The way it's presented here, yes, his own words are edited and selected with other words/statements omitted to create right wing propaganda. Where are the parts where he admits he was wrong and apologized over and over?

How about Trump's own words, and Trump's own position then. He said the Clinton/Biden crime bill was way too soft and lenient. Here's a taste from Trump's book....

"The perpetrator is never a victim. He’s nothing more than a predator. (pages 93-94).

A life is a life, and if you criminally take an innocent life, you’d better be prepared to forfeit your own. My only complaint is that lethal injection is too comfortable a way to go. (pages 102-103).

Criminals are often returned to society because of forgiving judges. This has to stop. We need to hold judges more accountable… The rest of us need to rethink prisons and punishment. The next time you hear someone saying there are too many people in prison, ask them how many thugs they’re willing to relocate to their neighborhood. The answer: None. (pages 106-107)."

If that doesn’t sound like support for mass incarceration and the death penalty with little chance for criminal justice reform in sentencing, I’m not sure what does.

https://observer.com/2019/06/trump-crime-2000-book-biden-1994-crime-bill/

How about the Central Park 5? Trump paid for adds calling for the death penalty for these wrongly accused boys. Despite DNA evidence and a confession by the real rapist and restitution from the state in the $40000000 range Trump STILL insists they're guilty of something (he doesn't know what they did, but they're definitely guilty) and deserve the death penalty.....clearly forgetting he's bragged about doing what they were wrongly accused of....sexual assault.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/06/19/what-trump-has-said-central-park-five/1501321001/

Biden has admitted his position was wrong, and repeatedly apologized. Trump has NEVER done that, even about calling for the death penalty for the proven innocent.

*facepalm. You still don't understand that some people have a longer memory than a gnat, and we can recall that no matter the topic, Trump's position was worse than Democrats at the time, and his current position is worse than their current position.
*D'Oh*

americans still trying to paint the big bad commies as the pioneers and champions of mass surveillance and mass incarceration. I guess its harder to sell the "they hate us for our freedom!" line if people realize they arent any more free than anyone else.

So the privately run "family detention centers" like the one set up in Dilley, Texas, by the Obama administration were acceptable, but this is a step too far?

This shit didn't magically appear out of thin air. You can trace it throughout the entire history of the US: the separation of children from their parents during slavery, the forceful removal of children from reservations and their placement into "Indian schools", the mass incarceration of primarily minority youths for the crime of being poor, and physical removal of parents in foreign nations by incinerating them in drone strikes, etc.

This shit is despicable, but it's not a deviation from previous actions -- it's just the next step. And for Maddow to "break down" over this... There are Syrian refugees living in the apartment building across the street from me. How many Syrian, Libyan, Somali, Pakistani, Afghani and Yemeni children have been separated from their parents by US bombs and missiles? Never stopped Maddow from warmongering.

@Asmo , @enoch , @Jinx --

I appreciate what you're saying and I know that I *should* feel the way(s) you suggest. ...But I have a hard time actually getting there.

At some point, we are all responsible for our own actions, and the consequences of our own actions. Even though these people may not have any of the sort of opportunities that I take for granted, even though circumstances well outside of their control might push them into the direction of addiction, at some point they made a choice to start up with this crap. And they make a choice to continue with the drugs, even if the physical and mental addiction makes it nearly impossible for them to choose anything else.

There's a lot of problems in the world. There's a lot of people who unjustly have to contend with major problems that are absolutely 100% in no way their fault. Addicts are at least partially at fault for getting themselves into the mess that they are in. That puts them way down the line on my empathy list, that's all I'm saying.

Asmo said "To fix a problem, you first have to understand it. That does not require sympathy or empathy." That in particular helps me look at the issue from a different angle. Just because addiction is not a problem on my personal priority list, I 100% agree that it *is* a problem, and it is a problem that affects *me* also, indirectly if not directly. I live in a society of people, and helping each individual person in the society can help *everyone* in the society.

The war on drugs and its approach of mass incarceration, etc. pretty clearly doesn't work well to alleviate the problem. The part of me that (mostly jokingly, but not entirely) would tag this as EIA might be happy to take the approach of letting these people all shoot themselves up with krokodil or whatever else until they kill themselves. But rationally, I know that wouldn't fix anything. I'm not convinced that it would be worse than the war on drugs, but it definitely wouldn't be ideal.

So rationally, I know that social systems to help people break those addictions and whatever situations or psychological problems contributed to them are probably the optimal solution, from a society-wide sort of view. But I don't want to be at the front lines of any of that myself, because I think that it *does* require some empathy to the situation to be an effective contributor there, and I simply recognize that I personally can't scrounge any up.

So by all means, STOP taking my tax dollars and spending them on the war on drugs, and START spending them on social programs that experts and scientists who study addiction believe will do a better job of actually fixing the problem. But that's the extent of the personal involvement that I want to have.

Competitive Slackline Tricking https://youtu.be/iRezj9BOEBQ

https://youtu.be/7QDMaTGsOBo

The Racism Of Mass Incarceration http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/404890/prison-inherited-trait/

Queens of Brooklyn: The NYC Girls Dominating Youth Chess https://youtu.be/Kxdoh1a5dwc

https://youtu.be/ge4HNwOpfRk

A most beautiful demolition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TnG3jh6KTQ

https://youtu.be/XYUEW3_WvH0

Your video, mass incarceration-why does the US jail so many people?, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.