GOP attacks on immigrants comes to prime time
Historian Jon Meacham told ABC’s “This Week” that the rules Joe Biden has won for this Thursday’s presidential debate means he has “childproofed” the debate for the child challenging him.
That’s naive, of course. The child has signaled his plan to tag Biden with every violent crime committed by an undocumented immigrant. If Biden is defending that accusation, he’s losing. He has to reject the premise and “out” what Trump is really doing.
Trump means to collectively punish 11 million undocumented migrants with mass roundup at the hands of the military, and to deport the lot using isolated isolated migrant crimes as a pretext. Perhaps pointing out Trump’s penchant for demonization and collective punishment of human beings he’s branded “vermin” is a more evocative counter. The subtext speaks for itself.
Trump has suggested tossing migrants into gladiatorial combat for the entertainment value:
The remarks are part of Trump’s broader pattern of using dehumanizing language when discussing immigrants, which during this election cycle has included broadly portraying migrants as violent criminals and saying that they are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Biden might ask Trump what happened to shooting them in the legs and moats filled with alligators.
Brian Beutler joins Greg Sargent’s “Daily Blast” podcast this morning and notes that targeting most any other group for mass deportation would be beyond the pale as far as media reporting and public reaction goes. Pointing out that Trump advocates for that and where that impulse leads might draw “severe” backlash.
Trump took much less drastic moves against immigrants in his first administration and drew that backlash. Imagine the police or the military rolling up to a neighbor’s home and dragging them out. (Keep your phone handy and charged.) Even if some Trumpers would celebrate, it would create a media firestorm against Trump and Trumpism and a global black eye for the land of the free.
How the press covers (or doesn’t) “the Trump-MAGA demonization of migrants,” Sargent writes, should be “a major scandal in its own right.”
Beutler adds regarding Republican bad faith arguments:
Media organizations have the resources that they need to reveal what’s true about Americans. Are they are they really as nativist, protectionist, xenophobic as Republicans seem to think they are, as Donald Trump seems to think they are, as many even liberal pundits think they are? Or do they actually, when you present them with the raw idea of what Republicans are proposing, will they recoil? And I think that we will find that the headline, the top line numbers suggesting there’s support for mass deportations, will reveal a real soft underbelly. There’s not actually a mass movement for for that kind of cruelty.
Even racists recoil at being called racists. They have no issue with their feelings toward the “Other.” But the brand still carries a stigma even in the age of Trump. Everyone, even the vilest among us, wants to be seen as the good guy. Unmasking the xenophobes’ game for what it is could make the country take a long, hard look in the mirror.
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.