Month: July 2019

Guys, he’s been saying “send them back” from the very beginning

by digby

Trump reading “The Snake”

My Salon column this morning:

Donald Trump has bragged many times that his 2016 election victory was a result of his unique political genius, saying only recently, “You know who got me elected? I got me elected!” He is convinced that his instincts are infallible and that he speaks for the American electorate when he engages in his patented demagogic bigotry. He believes this is what brought him to the White House and is what will win him a second term.

He has little choice but to try. Even with a healthy economy and no new wars, he’s been unable to raise his approval ratings above the 45 percent or so that elected him. For all of the media’s insistence over the past few years that his victory was a result of “economic anxiety,” Trump himself knows better. He knows he can only replicate his 2016 fluke by activating the racist id of his following to its fullest in order to once again eke out a narrow Electoral College victory.

Now that he has found the perfect symbols of all his voters’ racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and Islamophobia in the persons of Reps. Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley, there will be no turning back. They are the living personification of everything he and his voters loathe: Hispanic, Muslim, African American, progressive women.

Trump’s recent Twitter tantrum and the ensuing outrage over his supporters’ “Send her back” chant really should not come as any surprise. After all, he is the king of the “birthers,” who managed to single-handedly convince millions of Americans that Barack Obama was a secret Muslim foreigner trying to pass himself off as an American citizen and was, therefore, an illegitimate president. These are his political roots.

And you can forgive his followers for chanting “Send her back,” since Trump repeatedly promised to send refugees and immigrants back to where they came from during the 2016 campaign. It was a staple of his campaign from the very beginning to refer to Syrian refugees as a possible “Trojan horse.”

In New Hampshire for the first time since he failed to correct a man’s rant about President Barack Obama being a Muslim, Trump was greeted by a few thousand cheering fans — and he was fired up. …

On the topic of Syrian refugees, Trump was forceful: “I’m putting people on notice that are coming here from Syria as part of this mass migration, that if I win, they’re going back!”

He explained: “They could be ISIS …This could be one of the great tactical ploys of all time. A 200,000-man army maybe, or if you said 50,000 or 80,000 or 100,000, we got problems and that could be possible. I don’t know that it is, but it could be possible so they’re going back — they’re going back.”

One of his favorite performances was to read the lyrics to a song called “The Snake,” which he saw as a parable for immigrants and refugees turning on the Americans who generously “took them in.” He brought that back as a greatest hit at CPAC last year:

From the beginning of his campaign, he spoke of mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, citing (without naming it) the grotesque “Operation Wetback” from the 1950s as his model. In one Republican primary debate, he explained:

Let me just tell you that Dwight Eisenhower, good president, great president, people liked him. I like Ike, right? The expression. “I like Ike.” Moved a million and a half illegal immigrants out of this country, moved them just beyond the border. They came back. Moved them again, beyond the border, they came back. Didn’t like it. Moved them way south. They never came back. Dwight Eisenhower. You don’t get nicer, you don’t get friendlier.

He told the press that he would create a “deportation force” that would “humanely” remove these millions of citizens.

In other words, he has formerly claimed that the first African American president of the United States was really a foreigner and he’s been talking about “sending back” immigrants and refugees for years. So this latest salvo isn’t original, although it’s the first time he has combined claiming that a black American is an illegitimate citizen with calls for the person to “go back to where they came from.” So in that respect he’s taken the demagoguery up a notch. But his fans are just following the familiar grooves of his call-and-response chants by using words they’ve heard a hundred times before. When he said at his North Carolina rally that Ilhan Omar has “contempt for hard-working Americans,” they knew exactly what to do.

Trump danced around the “Send her back” chant when asked about it on Thursday, saying he “disagreed with it” and claiming that he tried to stop it. (He didn’t disagree with it and he didn’t try to stop it.) This is par for the course with Trump. He throws out the red meat to his crowds and then pretends he doesn’t like the fact that they gobbled it up like a school of red-bellied piranhas. But he doesn’t keep up the pretense for long.

