Donald Trump has come up with a two-fer: His administration has promulgated a new policy that both takes nativism to new heights and attacks John McCain, all in one.
According to an article in today’s New York Times:
Children born abroad to certain United States service members and other federal employees will no longer be granted automatic citizenship under a Trump administration policy set to take effect in October. Parents of those children, including those born on military bases, will have to apply for citizenship on the children's behalf before they turn 18. … The policy appeared to be aimed at military families who have not lived in the United States for years.
The Pentagon, the Times reports, is predictably furious at this latest diktat from the Department of Homeland Security. Defense Department officials are trying to figure out who exactly would fall under the new strictures and who’d skate by.
Well, I know one prominent American who might not have made Trump's latest cut: the late John McCain, who was born in the Panama Canal Zone, where his father had been stationed, when the Canal Zone was a U.S. territory. When McCain ran for president in both 2000 and 2008, a number of his critics questioned whether he met the constitutional requirements for the presidency, which mandate that presidents be born in the USA.
Could Trump have had McCain in mind when he and Stephen Miller were cooking up their latest brainstorm? Could Trump be so deranged that he still is determined to attack McCain? He already has—repeatedly. Seven months after McCain shuffled off this mortal coil, Trump, unprompted, took out after him, calling him “horrible” on Fox News, and he has periodically continued his tirades.
So if this new burst of nativism strikes you as inexplicable, there's a likely explanation: the inexhaustible Wrath of Trump, which death itself cannot quell.
