🎧 The Daily: Deployed in the U.S., Just Waiting for the Caravan | The New York Times

Listened to The Daily: Deployed in the U.S., Just Waiting for the Caravan by Michael Barbaro from nytimes.com

The midterm elections are over, and President Trump’s talk of the migrant caravan has dwindled. But thousands of troops sent to the southwest border are still there.

At nearly every turn, President Trump’s own generals tried to persuade him not to deploy active-duty troops to the United States border with Mexico. So what are 5,000 troops doing there?

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On today’s episode:

Helene Cooper, who covers the Pentagon for The New York Times.

Background reading:

Here’s what life is like for the soldiers deployed to the southwest borderon a mission that is expected to last until Dec. 15.

Since Election Day, President Trump has tweeted about the caravanexactly once.

The president has seemed to relish the spectacle of being commander in chief, but top Defense Department officials say he has struggled with the role.

He’s seriously deployed troops for a political reason and they’re going to be drawn down before the reason they’re supposed to be there happens?!

This is just the height of stupidity and government waste. Government institutions keep being eroded by Trumps ineptitude and fear-mongering. This is money and deployment help that would have been far better spent in Puerto Rico for the hurricane.