You will recall that when the eventually ubiquitous “Lock her up” chants first started he disavowed them, telling the media during a press conference:

When I started talking about Hillary Clinton, the veterans who saw her 24 hours before started screaming, “Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!” They also screamed that, as you know, during the speech I made. The big speech. And I said, “Don’t do that.” Now, I didn’t do that for any reason. I really — I didn’t like it. And they stopped. Not one reporter said that I said that. They all said — they started screaming “Lock her up! Lock her up!” I said, “Don’t do that.” I think it’s a shame that they said it, but a lot of people would say that should happen.”

It wasn’t long before he told his people that he was going to stop being so nice and when the chants started he began puffing out his chest and strutting around the stage like Il Duce. During the presidential debates, he famously told Clinton that if he were president, “you’d be in jail.” The chants continue to this day.

I have every expectation that he will do the same with “Send her back” or any other chant his fans come up with over the course of the next year and a half. He believes that pushing this odious demagoguery is how he will win because it’s how he won before. In any case, he doesn’t know how to do anything else.

Update: yep

Wow. Trump is now back to making a full-throated defense of his fans who engaged in racist chants at his rally.

"Those people in North Carolina — that stadium was packed. It was a record crowd … Those are incredible people. Those are incredible patriots." pic.twitter.com/mHrRMl6PiW— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 19, 2019

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The NY Times’s Moral Disgrace 

by tristero

The NY Times has recently published numerous intelligent op-eds openly denouncing Trump’s racism and bigotry. But the actual editorial board of the Times apparently won’t call Trump what he is until he starts gassing immigrants en masse or arresting members of Congress. Here’s the lede to their official editorial response to the “Send her back” chant:

Donald Trump insists he’s not a racist. This is, increasingly, a bit beside the point. 

Bullshit. Total bullshit.

First, Trump’s racism is the point. It’s his main calling card, he knows it and the Times’s editors know it. Second. claiming it’s “a bit besides the point” lets him personally off the hook, as if he doesn’t know what he’s doing (when it comes to racism, he most certainly does).

And the reason they let him off the hook is that they’re so in thrall to his celebrity, his wealth, and his position that they actually took his denial seriously. They even put his denial in the first goddamm sentence as if his denial was the single most important thing to know about the “Send her back” chant.

Here’s what the lede should have said:

Donald Trump is a racist. His denials are entirely besides the point.

The rest of the editorial is equally evasive and cowardly. They have no idea, even now, about who and what they are dealing with. Trump is an American fascist who is only a few tweets and rallies away from openly inciting his MAGAts to violence against his explicitly named enemies.

Leashing the financial predators
by Tom Sullivan

There is a reason for leash laws.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s latest plan for bringing metastasized capitalism to heel is “red meat for the Democratic party’s liberal base,” per CNN. That characterization presupposes her attention to Wall Street’s predations is a presidential candidate’s gimmick. In fact, it is the reason Warren conceived and fought to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It is the reason the former professor of commercial law sits in the U.S. Senate today.

Conservatives and business lobbyists argued for decades unleashing U.S. capitalism through deregulation would spur economic growth and enrichen everyone. They let large dogs loose on the playground with predictable results. People got hurt. And no, they didn’t enrichen everyone.

In a press release for Warren’s plan co-sponsored by Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee, plus Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Warren explains:

“For far too long, Washington has looked the other way while private equity firms take over companies, load them with debt, strip them of their wealth, and walk away scot-free -leaving workers, consumers, and whole communities to pick up the pieces,” said Senator Warren. “Our bill ends these abusive practices by putting private investment funds on the hook for the decisions made by the companies they control, ending looting, empowering workers and investors, and safeguarding the markets from risky corporate debt.”

Once known as leveraged buyout firms, the industry rebranded itself private equity after financial scandals of the 1980s, writes The American Prospect’s Robert Kuttner. The rebrand meant “to mislead the public to believe that it is similar to the venture capital business, in which investors actually contribute new capital. But private equity exists to extract capital.”

Ask Dylan Ratigan about America being “extracted.”

