https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kirstj...er-resignation-today-live-updates-2019-04-07/
DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigns after clashes with Trump on immigration
By Paula Reid
Updated on: April 8, 2019 / 12:45 AM / CBS News
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen abruptly resigned Sunday, as the president continues to fume over continued illegal border crossings. CBS News first reported Nielsen's impending departure, which Mr. Trump confirmed in a tweet after a 5 p.m. meeting with Nielsen at the White House.
Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan will serve as acting DHS secretary, Mr. Trump announced.
"Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen will be leaving her position, and I would like to thank her for her service," Mr. Trump tweeted Sunday. "...I am pleased to announce that Kevin McAleenan, the current U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, will become Acting Secretary for @DHSgov. I have confidence that Kevin will do a great job!"
Nielsen tweeted late Sunday that she has "agreed to stay on as secretary through Wednesday, April 10th to assist with an orderly transition and ensure that key DHS missions are not impacted." Her departure is a part of a massive DHS overhaul engineered and directed by top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, according to a senior U.S. official. It's unclear whether Nielsen is deciding to leave voluntarily, or whether she has been pressured to resign.
But Nielsen's tenure since she was confirmed in December 2017 has at times been rocky, with the president taking some of his frustrations over illegal immigration out on her. Questions about whether she might leave have swirled for months. But she was by the president's side on Friday in Calexico, California, as Mr. Trump pushed for a crackdown on illegal immigration and the need for a border wall.
"This afternoon I submitted my resignation to @POTUS and thanked him for the opportunity to serve in his administration. It's been an honor of a lifetime to serve with the brave men and women of @DHSgov," Nielsen wrote in her resignation letter, which she tweeted Sunday evening. "I could not be prouder of and more humbled by their service, dedication, and commitment to keep our country safe from all threats and hazards."
Nielsen's announced exit comes two days after Mr. Trump announced he wants to go in a "tougher" direction in his nomination for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director, after originally announcing Ron Vitiello would head ICE. Nielsen's departure also means acting heads will soon be running DHS, the Pentagon and the U.S. Department of the Interior. Nielsen has also been one of only four women serving in Cabinet-level positions in the Trump administration, the others being Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, CIA Director Gina Haspel and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
One U.S. official told CBS News is it unlikely McAleenan would be nominated as Nielsen's permanent replacement. It's unclear whether he would have to resign as CBP commissioner to take the job, and whether the line of succession at DHS would even allow for such a personnel move. Those legal issues would need to be sorted out.
McAleenan has worked as CBP commissioner since the early days of Mr. Trump's administration, keeping a generally low profile. In a 2018 interview with the New York Times in the height of the concern over family separations at the border, McAleenan called Mr. Trump's attempt to halt the separations with an executive order an "important recalibration."
In recent days, Mr. Trump has threatened to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border or slap tariffs on cars made in Mexico coming into the U.S. if Mexico and Congress don't fix the situation at the border.
Nielsen became known for her vigorous defense of the "zero tolerance" policy resulting in family separations at the border, blaming Congress for a "loophole" in the laws that needs to be fixed. Nielsen claimed in a White House briefing last year that the administration was merely continuing a policy from "previous administrations" that mandates separating a child who is "in danger, there is no custodial relationship between 'family' members, or if the adult has broken the law."
"As long as illegal entry remains a criminal offense, DHS will not look the other way," Nielsen told reporters at the time.
Trump's team 61 photos
Major Garrett, Arden Farhi and Kathryn Watson contributed to this report.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/08/politics/donald-trump-kirstjen-nielsen-immigration/index.html
DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen's ouster exposes Trump's immigration crisis
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Updated 1200 GMT (2000 HKT) April 8, 2019
Sen. Bennet hopes to run in 2020 despite cancer diagnosis
Trump: Asylum seekers look like UFC fighters
Cupp compares number of Dems running in 2020 to Netflix
Washington (CNN)The forced resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is not just the usual story of an administration racked by chaos and the short shelf life of almost everyone who works for an imperious and grudge-bearing President.
