Voters Roundly Defeated Trump’s 2018 Xenophobia; Congress Should Too
The following is a statement from Matt Hildreth, Political Director of America’s Voice:
Donald Trump’s closing argument in the 2018 midterms was all about immigrant fear-mongering, ugly exploitation of racial grievance, and hysteria over the caravan of Central Americans fleeing violence and instability.
But xenophobia overwhelmingly backfired this year, as Democrats won the popular vote by the largest midterm margin in history and flipped 40 House seats, while making major inroads in statehouses and districts of all types across the country. Americans from all walks of life poured their hearts and souls into electing Democrats and taking on Trump.
Now, Trump is pretending like the midterms and his closing argument never happened, threatening a government shutdown over the border wall and funding for DHS to implement his draconian immigration vision, while calling the issue a political winner for Republicans.
The idea that Trump should be rewarded for a vanity project that is offensive, ineffective, and wasteful is ridiculous, as is the idea that the issue is a political winner for the GOP. Republicans control Washington. The reason the border wall hasn’t passed is because the majority of Americans, including a large number of Republicans, recognize it is a dumb, wasteful and ineffective idea. It’s nothing more than a Trump rally chant that’s morphed into a sham policy.
The same Trump administration that has used Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding to separate families is still is separating families per a new ProPublica investigation and currently detaining thousands of kids in tent camps in the Texas desert. And it is the same Trump Administration whose decisions to dismantle existing laws and processes directly led to the lawlessness, chaos and disorder we are now witnessing and continues to whip up fears and lies to escalate and inflame the situation. This administration should not be rewarded, especially after the American people spoke up and voted out many defenders and facilitators of Trump’s ugliness on immigrants.