For decades, Washington has lived by a simple rule: If it’s good for Wall Street, it’s good for the economy. But it just isn’t true. Big banks are making record profits and handing out huge bonuses as average wages barely budge.— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) July 18, 2019

In a Medium column, Warren adds, “Private equity firms raise money from investors, kick in a little of their own, and then borrow tons more to buy other companies. Sometimes the companies do well. But far too often, the private equity firms are like vampires — bleeding the company dry and walking away enriched even as the company succumbs.”

As Kuttner concludes, “there is no constructive reason for this industry to exist.” Except to make those in it very, very rich standing on the backs of workers who have lost their jobs and more. As Matthew McConaughey said in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), “We don’t create shit. We don’t build anything.”

Warren’s Stop Wall Street Looting Act would:

● Require Private Investment Firms to Have Skin in the Game.
Firms will share responsibility for the liabilities of companies under their control including debt, legal judgments and pension-related obligations to better align the incentives of private equity firms and the companies they own.
In order to discourage irresponsible leverage, the bill ends the tax subsidy for excessive leverage and closes the carried interest loophole.

● End Looting of Portfolio Companies. To give portfolio companies a shot at success, the proposal bans dividends to investors for two years after a firm is acquired and ends the extraction of wealth from acquired companies through excessive fees.

● Protect Workers, Customers and Communities. This proposal prevents private equity firms from walking away when a company fails and protects stakeholders by:

○ Prioritizing worker pay in the bankruptcy process and improving rules so workers are more likely to receive severance, pensions, and other payments they earned.

○ Creating incentives for job retention so that workers can benefit from a company’s second chance.

○ Ending the immunity of private equity firms from legal liability when their portfolio companies break the law, including the WARN Act. When workers at a plant are shortchanged or residents at a nursing home are hurt because private equity firms force portfolio companies to cut corners, the firm should be liable.

○ Clarifying that gift cards are consumer deposits, ensuring their priority in bankruptcy.

● Empower Investors by Increasing Transparency. Private fund managers will be required to disclose fees and returns so that investors can monitor their investments and shop around. The bill will also prevent firms from requiring investors to waive their fiduciary duties and end secret side deals that privilege some investors over others.

● Require Risk Retention. Reinstates the Dodd-Frank provision that requires arrangers of corporate debt securitization to retain some of the risk.

Occupy Wall Street was a reaction to the financial collapse of 2008. Donald Trump’s election was, among other factors, a reaction to the Obama administration’s failure to rein in Wall Street and address the foreclosure crisis that put millions of Americans out of their homes so too-big-to-fail banks could prop-up their balance sheets. Much of the country has still not recovered.

As the congress is presently configured, Warren’s plans will go nowhere. Still, they accomplish two things. First, put the fear of God in the right people.

Trump supporter Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson on Monday, “I’m most scared by Elizabeth Warren.” Reflecting on 2020 Democratic candidates, Thiel said, “I think she’s the one who’s actually talking about the economy.”

Good. https://t.co/8buEJGkW32— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) July 16, 2019

Second, Warren’s plans demonstrate at least some Democrats are prepared to stop American families from being harmed by financial predators allowed to run loose since the 1980s.

Adam Levitin of Georgetown Law School, one of the bill’s advisers, tells Kuttner, “This is literally the first major bill on financial regulation since Dodd-Frank.” Levitin adds, “It shows that Democrats are back on the offensive on financial reform.”

Nausea 

by tristero

I’ve seen some despicable behavior by American leaders but I’ve never seen or heard anything — not from Nixon, from Reagan, or from either of the two terrible Bushes — that comes close to the  “Send her back” rally last night.

I watched him basking in that revolting chanting and my stomach heaved — I’m sure I wasn’t alone. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who thought of Mussolini, of Hitler, and of all the sickening nihilistic displays of fascist hate our time has generated.

It is my sincere (but likely futile) hope that the limit has been reached, that now, finally, the major media will treat Trump and Trumpism like the existential danger so many of us have known it was since long before 2016.

