IMMIGRATION/MEDIA/TRUMP PEOPLE: “We now know the sound it makes when human decency dies on live cable news: ‘Womp womp.’ That was the sound that the former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski made Tuesday night during a Fox News segment on the Trump administration policy of separating immigrant parents from their children at the border. He made it when a Democratic strategist, Zac Petkanas, told the story of a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome who was taken from her mother in Texas. Womp womp. You may know the noise by the name ‘sad trombone’ — a horn sound you use to mock a sob story. It’s a kind of trolling. And trolling is what Mr. Lewandowski gets booked on TV to do, this time by Fox, in the past by CNN. He’s the guy you can count on to taunt and revile the president’s enemies or perceived enemies. Mr. Lewandowski may have been egregious, but he hasn’t been alone on Fox. Laura Ingraham tried the Count Olafian sales pitch that the holding centers where children are kept in cages were ‘essentially summer camps.’ Ann Coulter argued that the children detained at the border were ‘child actors,’ and we shouldn’t fall for their heartstring-pulling wiles. (She pointedly aimed this at President Trump, saying, ‘I get very nervous about the president getting his news from TV.’)”
-James Poniewozik, “Images of the Border Crises Speak Louder Than ‘Womp Womp’,” The New York Times online, June 20, 2018