Many people are saying that last night’s “Immigration Policy” speech by Trump in Phoenix Arizona was historical. I’m one of those people. Just WHY it was historical is a point of contention.
To me, the speech was historical because it contained the 21st century version of some of the worst ills of the world’s past. Divisiveness and demagoguery. Mad red0faced ranting. I really felt like this was somewhere in Germany in 1939.
The country has heard this nationalistic refrains before.
Trump spun a dystopian tale that painted all immigrants as people to be feared, people to be rounded up and hauled out of this country.
He said immigrants would need an “ideological certification” that confirms they “share our values.” I mean… fuck, that’s some scary Big Brother shit.
He again approvingly referenced President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s deportation program “Operation Wetback,” a cruel and deadly disaster from the 1950s, suggesting that Trump’s version of that program would be even tougher.
The crowd cheered.
He claimed there are 2 million “criminal aliens” in America and then said, preposterously, “Day one, my first hour in office – those people are gone!”
Saying that some think the word “deport” is not politically correct, Trump mocked: “You can call it whatever the hell you want, they’re gone.”
Loud. Spewing insults and absurd claims. Red-faced and nationalistic. It was Trump as we know him to be.
It was a hate speech. You could see the hands of Steve Bannon, who runs the far-right “news” site Breitbart and is now CEO of Trump’s campaign, all over it, as if Trump was barfing out the comments section under one of the site’s white nationalist screeds.
Moderate Republicans who have been praying daily for their nominee to grow into a plausible candidate had to be sickened by what they saw Wednesday night.
That wasn’t a speech on immigration policy, as the campaign had promised. That was Donald Trump thumbing his nose at the establishment and at all the pundits who suggested he was “softening” his stance on immigration.
That was an angry man catering to a base that shares his anger, a base that mistakenly believes it constitutes an electoral majority.
Trump’s swoop from supposed statesman in Mexico to manic hate-monger in Arizona was jarring. Truly.
How bad was it? High-profile Hispanic supporters of Donald Trump have pulled or are considering pulling their support after last night’s raging speech:
Jacob Monty, a member of Trump’s National Hispanic Advisory Council, has resigned, and Alfonso Aguilar, the president of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, said in an interview that he is “inclined” to pull his support.
“I was a strong supporter of Donald Trump when I believed he was going to address the immigration problem realistically and compassionately,” said Monty, a Houston attorney who has aggressively made the Latino case for Trump. “What I heard today was not realistic and not compassionate.”
He withdrew from the board following Trump’s speech in Phoenix, which was heavy on calls for border security and emphasized that all immigrants in the country illegally were subject to deportation.
We need to start talking — not about the damage that a Trump presidency would do to this country — but about the damage Trump’s candidacy is doing to this country. Some media outlets are trying to break down Trump’s with all sorts of seriousness, and — for fear of looking biased — are afraid to do what needs to be done: an outright condemnation of Trump’s words. This wasn’t policy — it was hate. As the New York Times editors noted today:
To mock him for emptiness is almost too easy. But the fear and loathing that he has tapped into, that so easily won him the nomination, are real. . . Tornadoes are hollow at the center, too, and they do a lot of damage.
Indeed. This is a blood soaked white nationalist politics that has caught fire with a significant minority of the electorate. There’s no reason to imagine that changes before November. Or after.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
With Trump in control of the golden door, that lamp goes dark.