Kirstjen Nielsen resigns, thinks Donald Trump has become “increasingly unhinged”
Earlier this evening we saw the abrupt resignation of Homeland Security Director Kirstjen Nielsen, immediately after she met with Donald Trump. These kinds of high profile departures are nearly always publicly framed as a mutually agreeable “resignation” even if it’s a resignation in protest or a firing. We still don’t know exactly what happened with Nielsen, but now we know precisely how she feels about Trump.
Kirstjen Nielsen thinks that Donald Trump is “becoming increasingly unhinged about the border crisis and making unreasonable and even impossible requests,” according to a White House source who spoke to CNN about Nielsen’s resignation. This is remarkable for a couple reasons. First, of all the high ranking people who have departed the Trump regime, this is the ugliest swing that any of them has taken at Trump on their way out the door. Second, Nielsen was believed to have been on Trump’s side.
Donald Trump and Kirstjen Nielsen clearly saw eye to eye when it came to kidnapping immigrant children from their parents and locking them in cages. So this isn’t some kind of ideological impasse. This is simply a matter of Nielsen deciding that Trump has spiraled completely out of his gourd, demanding that she make imaginary things happen – and either she quit over it, or he ousted her because she tried to tell him that the things he was demanding were imaginary.
Kirstjen Nielsen departs today as one of the most evil villains in the history of the United States government. She knew her policies would result in the deaths of immigrant children in U.S. custody when she enacted them, and she did it anyway. She belongs in prison, in our view. But now we know that she sees Donald Trump as being maniacally removed from mental competence.
