On Aug. 31, Donald Trump delivered a mind-boggling speech on immigration, striking for its anger, its mendacity, its hostility, its cruelty and its frank bigotry. Trump has once again defied the expectations of longtime political observers with behavior that sets the bar for presidential candidates ever lower, that veers wildly outside the mainstream, that competes with history’s most dangerous dictators in its audaciousness.
Even as Republican strategists have advised a more welcoming attitude toward voters of color, Trump has cemented his party’s reputation as the home of racially resentful white people. He has virtually guaranteed that the Republican Party will struggle to attract Latino voters for the next generation.
So the matter of whether the GOP nominee can “pivot” to a style of campaigning that more closely resembles the conventional — and that doesn’t scare the socks off most reasonable voters — ought to now be settled: No, he cannot. This is, in the language of his Twitter handle, the real Donald Trump. He is hateful, bullying and vile. Period.
Moreover, Trump’s noxious views will likely set back the cause of comprehensive immigration reform even further. Since President George W. Bush tried to push forward a reasonable solution to the plight of 11 million or so undocumented immigrants living in the shadows, congressional Republicans have balked, afraid of a backlash from the far-right precincts that can determine GOP primary elections. Given the way that Trump’s bashing of Mexicans and Muslims has resonated with the ultra-right, mainstream Republicans are unlikely to sanction even a mention of immigration reform.
That’s despite the fact that most Americans disagree with Trump’s proposals. According to a July CBS/New York Times poll, 61 percent of Americans believe illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay and apply for citizenship. Fifty-seven percent oppose Trump’s “beautiful” wall.
But there is a deep partisan cleavage here. While 83 percent of Democrats oppose Trump’s wall, as well as 56 percent of independents, only 27 percent of Republicans do. According to a Bloomberg poll, 73 percent of Democrats oppose Trump’s plan for blanket deportations, but only 54 percent of Republicans do. It’s no wonder, then, that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., faced with opposition from the right-wing fringe, fled from his previous support for sensible policies to legalize the illegal immigrants already here.
That cowardice hurts not only the Republican Party, but also the country. Our refusal to pass comprehensive immigration reform has cut off opportunities for countless bright, hard-working young immigrants who’d like to go to college but can’t afford it because they don’t have the papers that would allow them to get scholarships and reduced tuition. Our failure to act has stifled countless illegal workers who would like to own homes and start businesses. They are Americans in virtually every way. It makes no sense to leave them in limbo.
But Trump has managed to persuade many working-class whites that illegal immigrants destroy neighborhoods, peddle drugs, murder innocents and drive down wages. They take well-paying jobs, he says, from citizens who deserve them. (To be fair, most of those claims aren’t original to Trump. They’ve been bandied about on the right for decades now.)
Much of that is simply not true. The population of criminals among illegal immigrants is lower than the percentage among native-born Americans, according to criminologists. As for the economic competition, there is no doubt that low-wage workers can be hurt by an influx of undocumented workers. The biggest burden falls on those without high school diplomas, who may see their wages fall by anywhere from 0.4 percent to 7 percent, research shows. That is certainly cause for worry.
But the answer to that is to make those undocumented workers legal, which would force their employers to pay them a higher wage. Too many employers get away with paying illegal workers less money and placing them in dangerous conditions.
If the solutions are all too obvious to most Americans, they represent a bridge to a treacherous new world order to many Trump supporters. And, for now, we are all held hostage to their prejudices and fears.
(Cynthia Tucker won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2007. She can be reached at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.)
Photo: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump attends a church service, in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., September 3, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
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Donald Trump’s MAGA media propagandists are so deep in the tank for the former president that they’ve been praising him for repeatedly falling asleep during his New York City hush money trial.
Since April 15, Trump has regularly been in a Manhattan courtroom, where he faces charges of falsifying business records in order to conceal payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Prosecutors say these payments were intended to keep Daniels’ claims that she had an affair with Trump from becoming public during the 2016 presidential election.
Trump, age 77, often mocks President Joe Biden as “Sleepy Joe,” suggesting that Biden is too old and frail to fulfill his duties. But reporters in the courtroom have repeatedly observed Trump appearing to fall asleep during the trial — most recently on Monday morning before opening statements began.
That evening on Fox News’ Special Report, chief political anchor Bret Baier suggested that news outlets are providing too much coverage of the first-ever criminal trial for a former president, and criticized them in particular for covering the spectacle of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s inability to stay awake in the courtroom.
“You know, we cover it every day,” Baier said of the trial, “and we will — all the details of each day in court — but there are some places that are obviously covering it ad nauseum and have gone through every single detail, including four times that he might have fallen asleep, everything that happens inside the courtroom.”
