Didja get any onya?
“Trump’s latest anti-immigration push echoes the nativism of the 1920s,” reads the headline over Karen Tumulty’s report this Pearl Harbor anniversary:
Somalis are “garbage,” and “we don’t want them in our country.” Migration from “all Third World countries” should be halted. Any foreign national deemed “noncompatible with Western civilization” must be deported.
His faculties visibly decaying, President Trump’s recent nativist rhetoric adds to past slurs that immigrants from “shithole countries” are “poisoning the blood” of our country, etc.
Those around Trump have joined in the nativist fervor. The president’s comments about Somalis, made during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, had Vice President JD Vance banging the table in approval. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called it an “epic moment.”
Former CUNY journalism professor, Jeff Jarvis, considers the Tumulty’s treatment of Trump, homeland security adviser Stephen Miller, Leavitt, et al. too tame, “Calling it nativism and calling on the history of the ’20s gets closer, but it should be noted that this is reaching a Nazi pitch.”
Careful where you point that thing
Tokyo Rose Garden (Leavitt) and DHS just got a clapback from the Washington Post in another Sunday story. Smears sometimes have a way of blowing back.
ICE in November arrested and began deportation efforts for Bruna Ferreira. Brazilian by birth, Ferreira is the mother of Leavitt’s 11-year-old nephew (Karoline Leavitt is his godmother; Ferreira is estranged from Leavitt’s brother Michael). She arrived in the U.S. as a child and overstayed her visa and is, in theory, legally protected and working under the DACA program.
DHS spokesliar Tricia McLaughlin launched her standard smear campaign. DHS called Ferreira an absentee mother with a previous arrest for “battery” and a “criminal.” The Post makes clear this morning that overstaying a visa is a civil violation. If that makes Ferreira a criminal, then anyone who’s ever received a parking ticket is as well.
But DHS was spitting into the wind when it smeared Ferreira. The Post did some digging:
Ferreira’s legal status had long been a point of contention in her relationship with Michael Leavitt. After they broke up, Ferreira said in court records that Michael Leavitt had in the past threatened to try to get her deported.
In the text messages, Michael Leavitt denied seeking to have Ferreira deported.
“I had no involvement in her being picked up by ice,” he wrote Wednesday to The Post. “I have no control over that and had no involvement in that whatsoever.”
What goes around
Tokyo Rose Garden might have called off the dogs attacking her godson’s mother, but failed to:
Michael Leavitt is from a close-knit family with deep roots in New Hampshire. He also had legal issues: He was charged twice in New Hampshire with underage alcohol possession, resulting in a fine and then a guilty plea to a downgraded town ordinance violation.
In 2009, at 19, he was found guilty of drunken driving and fined $620. In 2011, Miami Beach police arrested him for disorderly conduct, alleging that he and another man were fighting in the middle of the street, stopping traffic. The charges were dropped, court records show.
Leavitt said he has been the more consistent and responsible parent in his son’s life and accused The Post in a text message of “trying to use this whole situation to push a narrative to smear me.”
What goes around comes around:
In court, Ferreira and Leavitt traded allegations of abuse and neglect. In April 2015, Leavitt sought primary custody of their son in a New Hampshire court, alleging that Ferreira had pushed Leavitt during an argument when the couple took a trip to Florida. He said she returned home without him, collected their son from his grandparents, and threatened to take him with her to Brazil.
Ferreira denied the claims and in court filings accused Leavitt of abuse, saying on the day of her baby shower he had drunkenly pushed her, punched walls and broken doors. After he won the $1 million, she alleged in court that he cheated on her and gambled away thousands of dollars. Ferreira’s lawyer said in a May 2015 court filing that Leavitt also “threatened to contact Immigration in an effort to have her deported.”
[…]
In April 2020, Ferreira returned to court alleging Michael Leavitt owed her thousands of dollars in child support and was refusing to let her spend time with her son. She also wrote that Michael Leavitt had “used intimidation” based on her “immigration status” to discourage her from visiting the boy. Leavitt denied the allegations in court records.
There is a lot of he-said, she-said in the Post report, as things go in joint custody cases. It seems Ferreira struggled to get on her feet after the separation and her life is now more stable. Or it was until ICE snatched her last month.
@tmz 🚨Exclusive: Never-before-seen footage shows the moment ICE agents arrested a woman with family ties to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. FULL STORY AT THE LINK IN BIO!
Here’s hoping that the Leavitts enjoy their “epic” White Christmas.
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