The White House is busy spinning that the impending Stephen Miller-authored State of the Union address will lead to unity and consensus across ideologies. For once, we mostly agree with the White House: but the growing unity and national consensus is strongly against Trump, Miller and xenophobia and the larger nativist worldview that will be on display tonight.
Ahead of the State of the Union address, it’s clear that the Trump White House has forced a larger and overdue discussion about the contributions of immigrants in America. The 2018 midterms, the partial government shutdown, and the refusal of both the Republican- and Democratic-controlled Congresses to fund his border wall vanity project has taken its toll on his presidency. As many gauges of public opinion make clear, xenophobia has backfired and Trump’s worldview is losing. The country may be growing more unified, but it’s against Trump’s wall, Trump’s fear-mongering, and Trump’s portrayal of immigrants as murderers, threats and the source of all of the country’s ills. Witness:
- By a 2:1 margin, the public opposes an emergency declaration over border wall: A new CNN poll finds that by a 31-66 percent margin, Americans are opposed to Trump declaring a national emergency in order to build the border wall (24-73 percent among women; 34-63 percent among independents). The poll is the latest in a long string of recent polling reminders that the more Trump talks about immigration, the less Americans trust him or his anti-immigrant worldview (and are actually growing more pro-immigrant).
- SOTU guests Victorina and Sandra embody Trump’s hypocrisy and underscore the nation’s reliance on immigrants. Victorina Morales and Sandra Diaz, former undocumented employees of Trump’s golf courses, will be in the State of the Union audience as guests of Democratic House Members. Morales and Diaz will be a stark reminder of the hypocrisy of the Trump administration’s stance against immigration and a reminder that the Trump Organization has systematically and criminally exploited undocumented immigrant workers at Trump properties for decades — even as the Trump Administration has pursued its agenda to criminalize, demonize, and ostracize immigrants.
