The best Republicans have to offer
by Tom Sullivan
The world has condemned the acting U.S. president’s racist tweets Sunday morning in which he told Democratic congresswomen they should go back to the countries they came from.
Donald Trump was responding to four congresswomen of color, and likely a fifth. Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Deb Haaland of New Mexico criticized the president and his policies Saturday morning at the annual Netroots Nation conference in Philadelphia. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) did not attend, but is frequently considered among the young freshmen legislators of The Squad (except Haaland). All except Omar (born in Somalia) are native born Americans. Haaland is Native American. Ocasio-Cortez was born of Puerto Rican parents in the Bronx just miles from Trump’s birthplace.
The women, he said, “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world.” For four out of the five, that would be Trump’s own. The “many terrible things they say about the United States” must not go unanswered, Trump added.
“This from the guy who constantly says the US has been a weak, stupid country led by weak stupid leaders for the last 60 years,” Digby observed.
“The president* of the United States is the kind of racist you find in a neighborhood saloon in which everybody moves to the other end of the bar,” responded Esquire’s Charlie Pierce. Trump’s is the kind of ignorance that broadcasts itself even more belligerently when challenged.
This is how the GOP’s infamous Southern Strategy ends. A fool and a bigot occupies the Oval Office intent on deporting anyone non-white. A U.S. president separates migrant families and cages non-white migrants and legal asylum seekers, small children among them, in overcrowded and unsanitary detention camps condemned by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Homeland Security’s own review calls the camps dangerously overcrowded. Multiple children have died in government custody. A president who in 2018 condemned Oakland, Calif., Mayor Libby Schaaf for alerting residents to immigration raids publicizes them himself. It gets his face on TV.
Trump’s party — now it is Trump’s party — is determined to rig both the census and legislative districting. One nation under Trump schemes to secure power for white conservatives by turning minorities into “three-fifths” people under-represented in government, if not barred from voting altogether.
The Republican party abandoned the Constitution and democracy for racism, authoritarianism, nativism and xenophobia decades ago. The war crimes of the George W. Bush administration once appeared to be the crowning achievement of “greed is good” conservatism. Yet, below Bush was Trump. That pit is bottomless.
Never-Trumper Bill Kristol reacted to Trump’s Sunday tweets by asking GOP leaders, donors and voters if they could do no better than Trump:
The president has once again (but even more obviously than usual) made clear his unapologetic bigotry, nativism and racism. Are GOP leaders, donors and voters still fine with re-nominating Donald Trump for president? Do they really believe the Republican Party can do no better?— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) July 14, 2019
As if in answer, Trump toady Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina confirmed the party could not. CBP’s Transport, Escort, Detention and Search standards provide that “[d]etainees should generally not be held for longer than 72 hours in CBP hold rooms or holding facilities.” Responding to the humanitarian crisis the Trump administration has created on the southern border, Graham told Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business Network he didn’t care if Trump held migrants in camps for 400 days.
Does a soulectomy hurt, senator?