Trump Has No Policies to Modernize Immigration; Just Rhetoric to Incite Base
Candidate Trump’s official 2020 kickoff and Twitter rants this week made clear that – akin to the last four years of his candidacy and presidency – racism and xenophobia will be the centerpiece of Trump’s campaign platform. As Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer extrapolates, “how can you explain Trump’s anti-immigration obsession? There’s only one explanation: It’s racist political demagoguery.”
While Trump continues with more-of-the-same, a new, TIME Magazine profile from Brian Bennett on the president pulls back the curtain on the catalyst for many of the administration’s cruel immigration policies: the volume of cheers at his rallies.
As Bennett explains, “A rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., in late March offers a case in point. Trump issued an off-the-cuff threat to ‘close the damn border’ if Mexico didn’t stop two large caravans heading toward the southwest border. The crowd erupted in cheers. Electrified by the response, Trump told aides he wanted to move ahead with a plan to close ports of entry. A series of three tweets were drafted to be released on Trump’s Twitter feed the next morning, announcing that large sections of the border would be closed the following week.” Bennett notes similar patterns for the inhumane family separation policy and the asinine border wall.
According to Pili Tobar, Deputy Director of America’s Voice: “Policies that ripped apart families and communities, psychologically and physically traumatized children and parents, left thousands of government workers without pay for weeks, and put over a million Dreamers and TPS holders in legal limbo, all emanated from rallies and cheers. They are all byproducts of Trump’s unstable ego and his need for reassurance. National policy is being driven by applause lines, which is reckless and endangers real human beings, to say the least.”
