One of the paradoxes of modern-day American politics is that white identity politics can be a potent political platform, as long as you don’t call it that. Policies with racist effects are often popular; explicit racism is verboten.
After days of insisting, falsely, that the separations were the result of some Democratic-passed law, the president has partially shifted gears, defending the policy in a series of tweets. The most shocking is this one, with its description of unauthorized immigrants as an “infestation”:
Democrats are the problem. They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13. They can’t win on their terrible policies, so they view them as potential voters!
The good news about President Donald Trump’s speech in Nashville last night was that he didn’t mention Roseanne Barr, which could have made that controversy much, much worse. The bad news? Try all of the false, misleading and dishonest claims he made.
“[There’s] never been an administration — and even some of our enemies are admitting it — that has done what we’ve done in the first year and a half. Think of it”
The tax law has been Trump’s only major legislative achievement, and he ranks behind other past presidents in bills signed into law.
“We’ve created 3.3 million new jobs since Election Day. If we would have said that before the election — I’m going to create 3.3 million new jobs — would never have [survived the] onslaught from fake news. Wouldn’t have accepted it, said no way you can do that”
While there have indeed been 3.3 million jobs created in the 18 months since Election Day 2016 (Nov. 2016-April 2018), there were 3.9 million jobs created in the 18 months before Election Day (May 2015-Oct. 2016) — when Trump was criticizing the state of the U.S. economy.
“Wages for the first time in many years are finally going up”
That is false; wages also increased during the final years of Obama’s presidency, per PolitiFact.
“[Nancy Pelosi] loves MS-13”
Pelosi was objecting to Trump calling undocumented immigrants “animals”; the White House says he was referring to MS-13 in his “animals” remarks. Pelosi never said she loved MS-13.
“So how do you like the fact they had people infiltrating our campaign? Can you imagine? Can you imagine?”
On Fox News last night, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said the FBI’s use of an informant for the 2016 Trump campaign was appropriate (see below for more).
“Mexico, I don’t want to cause a problem. But in the end, Mexico’s going to pay for the wall”
Mexico once again said it wasn’t paying for Trump’s wall. Here’s Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto: “President @realDonaldTrump: NO. Mexico will NEVER pay for a wall. Not now, not ever. Sincerely, Mexico (all of us).”
“We passed largest tax cuts and reform in American history”
By either inflation-adjusted dollars or as a percentage of GDP, the tax legislation Trump signed into law last year ranks well below other tax laws, including those under Reagan or even Obama.
For an even more thorough account on Trump’s claims from last night, check out the feed from the Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale.
President Donald Trump smeared House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as an “MS-13 lover” while speaking to a rowdy crowd in Nashville, Tennessee tonight.
Trump dropped the new nickname after knocking Democratic Senate candidate Phil Bredesen as “an absolute tool of Chuck Schumer” in attempt to hype up Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who is looking to take Senator Bob Corker‘s Tennessee seat.
“He’s a tool of Chuck Schumer,” Trump said of Bredesen, a former Tennessee governor. “Of course, the MS-13 lover Nancy Pelosi.”
He continued the smear:
“She loves MS-13. Can you imagine? Remember? I said they’re animals and she said ‘How dare you say that, how dare you say that.’ Have you seen what they’ve done? Have you seen what they’re doing to us? And we’re taking them out of our country by the thousands. Out. Out. By the thousands. Chuck and Nancy. They don’t want the wall. They want open borders. They are more interested in taking care of criminals than they are in taking care of you.”
While the audience responded by wildly cheering, this was not original content for Trump, who claimed that “Nancy Pelosi came out in favor of MS-13″ while speaking at an anti-abortion event this month.”
However, both of Trump’s claims tying Pelosi to the gang are false, as a report from the fact-checking service Politifactfound that the top House Democrat simply said “calling people animals is not a good thing” and did not mention the gang. While Trump supporters and right-wing media pundits claim this was a defense of MS-13, since Trump’s infamous “animals” comment was directed at the gang, others have suggested that Republicans are simply using MS-13 to paint Hispanic immigrants as subhuman.
These concerns seem to have been proven correct, as a recent reporton ICE from Slate shows how the federal agency designed to target undocumented immigrants lied about ties to MS-13 in an attempt to deport a Dreamer.
