ton and what it has crystallized
is seen by a pediatric trained medical professional. dr. gosa also described her visit to cbp central processing center in mcallen, texas. the first thing that hit me when we walked in the door was the smell. it was the smell of sweat, urine, and feces. meanwhile, as we mentioned, president trump responded to the crisis with a number of tweets today including this one. if the illegal immigrants are unhappy with the conditions in the quickly built or refitted detention centers, just tell them not to come. all problems solved. with us to talk about all of this, franco ordonez, white house correspondent for npr, and elliott williams, former deputy assistant attorney general and former assistant director for u.s. immigration and customs enforcement. thanks to both of you for being with us today. franco, let me just start with you. there is a crisis. most americans polled in a cnn poll released yesterday believe there is a crisis at the southern border. and they believe the crisis is l
so let s just start with the premise that the president in his tweet this morning was lying. so i think, ali, it s not just department of commerce. it s also the justice department lawyers who went into court yesterday and said we re not going to be seeking the citizenship question, we re printing the census forms without it. and ali, i never thought i d see the day when the trump administration s top lawyers sound like drunk girl on saturday night live. you know, we re gonna have a citizenship question, we re not gonna have a citizenship question, we are. it s thoroughly inconsistent. and that s why, you know, when the supreme court ruled last week and said president trump s addition of the census question was illegal because they used a reason that was utterly prete pretextu pretextual, that should have been the end of it. and now they re coming back with all this sort of stuff. and it s not going to work. and continuities going to work for a really simple reason, ali.
threatening to torch whatever credibility the justice department has left because of what he s doing. and that will be a huge, huge error for the country and for him. so let me ask you something. the justice department lawyers either pull back on this or they go back to the court and try to get this done. but there s no chance that someone in the government is trying to is going to try and get that citizenship question on the census extrajudicially, right? going around the courts. doing something because i feel like that would be illegal. well, nothing that this administration does at this point surprises me. and we ve even had a member of congress, a sitting member of congress, say yeah, go ahead, defy the federal courts, president trump, and do the right thing, add the citizenship question. i mean, this administration s relationship to the rule of law is so tenuous, and i am worried about it. and i think all americans should be because the crown jewel of our american democrac