Nielsen was hardly a moderate out of step with President Donald Trump on his signature issue of immigration. She became the administration's public face of the zero-tolerance policy that caused widespread outrage after hundreds of migrant children were separated from their parents.
But she is nonetheless paying the price for a crisis exacerbated by the President's decision-making amid a major surge in migrants crossing the border.
Her departure is a victory for conservative immigration voices, such as White House policy adviser Stephen Miller, who have long had Trump's ear and are pushing the President to adopt an even more hardline border policy.
Trump says DHS Secretary Nielsen leaving
It's a sign of a government stocked with acting secretaries and hampered by thin personnel benches, stretched beyond functionality by Trump's impulses and the most prodigious staffing burn rate of any modern President.
Nielsen's ouster fits with a pattern of Trump forcing out officials who have pushed back against his more radical instincts or been unable to carry them out, or who have earned his ire for being unwilling to match his defiance for governing practice and convention. They include former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, ex-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former national security adviser H.R. McMaster and former chief of staff John Kelly.
Yet there is also a more fundamental reason for Nielsen's departure that gets closer to the heart of Trump's behavior and political strategy than almost all of the many, previous exits from his administration.
Nielsen's demise is the clearest indication yet of the impossibility of reconciling Trump's ideological and emotional instincts on immigration -- which helped make him President -- with legal, humanitarian and international realities.
Nielsen "believed the situation was becoming untenable" with Trump "becoming increasingly unhinged about the border crisis and making unreasonable and even impossible requests," a senior administration official told CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday.
Her departure mirrors that of former Defense Secretary James Mattis last year, whose authority was shredded by a sudden, and apparently spontaneous announcement of a Syria withdrawal by the President, but who had gradually grown apart from his boss.
In both cases, the complexity of serious policy problems, often in life or death situations, clashed with the political instincts of a President who abhors detail and prefers to govern from the gut, while ignoring conventional expertise -- even from subordinates that in no way could be considered moderates.
As the crisis on the US-Mexico border worsened, Trump's tolerance for Nielsen snapped.
And the President might also have gone looking for a scapegoat.
Last week, he was forced to climb down on a public threat to close the southern border after officials, business groups and political leaders warned of a pending economic disaster if he went ahead.
He covered his blushes by going on a tear on immigration, with some of the most unconstrained rhetoric on the issue ever heard by an American president, that was scorching even by the standards of Trump himself.
"Can't take you anymore. Can't take you. Our country is full ... Can't take you anymore, I'm sorry. So turn around. That's the way it is," Trump said in a message to asylum seekers during a trip to the border on Friday.
A day later, Trump mocked those fleeing persecution seeking a better life in the United States, portraying asylum seekers as criminals and gang members, rather than the families Nielsen described in a CNN interview last week.
"'I am very fearful for my life,'" Trump said mockingly during a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition on Saturday. "I am very worried that I will be accosted if I am sent back home. No, no, he'll do the accosting!"
"Asylum, oh give him asylum! He's afraid!" Trump said.
Tense meeting
https://www.sammyboy.com/javascript:void(0);
Secy. Kirstjen Nielsen is leaving, Trump tweets 00:40
Nielsen's departure, confirmed in a tense White House meeting with Trump on Sunday afternoon, came after days of speculation and was in retrospect a logical consequence of the President's boiling frustration.
He had been dissatisfied with Nielsen for months, though their relationship appeared to improve marginally during the government shutdown that spanned the turn of the year and turned into another political reverse for Trump.
Speculation about her status ballooned last week, after Trump suddenly declared that he would halt hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, accusing them of sending migrants to the US border.
The move utterly undercut Nielsen who had just days before signed what her department called a "historic, regional compact" to tackle undocumented migration at its source.
Immigration experts said that the aid cutoff would ultimately make the situation far worse as it would exacerbate the deprivation and lawlessness in Central America that is a key driver of migration and asylum claims.
Nielsen's departure comes as more critical moments loom for the administration that are likely to test Trump's equilibrium at a time when he is already furious about the border situation.
When he was not fulminating about immigration over the weekend, he was lashing out at special counsel Robert Mueller and Democratic demands that all of his report should be released.