Want to know how bad Donald Trump’s immigration policies are? Last week he lied to a Nashville, Tennessee crowd and claimed Nancy Pelosi was an “MS-13 lover.”
Rather than having an intellectual debate on the merits of his ideas, he lies to his base.
Pelosi simply said “calling people animals is not a good thing” and did not mention the gang.
Context is needed here because Republicans across the country are simply using MS-13 to paint all Hispanic immigrants as subhuman.
For example, here is failed Virginia GOP candidate Ed Gillespie’s ad, tying all Hispanic immigrants to MS-13.
President Trump on Saturday called for an end to his administration’s policy of separating immigrant families at the border for legal prosecution, blaming Democrats for inaction on immigration policy.
“Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there parents once they cross the Border into the U.S. Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS,” Trump tweeted.
Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there parents once they cross the Border into the U.S. Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS.
A Trump administration policy announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement earlier this month mandates the prosecution of adults separately from children when families arrive at the U.S. border seeking asylum. “If you cross the border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you. It’s that simple,” Sessions said. “If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you. And that child may be separated from you, as required by law.”
Trump has blamed Democrats for the policy, and accuses them of desiring “open borders” that would allow criminals, such as members of the gang MS-13, into the country.
President Donald Trump referred to some people deported from the United States as “animals” during a roundtable discussion with California sheriffs on Wednesday. It’s the latest in a series of statements stretching Trump’s entire national political career that carelessly conflate immigration, criminality, and violence.
From the official White House transcript:
SHERIFF (Margaret) MIMS (Fresno County, CA): Now ICE is the only law enforcement agency that cannot use our databases to find the bad guys. They cannot come in and talk to people in our jail, unless they reach a certain threshold. They can’t do all kinds of things that other law enforcement agencies can do. And it’s really put us in a very bad position.
THE PRESIDENT: It’s a disgrace. Okay? It’s a disgrace.
SHERIFF MIMS: It’s a disgrace.
THE PRESIDENT: And we’re suing on that, and we’re working hard, and I think it will all come together, because people want it to come together. It’s so ridiculous. The concept that we’re even talking about is ridiculous. We’ll take care of it, Margaret. We’ll win.
SHERIFF MIMS: Thank you. There could be an MS-13 member I know about — if they don’t reach a certain threshold, I cannot tell ICE about it.
THE PRESIDENT: We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in — and we’re stopping a lot of them — but we’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals. And we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before. And because of the weak laws, they come in fast, we get them, we release them, we get them again, we bring them out. It’s crazy.
It’s not clear who the president was referring to — whether he was simply picking up on Sheriff Mims’s reference to MS-13 gang members or referring to deportees more broadly. But the president didn’t exactly bend over backward to specify that not all immigrants deported by this administration are “animals.”
Trump has used the term “animals” to refer to members of MS-13 before. In a July 2017 speech to law enforcement officers on Long Island, he said: “Few communities have suffered worse at the hand of these MS-13 thugs than the people of Long Island. They have transformed peaceful parks and beautiful quiet neighborhoods into bloodstained killing fields. They are animals.” In February, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, he said, “These are animals. They cut people. They cut them. They cut them up in little pieces, and they want them to suffer. And we take them into our country.”
No matter how Trump is portraying his policy, his administration is not focusing on deporting people who have committed particularly heinous crimes; gang members; or people with criminal records. From Trump’s inauguration to the end of 2017, ICE arrested 45,436 immigrants without criminal records.
To be sure, ICE arrests of immigrants with criminal records ticked up slightly from the last year of the Obama administration (in which immigration enforcement was subdued compared to previous years) to the Trump administration. But arrests of immigrants without criminal records have also spiked. During President Obama’s last year, about 16 percent of ICE arrests were of noncriminal immigrants; each month since July 2017, between 32 and 40 percent of arrestees have been noncriminals.
The Trump administration is still deporting fewer noncriminal immigrants than the Obama administration did circa 2011, and the proportion of deportees who are noncriminals is usually smaller than the proportion of arrestees who are. But the Trump administration is aiming not just to ramp back up to the deportation peak of Obama’s first term but surpass it, and that’s going to require arresting and deporting a lot of immigrants without criminal records.
