The Note: Trump's DACA tweet storm confounding, illuminating

Washington has grown to expect occasional presidential tweet-storms by now.

April 3, 2018, 5:39 AM

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The TAKE with Rick Klein

Washington has grown to expect occasional presidential tweet storms by now.

Yet even by the new standards set by President Donald Trump, his post-Easter rants on immigration stand out. That’s not just for the curious timing or bizarre staging (hello, Easter Bunny), but for the utter disconnect between the president’s pronouncements, actual facts, and what it all means for policy in the end.

The president is demonstrably wrong on almost every major detail he’s harping on. Democrats couldn’t kill DACA if they wanted – and they don’t – because Trump himself ordered it ended, and then opposed the bipartisan solution that drew the most Senate support to keep it in place.

Those “caravans” coming via Mexico are carrying asylum-seekers – a category of people that has nothing to do with Dreamers, who have been in the U.S. since they were children. None of this has any connection to NAFTA, the border wall, or the Senate’s filibuster rules. There is no “DACA bandwagon.”

It all makes for another presidential episode that’s as confounding as it is illuminating. The president’s point isn’t to make policy; it’s to make noise.

PHOTO: President Donald Trump and the Easter Bunny, after speaking to the crowd on the Truman Balcony during the annual White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, April 2, 2018.
President Donald Trump and the Easter Bunny, after speaking to the crowd on the Truman Balcony during the annual White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, April 2, 2018.

The RUNDOWN with MaryAlice Parks

With Republicans controlling every lever in Washington, plus in many statehouses, too, it is perhaps not surprising the country is wrestling with the limits of the mainstay GOP philosophy that less is more. After all, how low is too low when it comes to taxes? Is there such a thing as a government that’s too small?

Those seem to be some of the key questions facing Oklahoma right now, as nearly 30,000 teachers continue to strike and send up flares about the state of the state’s public schools. Even the Republican governor Mary Fallin argued last year that there are diminishing returns when it comes to shrinking budgets and cutting taxes to attract businesses – specifically now that, as she says, potential employers worry Oklahoma schools are underfunded and failing.

And the teachers in Oklahoma are not walking out in a vacuum. From Kentucky to West Virginia, Arizona and elsewhere, the country seems to be reaching a boiling point when it comes to public education.

Likewise, will the country decide there are appropriate limits on rolling back regulations at the federal level, too? Republican lawmakers may have a hard time squaring that a decision from the Environmental Protection Agency yesterday to relax vehicle emissions standards seems to come in direct conflict with another core Republican value: the importance of states’ rights. Will the feds really tell California it can’t have its own energy standards?

PHOTO: Thousands of teachers from across Kentucky gather outside the state Capitol to rally for increased funding and to protest last minute changes to their state funded pension system, April 2, 2018, in Frankfort, Ky.
Thousands of teachers from across Kentucky gather outside the state Capitol to rally for increased funding and to protest last minute changes to their state funded pension system, April 2, 2018, in Frankfort, Ky.

The TIP with Mary Bruce

Once again, the president is stirring the (legislative) pot and spreading untruths on Twitter, and once again Congress is largely ignoring him.

Republican leaders have yet to say a word about Trump's DACA tirade.

Not surprisingly, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and a few Democratic leaders are eager to react.

"The only person the country needs on the “DACA bandwagon” is the president. He’s rejected deal after deal to save the program he unilaterally chose to end," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., tweeted in his own Twitter tirade against the president.

"The only person who’s gaming the DACA program isn’t in a caravan, he’s in the Oval Office," he added.

But even some top Democrats are declining to dignify Trump's comments with a response.

Asked for any response, a spokesperson for Senate Democratic Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer said simply: "Nope!"

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

  • President Donald Trump meets with three Baltic heads of state to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania’s independence during the United States-Baltic Summit being held at the White House.
  • The president holds a joint press conference with the Baltic heads of state at 1:35 p.m.
  • HUD Secretary Ben Carson delivers remarks at “A More Perfect Union” event held at the Newseum at 9 a.m.
  • The State Department commemorates the 70th anniversary of the Marshall Plan in the afternoon.
  • Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross participates in the U.S. Baltic Business Summit hosted by the U.S Chamber of Commerce at 4 p.m.
  • Gov. John Kasich participates in a fireside chat at New England College in New Hampshire at 5:30 p.m.
  • QUOTE OF THE DAY

    “I have spent countless hours trying to understand how the president and so many others can share such destructive lies about me." — Jill McCabe, the wife of fired former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, in a Washington Post op-ed.

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    The Note is a daily ABC News feature that highlights the key political moments of the day ahead. Please check back tomorrow for the latest.

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