Attorney General William Barr, caught between an angry President and Democrats in Congress after finding there was no evidence to support election collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, has pledged to release a redacted version of the report by mid-month.
The White House is also trying to escape a self-imposed snafu over health care policy after sending confusing signals of whether the President wanted a new bid to replace Obamacare before or after the 2020 election.
And this week, the administration is expected to significantly escalate tensions with Iran by against throwing caution to the wind by designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, a move some in the defense and intelligence communities fear could expose US personnel in the Middle East to reprisals.
Immigration the campaign cornerstone
https://www.sammyboy.com/javascript:void(0);
Cuomo to DHS Sec: Why's Trump viewing fencing, not kids? 01:32
As he seeks to manage the immigration crisis, the President now has a chance to insert a like-minded replacement in what in the wake of Nielsen's departure looks like an increasingly impossible job.
Trump has already signaled that he will make immigration a centerpiece of his 2020 re-election bid and has every political incentive, since he is basing his hopes of a second term on energizing his base, to turn up the heat on the issue.
The new secretary will also face the same limits as Nielsen. As much as Trump rages against asylum claims, they are codified in US and international laws that he in practice cannot just disregard.
He recently found out that his preferred, dramatic solution of just closing the border would cause a swift and massive economic backlash that in itself could harm his hopes of winning a second term.
The President is already pushing his power to the limit, and possibly beyond it by seeking to use a national emergency declaration to redirect money already allocated by Congress for other projects to the border wall that was at the symbolic center of his 2016 campaign.
For all his fiery speeches, it is difficult for Trump to argue that his hardline approach on immigration is actually working.
After years of declines, the tide of asylum seeking and undocumented migrants crossing the border has climbed dramatically.
The White House says US Customs and Border Protection engaged in more than 100,000 border enforcement actions in March -- the most for one month in more than a decade.
It argues that Trump has reassigned customs officers to the border and directed them to return as many migrants as possible to Mexico to wait for immigration proceedings on the southern side of the border.
But ultimately, there will be no solution to the border problem and the chronic glut in the asylum and court systems, without action by Congress.
Nielsen did "everything she could to make the problem better," a senior Department of Homeland Security official told CNN's Geneva Sands on Sunday.
"Worst place for you to be is where you need Congress to act," the official said.
The White House wants asylum law tightened and the power to detain families traveling with children -- a practice Democrats have branded inhumane.
Trump named Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection, as acting replacement for Nielsen at the Department of Homeland Security.
McAleenan is not seen as an ideologue and served former President Barack Obama -- so there must be considerable doubt about how long he will also be in the post -- but he has less problematic ties with Congress than Nielsen.
READ: Kirstjen Nielsen's resignation letter from DHS secretary post
Attempts at reaching a broad political solution on the border have been complicated by Trump's choice to use immigration as a rallying call for his base and his adoption of rhetoric that stains any political common ground.
He has several times pulled out of immigration deals with Democrats that might have helped mitigate the situation at the border apparently because he feared a backlash from his most fervent supporters and cheerleaders in conservative media.
Democrats complain that the so-called master of the art of the deal wants to win on all his immigration priorities while offering nothing in return -- for example a path to legal status for people brought to the US illegally and who are protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
They also argue that his rhetoric is incompatible with the founding principles of a nation built on immigration.
"When even the most radical voices in the administration aren't radical enough for President Trump, you know he's completely lost touch with the American people," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday, remarking on Nielsen's departure.
Yet while there is evidence that Trump's flame throwing commentary on immigration hurt Republicans in swing districts and helped Democrats win the House in midterm elections, Trump's warning that the US is under assault by marauding caravans of immigrants is widely backed by his supporters.
That's why ultimately, even Nielsen, who was reviled on the left over the family separations policy and attempted to shape the President's instincts into a workable policy always seemed doomed.
Trump has shown that he will always, eventually side with the themes and voters that powered his political rise even faced with insurmountable political and practical obstacles.
CNN's Jim Acosta, Geneva Sands, Jeff Zeleny, Kaitlan Collins, Jeremy Diamond and Jake Tapper.
DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigns after clashes with Trump on immigration
By Paula Reid
Updated on: April 8, 2019 / 12:45 AM / CBS News
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen abruptly resigned Sunday, as the president continues to fume over continued illegal border crossings. CBS News first reported Nielsen's impending departure, which Mr. Trump confirmed in a tweet after a 5 p.m. meeting with Nielsen at the White House.
Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan will serve as acting DHS secretary, Mr. Trump announced.
"Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen will be leaving her position, and I would like to thank her for her service," Mr. Trump tweeted Sunday. "...I am pleased to announce that Kevin McAleenan, the current U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, will become Acting Secretary for @DHSgov. I have confidence that Kevin will do a great job!"
Nielsen tweeted late Sunday that she has "agreed to stay on as secretary through Wednesday, April 10th to assist with an orderly transition and ensure that key DHS missions are not impacted." Her departure is a part of a massive DHS overhaul engineered and directed by top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, according to a senior U.S. official. It's unclear whether Nielsen is deciding to leave voluntarily, or whether she has been pressured to resign.
But Nielsen's tenure since she was confirmed in December 2017 has at times been rocky, with the president taking some of his frustrations over illegal immigration out on her. Questions about whether she might leave have swirled for months. But she was by the president's side on Friday in Calexico, California, as Mr. Trump pushed for a crackdown on illegal immigration and the need for a border wall.
"This afternoon I submitted my resignation to @POTUS and thanked him for the opportunity to serve in his administration. It's been an honor of a lifetime to serve with the brave men and women of @DHSgov," Nielsen wrote in her resignation letter, which she tweeted Sunday evening. "I could not be prouder of and more humbled by their service, dedication, and commitment to keep our country safe from all threats and hazards."
Nielsen's announced exit comes two days after Mr. Trump announced he wants to go in a "tougher" direction in his nomination for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director, after originally announcing Ron Vitiello would head ICE. Nielsen's departure also means acting heads will soon be running DHS, the Pentagon and the U.S. Department of the Interior. Nielsen has also been one of only four women serving in Cabinet-level positions in the Trump administration, the others being Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, CIA Director Gina Haspel and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
One U.S. official told CBS News is it unlikely McAleenan would be nominated as Nielsen's permanent replacement. It's unclear whether he would have to resign as CBP commissioner to take the job, and whether the line of succession at DHS would even allow for such a personnel move. Those legal issues would need to be sorted out.
McAleenan has worked as CBP commissioner since the early days of Mr. Trump's administration, keeping a generally low profile. In a 2018 interview with the New York Times in the height of the concern over family separations at the border, McAleenan called Mr. Trump's attempt to halt the separations with an executive order an "important recalibration."
In recent days, Mr. Trump has threatened to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border or slap tariffs on cars made in Mexico coming into the U.S. if Mexico and Congress don't fix the situation at the border.
Nielsen became known for her vigorous defense of the "zero tolerance" policy resulting in family separations at the border, blaming Congress for a "loophole" in the laws that needs to be fixed. Nielsen claimed in a White House briefing last year that the administration was merely continuing a policy from "previous administrations" that mandates separating a child who is "in danger, there is no custodial relationship between 'family' members, or if the adult has broken the law."
"As long as illegal entry remains a criminal offense, DHS will not look the other way," Nielsen told reporters at the time.
Trump's team 61 photos Major Garrett, Arden Farhi and Kathryn Watson contributed to this report.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/08/politics/donald-trump-kirstjen-nielsen-immigration/index.html
DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen's ouster exposes Trump's immigration crisis
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Updated 1200 GMT (2000 HKT) April 8, 2019
Sen. Bennet hopes to run in 2020 despite cancer diagnosis
Trump: Asylum seekers look like UFC fighters
Cupp compares number of Dems running in 2020 to Netflix
Washington (CNN)The forced resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is not just the usual story of an administration racked by chaos and the short shelf life of almost everyone who works for an imperious and grudge-bearing President.