It is long past time for the news to stop highlighting video footage of his lying and demagoguery and instead, regularly feature the thousands of eloquent people who are speaking up in protest. No more febrile white people drooling over their racism in diners. Let’s hear frequently from the millions of Americans who are as disgusted by Trumpism as we are.

In short, it’s way past time to cut Trump’s access to grade A media coverage and for the media to stop the collusion with his blatant manipulation of the press’s commitment to objectivity. Trump is still treated by the NY Times, for example, as if his monstrous racism and cynical distractions are somehow newsworthy and merely another point of view. Meanwhile, those speaking in opposition to his fascism are, at best, merely given equal time, creating a “he said/she said” vomitous media soup.

This approach to covering Trump has to stop, and stop now, or “Send her back” will soon be replaced by far worse including, I’m terrified to imagine, outright fascist, Trumpist violence.

Those rally goers were just blowing off steam

by digby

Rush on “send her back”

We know that they are targeting us. We know that they are taking political action against us. This stuff gets stored, there is no outlet for it, and then Trump’s rally happens last night, mentions Omar in context with everything that’s been happening here. It’s clear as a bell that Omar has got big problems with this country as founded. So do the rest of the members of The Squad. And let’s not forget the tie-in to illegal immigration, which I think also has a relationship to “send her back.”

I don’t think “send her back” is about one person or about one thing. I think it’s a culmination of many things resulting from a boiling over frustration. It is an overall expression of anger about the lack of enforcement of the morality and of the law and of the rules that preserve this country as founded.

The American people did what they could in 2016. They elected somebody that was gonna stop it. He has been opposed and thwarted at every move he’s made to try to keep his campaign promise, to stop this massive invasion of illegal immigrants into the country. He has been thwarted. You can understand frustration over this building and building and building.

All the while, the people who support this are being portrayed as the enemies of America, and they’re racists, and they’re bigots, and they’re homophobes. And people have been subjected to these insults now for years and years and years. And they’re tired of it. So here comes an outlet to express the frustration.

“Lock her up,” Hillary Clinton. She commits violations of the law, for crying out loud! She is exonerated, she gets away from them. People are fed up with this. They’re fed up with the two-tier justice system. She can do an illegal server. She can traffic in classified documents. She can have a pay-for-play, phony foundation where she’s accepting essentially bribes from foreign actors on the come, assuming she’s gonna be president. And the FBI and James Comey exonerate her after having a meeting with her husband on an airplane on a tarmac in Phoenix!

You think people are not fed up over all of this? And it’s just one thing after another that adds up! And it keeps adding up. And then you add to the fact that there’s no Republican stand up opposition to any of this! No! We get the Never Trumpers and the resigned members of the House blaming Trump supporters for this stuff! Blaming Trump supporters for lack of civility while it’s Sarah Huckabee Sanders being forcibly kicked out of a restaurant or any other number of Republicans.

We’re supposedly engaging in incivility? We’re minding our own business, we’re going about our lives, we end up being targeted. They try to ruin some of us. They try to damage some of us. They do anything they can, including taking physical action against us, and we’re supposed to sit there and be well-mannered. That will triumph in the long haul with the American people who will understand that we’re the ones who are civil.

In other words: Whaaaaaa!!!

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This isn’t the first time we’ve heard “send them back”

by digby

Trump made it clear during his 2016 campaign that he planned to deport millions back to Mexico and other countries south of the border. But he didn’t stop there:

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would send Syrian refugees “back” if he were elected to the White House.

In New Hampshire for the first time since he failed to correct a man’s rant about President Barack Obama being a Muslim, Trump was greeted by a few thousand cheering fans — and he was fired up.

Trump outlined the specifics of his new tax plan. But in typical Trump fashion, he didn’t stop there.

On the topic of Syrian refugees, Trump was forceful: “I’m putting people on notice that are coming here from Syria as part of this mass migration, that if I win, they’re going back!”

He explained: “They could be ISIS …This could be one of the great tactical ploys of all time. A 200,000-man army maybe, or if you said 50,000 or 80,000 or 100,000, we got problems and that could be possible. I don’t know that it is, but it could be possible so they’re going back — they’re going back.”

