Idina Menzel, the voice of Elsa in Disney’s smash hit “Frozen,” took to Twitter Saturday to celebrate after numerous news organizations called the presidential election for Joe Biden. In her tweet, Menzel claimed her son hugged her and said, “mommy no more kids in cages!” Menzel said she cried “Tears of joy and tears of sadness.”
What a relief. My son just hugged me and said “ mommy no more kids in cages!” Tears of joy and tears of sadness.
— Idina Menzel (@idinamenzel) November 7, 2020
As was quickly pointed out on Twitter, President Donald Trump didn’t build the “cages” to which Menzel was referring. It was former President Barack Obama who built those “cages,” and Biden was Obama’s vice president. The Trump administration continued the policies of the Obama administration in how it handled children illegally crossing the U.S. border from Mexico.
In 2018, any prominent Democrats and left-wing pundits shared an article about kids in cages, using it to smear the Trump administration. The article was actually from 2014, when Obama was president. Former Obama speech writer Jon Favreau later defended the Obama administration’s treatment of migrant children by saying it happened during “an influx of unaccompanied minors who showed up at the border, fleeing violence from Central America.”
He also said that the pictures were taken during a time when the administration was trying to “move those children out of those shelters as fast as humanly possible and connect them with their parents, most of whom were already in the United States.”
No such caveat has been made for Trump, who has faced multiple massive caravans of people traveling to the U.S. from Central America.
The Trump administration enacted a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal border crossings, but instead of sending children into prison with their parents, the children were taken to the same facilities where they were housed under Obama. Democrats and their media supporters failed to acknowledge the complexities of illegal immigration and weren’t asked whether the children should be sent to jail with their parents or whether they thought illegal immigration shouldn’t be considered a crime.
The same sentiments were ignored when illegal immigrant families were held together in the Border Patrol facilities. Democrats and the media decried the facilities without explaining what should be done with the immigrants. Should they have been taken to hotels? Who would pay for that? Would the American people agree to paying for illegal immigrants to be housed? Or perhaps letting them loose on the streets without any accountability?
These questions were never asked. Instead, Trump was demonized for cheap political points.
As to Biden, he never had to answer for the Obama administration’s cages, and Menzel hasn’t acknowledged that her tweet was misinformed.
Further, though media outlets have called the election for Biden, Trump has not conceded, and his campaign has filed lawsuits in several states to look into voting irregularities.
Jenna Ellis, senior legal adviser and attorney for the Trump campaign, said in a statement to The Daily Wire that the election is not over.
“Media coordinated efforts are attempting to simply declare Joe Biden the president and ignore the rule of law. There is no official winner until every legal vote is counted accurately, the states certify results, and all legal challenges are resolved,” Ellis said.
Biden, however, has assumed he will be the next president of the United States.