Nielsen was hardly a moderate out of step with President Donald Trump on his signature issue of immigration. She became the administration's public face of the zero-tolerance policy that caused widespread outrage after hundreds of migrant children were separated from their parents.
But she is nonetheless paying the price for a crisis exacerbated by the President's decision-making amid a major surge in migrants crossing the border.
Her departure is a victory for conservative immigration voices, such as White House policy adviser Stephen Miller, who have long had Trump's ear and are pushing the President to adopt an even more hardline border policy.
Trump says DHS Secretary Nielsen leaving
It's a sign of a government stocked with acting secretaries and hampered by thin personnel benches, stretched beyond functionality by Trump's impulses and the most prodigious staffing burn rate of any modern President.
Nielsen's ouster fits with a pattern of Trump forcing out officials who have pushed back against his more radical instincts or been unable to carry them out, or who have earned his ire for being unwilling to match his defiance for governing practice and convention. They include former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, ex-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former national security adviser H.R. McMaster and former chief of staff John Kelly.
Yet there is also a more fundamental reason for Nielsen's departure that gets closer to the heart of Trump's behavior and political strategy than almost all of the many, previous exits from his administration.
Nielsen's demise is the clearest indication yet of the impossibility of reconciling Trump's ideological and emotional instincts on immigration -- which helped make him President -- with legal, humanitarian and international realities.
Nielsen "believed the situation was becoming untenable" with Trump "becoming increasingly unhinged about the border crisis and making unreasonable and even impossible requests," a senior administration official told CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday.
Her departure mirrors that of former Defense Secretary James Mattis last year, whose authority was shredded by a sudden, and apparently spontaneous announcement of a Syria withdrawal by the President, but who had gradually grown apart from his boss.
In both cases, the complexity of serious policy problems, often in life or death situations, clashed with the political instincts of a President who abhors detail and prefers to govern from the gut, while ignoring conventional expertise -- even from subordinates that in no way could be considered moderates.
As the crisis on the US-Mexico border worsened, Trump's tolerance for Nielsen snapped.
And the President might also have gone looking for a scapegoat.
Last week, he was forced to climb down on a public threat to close the southern border after officials, business groups and political leaders warned of a pending economic disaster if he went ahead.
He covered his blushes by going on a tear on immigration, with some of the most unconstrained rhetoric on the issue ever heard by an American president, that was scorching even by the standards of Trump himself.
"Can't take you anymore. Can't take you. Our country is full ... Can't take you anymore, I'm sorry. So turn around. That's the way it is," Trump said in a message to asylum seekers during a trip to the border on Friday.
A day later, Trump mocked those fleeing persecution seeking a better life in the United States, portraying asylum seekers as criminals and gang members, rather than the families Nielsen described in a CNN interview last week.
"'I am very fearful for my life,'" Trump said mockingly during a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition on Saturday. "I am very worried that I will be accosted if I am sent back home. No, no, he'll do the accosting!"
"Asylum, oh give him asylum! He's afraid!" Trump said.
Tense meeting
https://www.sammyboy.com/javascript:void(0);
Secy. Kirstjen Nielsen is leaving, Trump tweets 00:40
Nielsen's departure, confirmed in a tense White House meeting with Trump on Sunday afternoon, came after days of speculation and was in retrospect a logical consequence of the President's boiling frustration.
He had been dissatisfied with Nielsen for months, though their relationship appeared to improve marginally during the government shutdown that spanned the turn of the year and turned into another political reverse for Trump.
Speculation about her status ballooned last week, after Trump suddenly declared that he would halt hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, accusing them of sending migrants to the US border.
The move utterly undercut Nielsen who had just days before signed what her department called a "historic, regional compact" to tackle undocumented migration at its source.
Immigration experts said that the aid cutoff would ultimately make the situation far worse as it would exacerbate the deprivation and lawlessness in Central America that is a key driver of migration and asylum claims.
Nielsen's departure comes as more critical moments loom for the administration that are likely to test Trump's equilibrium at a time when he is already furious about the border situation.
When he was not fulminating about immigration over the weekend, he was lashing out at special counsel Robert Mueller and Democratic demands that all of his report should be released.