If Donald Trump understands his own administration’s policy, he’s never acknowledged it in public. He sticks to the same rhetorical move every time: refer to some specific criminals, call them horrible people and animals, say that their evil justifies his immigration policy, and allow the conflation of all immigrants and all Latinos with criminals and animals to remain subtext.
This is who Donald Trump has been for his entire political career. The worst-case scenarios about his dehumanizing rhetoric — that they would foment large-scale mob violence or vigilantism against Latinos in the United States — have not been realized. But neither have any hopes that Trump, as president, might ever weigh his words with any care at all, especially when encouraging Americans to see human beings as less than human.
The White House said that President Trump was “clearly” referring to members of the MS-13 gang when he called some immigrants “animals” and argued the controversial label is more than appropriate.
President Donald Trump received applause on Friday when he endorsed police brutality while delivering a speech to law enforcement officers on Long Island, New York.
The president suggested that officers should hit suspects’ heads on the doors of their police cars.
“When you see these towns and when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in, rough, and I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice,’” Trump said.
“Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over, like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody, don’t hit their head, I said, ‘You can take the hand away, OK?’” he added.
His remarks received significant applause.
Here's the president of the United States encouraging police officers to be rough with people they arrest pic.twitter.com/iLzoUEY89e
Trump also made the dubious claim that laws were “horrendously stacked” against police officers and said he wants to change those laws.
“For years and years, [laws have] been made to protect the criminal,” Trump said. “Totally protect the criminal, not the officers. You do something wrong, you’re in more jeopardy than they are. These laws are stacked against you. We’re changing those laws.”
In his speech, Trump also said that police officers in many parts of the country couldn’t do their jobs because they had a “pathetic mayor” or a mayor “who doesn’t know what’s going on.” Those comments also received a lengthy applause.
“It’s sad, it’s sad. You look at what’s happening, and it’s sad,” Trump said. “We’re going to support you like you’ve never been supported before.”
Trump also spoke about violence in Chicago, which was a consistent theme of his speeches throughout the campaign and is a topic he has continued to reference during his presidency. Trump recalled speaking to an “impressive” and “rough cookie” police officer from Chicago, and said the officer had told him he could straighten out the city’s violence problem in a “couple of days” if he was given the authority.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Trump may not be getting along these days, but the two are on the same page when it comes to policing. Sessions has had the Justice Department pull back from “pattern or practice” investigations that look into widespread constitutional abuses in police departments.
Zeke Johnson, senior director of programs at Amnesty International USA, said Trump’s “inflammatory and hateful speech will only escalate tensions between police and communities,” putting both officers and civilians at risk.
“Police cannot treat every community like an invading army, and encouraging violence by police is irresponsible and reprehensible,” he said.
Vanita Gupta, who headed the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under former President Barack Obama, said Trump’s remarks were “unconscionable” and undermined the positive efforts of local law enforcement to build up community trust.
“The president of the United States, standing before an audience of law enforcement officials, actively encouraged police violence,” Gupta said. “We call on the president to immediately and unequivocally condemn police brutality. We can all respect our law enforcement officers without sanctioning unjust and illegal behavior.”
Robert Driscoll, a former Justice Department Civil Rights Division official under the President George W. Bush administration, was also critical.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized his predecessor for being “weak” on illegal immigration and blamed him, without evidence, for allowing the violent MS-13 gang to form in America.
“The weak illegal immigration policies of the Obama Admin. allowed bad MS 13 gangs to form in cities across U.S. We are removing them fast!” the president said on Twitter at about 5:40 a.m.
The MS-13 gang, which is based in Central America, was formed by Salvadorans fleeing that country’s civil war in the 1980s. The FBI recognized that the gang was a growing threat in the early 2000s — before former President Barack Obama was elected — and in 2004 created a task force “to investigate this violent international street gang,” according to the FBI. In 2008, the FBI stated that MS-13 had expanded to at least 42 states and D.C.
During an interview with “Fox and Friends” co-anchor Ainsley Earhardt that aired Tuesday, Trump said his administration has already kicked out dangerous illegal immigrants who were in this country. He didn’t specify MS-13 gang members.
“I’m talking about illegal immigrants that were here that caused tremendous crime that have murdered people, raped people; horrible things have happened. They are getting the hell out, or they are going to prison,” he says. “It is a serious problem and we never did anything about it, and now we’re doing something about it.”