This was big part of his pitch in the early days:

After two days of confusion over whether or not Donald Trump wants to set up a database of Muslims living in the United States, the candidate explained his stance during a political rally on Saturday morning.

“I will absolutely take database on the people coming in from Syria,” Trump said, adding that such a database would not be needed in a Trump administration, as he would kick all Syrian refugees out of the country, regardless of their religion, and allow no more to enter. “If I win, they’re going back. They’re going back. We can’t have them.”

Trump called for heavy surveillance of Syrians, Muslims and anyone with possible ties to the Islamic State. He urged the audience members to be vigilant and report anything suspicious they see to the police.

“I want surveillance of certain mosques, okay? If that’s okay?” Trump said, as thousands of people in the audience cheered. “I want surveillance. And you know what? We’ve had it before, and we’ll have it again.”

His followers cheered that then and they cheer him now. The fact that he didn’t actually do it is meaningless. They just want to make sure that all immigrants of color know that they are not “real Americans” and that this president will make sure they never, ever think they are. It makes them feel good. It makes them feel powerful. It makes them feel relieved that their ugly bigotry is actually ok.

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QOTD: Lindsey Graham

by digby

Lindsey Graham gives up the game, tells reporters that "if you're a Somali refugee wearing a MAGA cap, [Trump] doesn't want to send you back … what does that tell me? That it's about the criticism."

In other words, Trump tolerates refugees so long as they support him. pic.twitter.com/9x9IOvruLW— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 18, 2019

Hey, he never says racist remarks about white people or people of color who are good boys and girls and bow down and reassure him that he’s not a racist.

So — he’s not a racist.

Look what we’ve become: “Sofi’s Choice”

by digby

Scarce at Crooks and Liars:

Sophie’s Choice :

Sophie’s Choice is the title of a 1979 novel by William Styron, and in 1982 Sophie’s Choice was made into a critically acclaimed film starring Meryl Streep. In the novel, which is set during World War II, the title character must choose between the lives of her two children while imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz.

In this case, a three-year-old Honduran girl was asked to choose which of her parents could stay with her, while the other was sent away. The dark irony of what they were asking of the three-year-old who they called “Sofi” apparently didn’t register with the border agents who were “just doing their job” [sic].

NPR reported this case:

At a Border Patrol holding facility in El Paso, Texas, an agent told a Honduran family that one parent would be sent to Mexico while the other parent and their three children could stay in the United States, according to the family. The agent turned to the couple’s youngest daughter — 3-year-old Sofia, whom they call Sofi — and asked her to make a choice.

“The agent asked her who she wanted to go with, mom or dad,” her mother, Tania, told NPR through an interpreter. “And the girl, because she is more attached to me, she said mom. But when they started to take [my husband] away, the girl started to cry. The officer said, ‘You said [you want to go] with mom.’ “

Tania and her husband, Joseph, said they spent parts of two days last week trying to prevent the Border Patrol from separating their family. They were aided by a doctor who had examined Sofi and pleaded with agents not to separate the family, Joseph and Tania said. [NPR is not using migrants’ last names in this story because these are people who are in the middle of immigration proceedings.]

Three. Years. Old.

I might doubt this story except for the fact that we are routinely dragging toddlers before judges who ask them if they understand their rights etc.

Because our system is both cruel and insane…

Female GOP officials should be identified for the hacks they are

by digby

The media needs to stop doing this:

CNN hosted a panel of Republican women this week, who defended President Donald Trump’s recent attacks against several progressive lawmakers of color, but the network failed to disclose all eight of the guests are part of an organized pro-Trump club.

The eight women, who came on the network shortly after CNN gave a platform to white supremacist Richard Spencer to discuss Trump’s racism, are all members of a group they call “Trumpettes of America 2019 Palm Beach Team.” Instead of informing their audience that these women are all dedicated, pro-Trump partisans, CNN correspondent Randi Kaye introduced the panelists using the innocuous label, “Republican women from Dallas.”

Cooper did refer to the women as part of “the president’s base,” but the on-screen description of the panelists simply read, “Republican.”

