I can’t stop thinking about the time Tucker Carlson spoke the truth about the Republican Party without meaning to. It was during the president’s trip to North Korea. The Fox News host was trying to rationalize Donald Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong-un. No president has ever given that country’s murderous dynastic dictator so much prestige in exchange for nothing. Carlson was working overtime.

You’ve got to be honest about what it means to lead a country—it means killing people. Not on the scale that North Koreans do, but a lot of countries commit atrocities, including a number that we’re closely allied with… it’s important to be honest about that (my italics).

The Trump administration this month decided it would no longer protect from deportation adults and children who have come to this country seeking life-saving medical treatment. About a thousand people a year are given “deferred action” as a form of humanitarian relief. Well, that relief is gone, and indeed, the administrations’s decision to end it is, if you ask me, the moral equivalent of murder.

I’ve said before that I feel squeamish saying that Republican policies are designed to kill people. (Not one Republican Senator has said a thing about children being sent to their deaths, not one.) But I feel less squeamish every time this administration gives credence to Tucker Carlson’s accidental claim.

You’ve got to be honest about what it means to lead a country—it means killing people.

—JS