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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumstrump is on a tear about immigration. What's really behind it
trump is on a tear about immigration. What's really behind it
(CNN)President Donald Trump is on a tear about immigration again. Often mercurial and dark, Trump is using the power of the presidency to share his fear and anxiety with the country, and to stir the same feelings in its citizens. He does this instead of directly addressing the nation's domestic problems -- in this case, a long-broken immigration system -- pushing the buttons of his base and re-energizing them on this divisive issue. In this scenario, governance and leadership lose, and fear-driven policy can result.
Thus, over the holiday weekend, he issued a series of tweets stoking a familiar (and unfounded) fear of border-crossing bogeyman who are hell-bent on committing violent crimes. And Tuesday, he announced several proposals to address this alleged issue, including stationing military troops along the border with Mexico.
Trump's immigration tirade began with a Twitter rant about pardons issued by California Gov. Jerry Brown to five people facing deportation. The topic had just been featured on Fox News, which often functions as an outrage factory for the President and his followers. The President's tweet came as he spent the weekend at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, with current and former Fox bigwigs, including Sean Hannity and former executive Bill Shine. Away from the moderating influence of chief of staff John Kelly, Trump was free to marinate in the fact-challenged political stew that comes from the likes of Hannity, Shine and other visitors including Jeanine Pirro.
Notably, these Trump influencers have apparently been devouring "The Camp of the Saints," a right-wing immigrant fear fantasy novel, which has surfaced on Fox News in recent days -- including on Tucker Carlson's show. The Southern Poverty Law Center has referred to the novel as "a favorite racist fantasy of the anti-immigrant movement." All of which is to say, Trump is getting his immigration talking points from commentators reaching dangerously far outside the mainstream.
After targeting Brown, Fox reported breathlessly on a "caravan of illegals headed to US." Any viewer could easily conclude that some sort of invasion was imminent. In fact, the "caravan" is an annual journey of more than 1,000 people who travel across Mexico to ultimately seek asylum in the United States. Many of them claim they are trying to escape violence and political unrest in their home countries, such as Honduras. Only a propagandist would omit all the context of this caravan in order to sow fear. Hence Trump's Easter morning rant about how Mexico must act to "stop the big drug and people flows." In the same tweet, he alleged that Mexicans "laugh at our dumb immigrant laws." That last bit about the laughing was supposed to make Mexican authorities seem mean and nasty, and Americans feel shamed and furious.
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https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/03/opinions/trump-immigration-propaganda-machine-opinion-dantonio/index.html
CanonRay
(14,112 posts)quartz007
(1,216 posts)to find Rump's criminal activities? Pretty soon the mid-term election will be here......
niyad
(113,532 posts)quartz007
(1,216 posts)NSA has every communication between Rump and others.
Nixon's time his secretary had erased the tape.
CanonRay
(14,112 posts)and I'm sure he wants to get it all. These things take time. Patience, grasshopper.
Botany
(70,567 posts)niyad
(113,532 posts)Botany
(70,567 posts)I hope so because Gov. Brown is smart, well written, and read. She would
rip Trump a new asshole. But Trump thinks that he is so smart that he can
out think her. Right now people around Trump are trying to tell him not to
"tweet back" @ Gov. Kate Brown.
niyad
(113,532 posts)Botany
(70,567 posts)From wiki
Brown was born in Torrejón de Ardoz, Madrid, Spain, where her father was serving in the United States Air Force, but was raised in Minnesota. She graduated from Mounds View High School in Arden Hills, Minnesota in 1978.[6] She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Conservation with a certificate in Women's Studies from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1981 and a J.D. degree and certificate in Environmental Law from the Northwestern School of Law at Lewis and Clark College in 1985.[7]
She also was in the Oregon state legislature, Oregon's Sec. of State, and won Oregon's Goverorship
in landslide.
niyad
(113,532 posts)niyad
(113,532 posts)smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)He doesn't understand how the economy works or anything about international policy so he is just going to rally the deplorables by stirring up fear immigrants and brown people coming to take their jobs and rape their women and kill their babies. Nothing gets them stoked like some good old-fashioned racist hate-mongering.
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)It's aggravating to watch the reporters treat this with any more seriousness than it deserves. Just say that Toddler Trump is having another tweeter temper tantrum to rev up his base of bigots and be done with it.
Va Lefty
(6,252 posts)could we get the UN to monitor our elections?