Unsurprisingly, not a single one of the women took issue with Trump telling Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley to go back to the countries they “originally” came from. Three of those lawmakers were born in the United States — Omar came to the U.S. as a teenaged refugee and became a citizen.

“He was saying that if they hate America so much — because what we’re seeing out of them and hearing out of them, they hate America,” one of the pro-Trump women said, before claiming the lawmakers are “racist” because they “don’t like white people.”

Another panelist said they are “glad that the president” told the lawmakers to “go back” to their countries. A third woman described the lawmakers of color as “American now, so to speak,” but insisted “they are not acting American.”

“We know the president is not racist,” chimed in another Trumpette. “He loves people from Hispanics to black people, all across the board.”

As for activism that the Trumpettes actually conduct on behalf of the president, the group held a Pennsylvania rally on the same day that the CNN segment aired which featured some of the most notable women Trump supporters, including the president’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, Trump 2020 senior advisor Katrina Pierson, ex-Fox News host and Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle, and pro-Trump viral sensations Diamond & Silk.

During the Tuesday night rally, Lara Trump repeated nearly the same talking points as the CNN panelists when asked about the president’s racist tweets.

“I know Donald Trump. He’s not a racist,” she told Vice News reporter Elizabeth Landers. “It’s a talking point that is always used against any Republican especially this president, and it’s sad to see that that is the only thing that people ever have to throw at any Republican racist, sexist.”

Eric’s wife Lara is smarter than your average Trump. And she’s got a very, very casual relationship to the truth…

This is not the first time the media has done this over the last few years. and it’s a bad habit. They interview “Trump voters” which is technically true, but it turns out that they a political players not average citizens. So they end up promoting the party’s talking points as if they are the real views of everyday citizens. It is, to say the least, misleading.

I suspect they do this because they depend upon the party to help them gather these people. Big mistake. The party is dishonest.

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Trump has “reprogrammed” their minds

by digby

Trump’s followers automatically know what to say:

We now have a new gross Trump rally crowd chant to replace “Lock Her Up!”

During President Trump’s Wednesday night rally in Greenville, North Carolina, he took aim at Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), one of the Democratic congresswomen of color he told to “go back” to where “they came” from.

“Omar has a history of launching vicious anti-Semitic screeds,” the president said.

The MAGA crowd knew just what to do next.

“Send her back! Send her back! Send her back,” the audience chanted as Trump soaked it in for a few moments.

Omar is a United States citizen. She moved from Somalia as a child and gained her citizenship as a teenager.

Maybe someone from the campaign prompted this unamerican bilge but I doubt it.

They are a cult. They know what to do.

Let’s just hope there weren’t any more cultists like his:

The Florida man who pleaded guilty to mailing explosive devices said in a letter to a federal judge that attending a rally for President Donald Trump “became like a new found drug.”

Cesar Sayoc has admitted to sending pipe bombs to CNN, and various Democratic officials and donors. He pleaded guilty last month to 65 felony counts, including using weapons of mass destruction in an attempted domestic terrorist attack.

In the handwritten letter filed Tuesday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, he told a judge that “the first thing you here (sic) entering Trump rally is we are not going to take it anymore, the forgotten ones, etc.”

At those events, he said, he came into contact with all kinds of people. “You met people from all walks life … color etc,” he wrote. “It was fun, it became like a new found drug.”

He also wrote that Trump’s self-help CDs reprogrammed his mind, and detailed the negative reaction he got for the Trump stickers on his car, including having his tires slashed and windows broken.

Luckily, he was incompetent. But they all won’t be.

He is inciting these people.

Update: He said this morning that he “disagreed with it” and tried to stop the chant.

Uhm. No he did not.

Here's full clip of Trump attacking Omar & ensuing "send her back!" chants. Couple things to note:

1) The hypnotic way Trump puts words in her mouth to make it seem like she's an al-Qaeda supporter
2) The jingoistic grunts emanating from crowd, reminiscent of an Idiocracy scene pic.twitter.com/b8CEsgv4Uo— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 18, 2019

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