Attorney General William Barr, caught between an angry President and Democrats in Congress after finding there was no evidence to support election collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, has pledged to release a redacted version of the report by mid-month.
The White House is also trying to escape a self-imposed snafu over health care policy after sending confusing signals of whether the President wanted a new bid to replace Obamacare before or after the 2020 election.
And this week, the administration is expected to significantly escalate tensions with Iran by against throwing caution to the wind by designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, a move some in the defense and intelligence communities fear could expose US personnel in the Middle East to reprisals.
Immigration the campaign cornerstone
https://www.sammyboy.com/javascript:void(0);
Cuomo to DHS Sec: Why's Trump viewing fencing, not kids? 01:32
As he seeks to manage the immigration crisis, the President now has a chance to insert a like-minded replacement in what in the wake of Nielsen's departure looks like an increasingly impossible job.
Trump has already signaled that he will make immigration a centerpiece of his 2020 re-election bid and has every political incentive, since he is basing his hopes of a second term on energizing his base, to turn up the heat on the issue.
The new secretary will also face the same limits as Nielsen. As much as Trump rages against asylum claims, they are codified in US and international laws that he in practice cannot just disregard.
He recently found out that his preferred, dramatic solution of just closing the border would cause a swift and massive economic backlash that in itself could harm his hopes of winning a second term.
The President is already pushing his power to the limit, and possibly beyond it by seeking to use a national emergency declaration to redirect money already allocated by Congress for other projects to the border wall that was at the symbolic center of his 2016 campaign.
For all his fiery speeches, it is difficult for Trump to argue that his hardline approach on immigration is actually working.
After years of declines, the tide of asylum seeking and undocumented migrants crossing the border has climbed dramatically.
The White House says US Customs and Border Protection engaged in more than 100,000 border enforcement actions in March -- the most for one month in more than a decade.
It argues that Trump has reassigned customs officers to the border and directed them to return as many migrants as possible to Mexico to wait for immigration proceedings on the southern side of the border.
But ultimately, there will be no solution to the border problem and the chronic glut in the asylum and court systems, without action by Congress.
Nielsen did "everything she could to make the problem better," a senior Department of Homeland Security official told CNN's Geneva Sands on Sunday.
"Worst place for you to be is where you need Congress to act," the official said.
The White House wants asylum law tightened and the power to detain families traveling with children -- a practice Democrats have branded inhumane.
Trump named Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection, as acting replacement for Nielsen at the Department of Homeland Security.
McAleenan is not seen as an ideologue and served former President Barack Obama -- so there must be considerable doubt about how long he will also be in the post -- but he has less problematic ties with Congress than Nielsen.
READ: Kirstjen Nielsen's resignation letter from DHS secretary post
Attempts at reaching a broad political solution on the border have been complicated by Trump's choice to use immigration as a rallying call for his base and his adoption of rhetoric that stains any political common ground.
He has several times pulled out of immigration deals with Democrats that might have helped mitigate the situation at the border apparently because he feared a backlash from his most fervent supporters and cheerleaders in conservative media.
Democrats complain that the so-called master of the art of the deal wants to win on all his immigration priorities while offering nothing in return -- for example a path to legal status for people brought to the US illegally and who are protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
They also argue that his rhetoric is incompatible with the founding principles of a nation built on immigration.
"When even the most radical voices in the administration aren't radical enough for President Trump, you know he's completely lost touch with the American people," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday, remarking on Nielsen's departure.
Yet while there is evidence that Trump's flame throwing commentary on immigration hurt Republicans in swing districts and helped Democrats win the House in midterm elections, Trump's warning that the US is under assault by marauding caravans of immigrants is widely backed by his supporters.
That's why ultimately, even Nielsen, who was reviled on the left over the family separations policy and attempted to shape the President's instincts into a workable policy always seemed doomed.
Trump has shown that he will always, eventually side with the themes and voters that powered his political rise even faced with insurmountable political and practical obstacles.
CNN's Jim Acosta, Geneva Sands, Jeff Zeleny, Kaitlan Collins, Jeremy Diamond and Jake Tapper.
