Merger Now Complete: Trump and GOP One and the Same
In yet another outrageous and indefensible attack, Donald Trump said yesterday that Judge Curiel, a well-respected federal judge, is unfit to hear Cohen v. Trump, the civil fraud lawsuit against Trump University, simply because of his ethnicity. This latest racist broadside from Trump happened on the same day Speaker Paul Ryan endorsed Trump.
The Curiel family is the epitome of the American dream. Judge Curiel’s parents emigrated from Jalisco, Mexico to Northwest Indiana, where they worked tirelessly to provide for their sons. As for Judge Curiel’s brothers: one served in Vietnam and the other worked as a U.S. attorney in Chicago. Judge Curiel received his juris doctorate from Indiana University and was the first prosecutor to take down a major drug cartel, the Arellano-Felix Organization. Despite death threats, Curiel continued prosecuting, won over 300 cases, and is widely respected as one of the nation’s most effective and fearless cartel busters. As Dara Lind stated in a new piece for Vox, “Judge Curiel has done more to secure the border over his career than Trump ever has.”
While conservative pundits, reporters, and legal scholars have spoken out against these egregious comments, the Republican leadership, including Speaker Paul Ryan, have been silent. Instead of expressing outrage, they have lined up behind Donald Trump. This is a moment of truth for Republicans — and so far they are failing. As Trump runs the most explicitly nativist presidential campaign in modern American history, there is no room for equivocation or middle ground on this matter.
In a new piece criticizing Speaker Ryan’s endorsement, the Washington Posteditorial board stated “Mr. Ryan has endorsed a man whose “solutions” include banning Muslims from entering the country, who casts aspersions on judges because of their ethnicity, who mocks people with disabilities, who lies repeatedly, who would muzzle the free press. Each one of these is disqualifying — particularly for anyone who believes in conducting the nation’s politics in a constructive, reasonable manner”
Through his endorsement, Speaker Ryan cemented the GOP’s fate as the Party of Trump.
According to Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice, “These insults show that Trump’s hatred is not limited to undocumented immigrants from Mexico, but extends to all 56 million Latinos in America. His claim that Judge Curiel’s Mexican-American heritage means he isn’t qualified to sit in judgement of a case involving Trump’s fake university delivers the message Trump wants to send: Latinos are not real Americans. This is an affront not just to Americans of Hispanic heritage, but to all Americans who stand for the proposition that America is at its best when people are defined by what they contribute to our nation, not by their skin color, ethnicity, national origin, sexual preference, or gender. The fact that Paul Ryan embraced Trump on the same day the nominee double-downed on his racist verbal attacks on a well-respected Mexican-American federal judge is nothing short of stunning. The refusal of GOP leaders to disavow Trump’s candidacy and his remarks means that Ryan and the GOP, having embraced Trump, now own his racism, too.”
