It shouldn’t be too much to expect a modicum of justice, if not compassion, from the “leader of the free world.”

Yet, with his crass manipulation of the migrant caravan humanitarian crisis President Donald Trump –proudly, it seems-- shows once again that those concepts are as foreign to him as common decency. The supposed “leader of the free world” is in reality the world’s most dangerous and terrifying clown.

“Sadly, it looks like Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States,” Trump falsely claimed in an early Monday morning tweet. “Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National [Emergency]. Must change laws!”

Yet every witness, every reporter covering the perilous journey of the estimated 7,000 Central Americans, most of them from Honduras, have not seen any Middle Easterners or criminal activity, only desperately poor men and women, families terrified about their children’s lives and lack of a future attempting to escape the violence and extreme poverty that plagues their country. They have also witnessed determination and hope in the midst of the marchers’ uncertain journey.

“This is not a caravan - which indicates it’s a fun walk,” said Susanne Ramírez de Arellano, a New York journalist and writer. “This is a desperate cry from fellow humans.”

Ramírez de Arellano is right, of course, which makes it even more despicable for the president of the world’s most powerful country to callously defame the marchers in order to inflame his base of ignorant, racist supporters a few days before the midterm elections. Honesty is another one of those virtues this morally challenged president cares nothing about.

It is the height of cynicism that, while Trump condemns the caravan as an “invasion” and threatens to cut aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, it has been the United States military interventions, support for coup d’états, drug trafficking and generally abusive and exploitative policies that, to a large degree, have created the terrible conditions in Central America that make its people embark in life or death journeys.

Obviously, for Trump, as it was for former president Obama, horrific brutality in countries with some of the highest murder rates in the world is not reason enough for this self-proclaimed human-rights-proud nation to offer terrified people its protection.

That the U.S., by financing devastating armed conflicts during the Cold War and supporting illegitimate and criminal governments, has a huge historical responsibility in creating the conditions Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala find themselves in that are making their people flee doesn’t seem to matter to this administration. That much of the current brutality in those countries is fueled by the existence of a multibillion-dollar illegal drug market in the U.S. is of no real concern to this administration either.

It is difficult to find a more stupid – or heartless – measure than Trump’s decision to curtail aid to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala as punishment for failing to “control” their people.

Doesn’t he realize that in making those countries’ already dire conditions even worse, the number of people fleeing to save themselves and their children from abject poverty, horrific violence and lack of hope will go through the roof? Doesn’t Trump understand that desperate people will do whatever is necessary to protect the most basic of human rights: the right to live?

Doesn’t the twisted clown in the White House comprehend that no border wall, no cruel immigration policy, no repressive measure will be enough to stop an exodus of his own making and about which the U.S. cannot abdicate its moral responsibility?

Not surprisingly, the pathetic fact that Honduras and Guatemala were two of the few countries that supported Trump’s universally despised transfer of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem doesn’t seem to have had any effect on Trump’s cruel disregard for the suffering of their people.

Only God knows what’s next for the caravan people who embarked on a trip seeking safety and a future. But, unfortunately, nothing good can be expected from the racist cabal occupying Washington.