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Reviewing The Anti-Immigrant Extremism At the Republican National Convention

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Last week, Americans watched as former President Trump took the stage at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in what his aides promised would be a unifying speech. However, what the American people saw was the same old Donald Trump spewing the same old hateful, divisive anti-immigrant rhetoric. And it wasn’t just Trump: the entire convention was full of the same dehumanizing language, including signs that called for mass deportations of millions of people. 

Anti-immigrant extremism became the defining feature of Trump’s speech and the Republican National Convention – and the people were not impressed. 

America’s reaction to Trump’s anti-immigrant convention speech: 

The New York Times: Trump Struggles to Turn the Page on ‘American Carnage’

[Trump] waxed hyperbolic about the immigration crisis, calling it “the greatest invasion in history” and compared undocumented migrants to Hannibal Lecter, the fictional serial killer and cannibal from “The Silence of the Lambs.”

The Guardian: Trump calls for unity then returns to familiar attacks in lengthy speech

[Trump] pledged “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country” while reciting falsehoods about who was coming into the United States. Claiming that countries were emptying asylums to send people to the US, Trump veered into a bizarre segue about Hannibal Lecter, the cannibal villain from the film Silence of the Lambs. […] Mark Boldger, a Texas delegate, told the Guardian he thought Trump was off his usual rhetorical track. “He was all over the place,” said Boldger.

MSNBC Opinion: Trump’s RNC speech proved again there’s never a ‘New Trump’

But despite promising unity, his speech only grew Trumpier as it continued… It was still filled with lies about a supposed surge in crime fueled by migrants sneaking across the border. […]It is hard to find the unity in promising to “launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country,” darkly warning that “bad things are going to happen” otherwise. 

Time: America Met a New, Kinder Trump—Then Came the Rest of the Speech

But once he concluded the choreographed spectacle, Trump transitioned back to the Trump we all know.. He said U.S. cities were “flooded with illegal aliens.”

San Francisco Chronicle: Donald Trump could have put the race away with his RNC speech. Instead, he blew it back open

He peppered the speech with references to fictional movie killer Hannibal Lecter, immigrants transported in “paddy wagons” and electric charging stations that cost $1 billion.

More reactions to the anti-immigrant rhetoric at the RNC: 

Washington Post: 4 takeaways from Night 2 of the Republican National Convention

The volume shot back up, as dark rhetoric reigned: For the second night running, the GOP’s purported effort to turn down the volume ran into the reality that is: Red meat sells…And Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Tex.) speech was especially dark. He repeatedly tied crime from undocumented immigrants to Democrats.

AP FACT FOCUS: A look at ominous claims around illegal immigration made at the Republican convention

After Donald Trump triumphantly entered the hall on the second night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, the program turned to one of his signature issues: illegal immigration. An ominous video of chaos at the U.S.-Mexico border led into to a speech by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who declared, “We are facing an invasion on our southern border.”

Bloomberg Opinion: MAGA Loves Immigrants — as Long as They’re the ‘Good’ Kind

The most alarming theme that emanated from the Republican National Convention last week was the party’s desire to turn its back on immigrants. The rhetoric began on day one, at the Heritage Foundation’s “Policy Fest,” where the conservative think tank presented its view of the nation’s future.

Its distorted view of reality was loaded with inflammatory language depicting anyone who crossed the southern border as rapists, purveyors of drugs or trafficking humans. Former President Donald Trump reverted to form, calling undocumented immigrants “criminals” and “murderers” in what was supposed to be a nomination acceptance speech focused on unity.

[…]

Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is one of the “good” ones. But he told the crowd, those who are undocumented aren’t.

“We will return you to your country of origin,” said Ramaswamy, the son of immigrants. “Not because you are bad people, but because you broke the law, and the United States of America was founded on the rule of the law.”

[…]

Placards reading “Mass deportation now!” were handed out to convention delegates Wednesday night, accompanied by chants of “Send them back.” The message: If you aren’t from here, you don’t belong.

ABC: What we heard about the economy, immigration and foreign policy at the RNC

Overall, at least 48 speakers mentioned immigration in the first three nights of the convention, and at least 10 used the words “illegal aliens,” although other speakers referred to “illegal immigrants.” 

[…]

Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake said “Democrats have handed over control of my state, Arizona’s border, to the drug cartels.”

[…]

[Trump] also called immigration an invasion, claimed it was killing hundreds of thousands of people a year, and that immigrants are pouring into American cities. (Fact checks have found these claims to be false or exaggerated.) He also repeated false claims that immigrants were coming from prisons and insane asylums.

New York Times: Key Takeaways From the Republican Convention’s Message on Immigration

Mark Morgan, a former top Trump immigration official, claimed without evidence that Democrats were encouraging illegal immigration for political reasons, in order to bring more people into their party. Kari Lake, a Trump acolyte and Republican nominee for Senate in Arizona, falsely accused her Democratic opponent of voting “to let the millions of people who poured into our country illegally cast a ballot in this upcoming election.”

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said Democrats “wanted votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children.” Senator Rick Scott of Florida recalled a nightmare, he said, in which “Biden and the Democrats flew so many illegals” into the United States that it “was easy for Democrats to rig the elections.”

[…]

Familiar “Build the wall” chants were still heard occasionally at the convention, but a new slogan is gaining prominence, spotted on white, red and blue signs throughout the hall: “Mass deportation now!”

MSNBC Opinion: A chilling pattern at the RNC reveals what the Republican party has become

In his rambling acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee Thursday night, former President Donald Trump unsurprisingly doubled down on anti-immigrant messaging, saying things like: “You know who’s taking the jobs, the jobs that are created? One hundred and seven percent of those jobs are taken by illegal aliens.”

But throughout the four-day convention, a distinct and disturbing pattern emerged when it came to discussing immigration onstage: First, there’d be someone using violent rhetoric against migrants; then there’d emerge a Latino or Latina Republican to give the party cover. Take, for example, former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro, who spoke at the convention hours after being released Wednesday from a Miami federal prison, where he served a sentence for contempt of Congress.

“Joe and Kamala, they threw out the woke blue carpet across the Rio Grande, opened our borders, to what? Murderers and rapists,” Navarro said, adding that when Trump called Mexicans “rapists” in 2015, he was viewed as racist. “We read the papers,” Navarro said. “It’s murderers and rapists. Drug cartels. Human traffickers. Terrorists. Chinese spies. And a whole army of illiterate illegal aliens stealing the jobs of Black, brown and blue-collar Americans.”

At the RNC, facts were damned. Despite what Navarro and others said, there is no “migrant crime surge.” But according to Trump and Republicans, migrants are the country’s greatest security threat.

Right after Navarro spoke, Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Texas, took the stage. The juxtaposition was clear. A Latina Republican was there to give permission to the audience — both in the arena and watching from afar — to accept and validate what Navarro had just said.