On Sunday Trump tweeted criticism of four members of Congress who are women of color: “So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”
David French: “The near-total silence (at least so far) from GOP leaders is deeply dispiriting. Do they not understand the message the leader of their party is sending — especially to America’s nonwhite citizens? Do they not understand that racial malice as a political strategy isn’t just an ultimately losing proposition but also deeply divisive, picking at the scabs of America’s deepest political, cultural, and spiritual wounds?”
Adam Serwer: “When Trump told these women to “go back,” he was not making a factual claim about where they were born. He was stating his ideological belief that American citizenship is fundamentally racial, that only white people can truly be citizens, and that people of color, immigrants in particular, are only conditionally American. This is a cornerstone of white nationalism, and one of the president’s few closely held ideological beliefs.” On the way supporters are defending the tweet: “self-deceit is, in a sense, necessary for the president’s advocates: To reconcile the America they say they believe in with the one they actually do believe in, they cannot be honest with themselves about what the president actually said.”
The House voted to on a resolution condemning Trump’s racist comments. Here is the text: “strongly condemns President Donald Trump’s racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color by saying that our fellow Americans who are immigrants, and those who may look to the President like immigrants, should “go back” to other countries, by referring to immigrants and asylum seekers as “invaders,” and by saying that Members of Congress who are immigrants (or those of our colleagues who are wrongly assumed to be immigrants) do not belong in Congress or in the United States of America.” Only four Republicans voted in favor.
At a rally in North Carolina, Trump inspired his crowd to chant “Send her home”: “His voters and supporters were having fun. The “Send her back” chant directed at Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota was hateful but also exuberant, an expression of racist contempt and a celebration of shared values.”
Adam Serwer argues “we have never seen an American president make a U.S. representative, a refugee, an American citizen, a woman of color, and a religious minority an object of hate for the political masses, in a deliberate attempt to turn the country against his fellow Americans who share any of those traits. Trump is assailing the moral foundations of the multiracial democracy Americans have struggled to bring into existence since 1965, and unless Trumpism is defeated, that fragile project will fail.”… “To attack Omar is to attack a symbol of the demographic change that is eroding white cultural and political hegemony, the defense of which is Trumpism’s only sincere political purpose.”
Ronald Brownsteain suggests Trump’s strategy: “He has to double down on stirring turnout from his base through racial and cultural strife to offset his underperformance with swing voters alienated by exactly that behavior. It is as if Trump is on two diverging roads: He has already moved so far down the path of centering 2020 on American identity that he can no longer realistically cross back to focusing it primarily on the economy. He fights over American identity not only because he likes to, but also because, by this point, he must.”
On Thursday Trump said he was not happy with the chant and he falsely suggested that he tried to interrupt it. Thins comes after some Republicans were trying keep the chant from catching on. By Friday he walked this back, telling reporters: “No, you know what I’m unhappy with — the fact that a congresswoman can hate our country…. You know what’s racist to me, when someone goes out and says the horrible things about our country.”
By Saturday, Trump was praising the chanters: “As you can see, I did nothing to lead people on, nor was I particularly happy with their chant. Just a very big and patriotic crowd. They love the USA!” He retweeted far right anti-immigrant propagandist who wrote “New Campaign slogan for #2020? Don’t love it? Leave it. Send her back is the new lock her up. Well done to #Team Trump.”
The House voted to hold Barr and Ross in contempt over their handling of the Census case.
SDNY is not going to charge anyone else in the Trump campaign hush money payment scheme: “With Mr. Trump, the prosecutors were limited by more than just a Justice Department policy that bars charging a sitting president with a federal crime, one of the people said. Prosecutors also grappled with whether they had enough evidence to show that Mr. Trump had understood campaign finance laws and had intentionally violated them.”
Immigration News
Large-scale ICE raids failed to materialize over the weekend.
According to Washington Post: “there were few signs that ICE was out in force, with a smattering of reports of ICE activity…. New York City officials said Saturday night that ICE agents were spotted conducting “enforcement operations” in two neighborhoods but that no arrests were made after residents declined to answer their doors.”
NPR reports that border agents directed a 3 year old asylum seeker with a heart condition to chose which one of her parents she would be aloud to take with her into America. They dragged her father away. After legal intervention, the family was reunited and allowed to go to relatives in the US.
Personal Log: after reading that last news story I involuntarily bowed my head and prayed for God to give these people strength as they are forced to cope with these immigration challenges.
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Trump’s Job Approval: 42.7%