Meanwhile, Baier’s colleagues and their ilk spent last week attempting to turn Trump’s proclivity for nodding off in public into a virtue — apparently unphased by their years of denigrating Biden as an addled old man whose energetic speeches can only be the result of performance-enhancing drugs.
“I mentioned that Maggie Haberman posted this update from the courtroom, ‘It appears that Trump might be sleeping’ — this was on day one,” Republican political operative and Fox host Sean Hannity said on his April 18 radio show. “By the way, I think I’d fall asleep if I was there,” he added.
And Hannity wasn’t the only Trump flunky to attest that they, too, would sleep through a trial just like their beloved former president.
“I'd be falling asleep at that trial too,” Hannity’s colleague Laura Ingraham said on her April 15 Fox show.
“That’s exactly how all of us would act in, like, the ‘Intro to Gender Studies’ class at the University of Missouri,” Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk said on his radio show.
Others praised Trump for falling asleep in court and urged him to be even more disrespectful during his trial.
“Did Donald Trump nod off for a moment? Good for him. These things are boring,” Newsmax host Greg Kelly offered on April 16.
“Trump appearing to sleep and be bored is exactly the response this Kafkaesque persecution deserves,” Fox host Greg Gutfeld said on the April 16 edition of The Five. “He is America, who, unlike this frothing infantile media, doesn't see this as some mutant form of entertainment and justice.”
“Trump should go to trial, bring a big book, big fat John Grisham novel, just sit there and read,” Gutfeld added. “Just sit there and read. That's the only response this manufactured mayhem deserves — is just contempt.”
Co-host Jesse Watters replied that he was going to send Trump’s team a copy of his new book so Trump “can open it up inside the courtroom.”
On Sunday’s MediaBuzz, Fox contributor Tomi Lahren praised Trump’s “excellent job” and claimed that journalists are “trying to distract from Joe Biden” by pointing out that Trump keeps falling asleep.
“I don't think anybody's buying it,” she said. “Good job media, but I don't think that it's resonating when you've got the current guy, President Joe Biden, in the office, who quite literally falls asleep.”
Less than 24 hours later, Trump apparently once again dozed off in court.
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.
- Trump Infuriated By Reports He Fell Asleep In Court ›
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Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) hasn't shied away from criticizing former President Donald Trump in the past. But on Tuesday he gave his frank and candid take on the allegations surrounding the ex-president's ongoing criminal trial.
Trump's attorneys have spent the first portion of the Manhattan trial making their case that the former president is a "family man" who has been unfairly painted in the media as immoral. While speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill, the Utah senator — a fifth-generation practicing Mormon — offered his opinion on that characterization of Trump to CNN congressional correspondent Kristin Wilson.
"I think everybody has made their own assessment of President Trump's character, and so far as I know you don't pay someone $130,000 not to have sex with you," Romney said.
Romney — who was the GOP presidential nominee in 2012 — appeared to be referencing the hush money payment Trump allegedly made to buy the silence of adult film star and producer Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election. Daniels maintains that she and the reality TV star had an affair in 2006, just weeks after Trump's wife, Melania, gave birth to their son, Barron. The former president continues to deny the allegations.
Tuesday's trial proceedings featured the testimony of David Pecker, the former CEO of American Media Inc. — the company that publishes the National Enquirer tabloid newspaper. Daniels' story was part of the so-called "catch and kill" scheme in which Pecker would purchase the rights to certain stories in order to bury them and limit public knowledge. Pecker told prosecutors that he agreed during a 2015 meeting at Trump Tower to be the "eyes and ears" of Trump's 2016 campaign.
One such "catch-and-kill" scheme involved the story of former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who said she had an ongoing relationship with Trump while he was married. When Trump reportedly asked Pecker his thoughts on whether they should pay McDougal, Pecker responded with, "we should take this story off the market.
"And I said, 'it's my understanding that she doesn't want her story published. I think the story should be purchased and I believe that you should buy it,'" Pecker said on the witness stand.
According to the 34-count indictment unveiled by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg last year, Trump's personal lawyer and "fixer" Michael Cohen made the $130,000 payment to Daniels at the behest of Trump, who then reimbursed Cohen and labeled it as a legal retainer. Cohen has said repeatedly that there was no such retainer, and that the $130,000 was explicitly done to prevent Daniels from going public with her story.
Cohen will be one of the prosecution's key witnesses, and will be expected to guide the jury through the hush money payment process. In 2018, he was handed a three-year federal prison sentence for his role in the scheme, among other crimes.
Jurors were excused at approximately 2 PM ET on Tuesday, and the trial will be paused on Wednesday in observance of the Jewish Passover holiday. Proceedings are expected to resume on Thursday morning, with the defense expected to cross-examine Pecker on the stand.
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.