It has been quite a weekend - not a week, just a weekend.
What should we expect from the Birther-in-Chief who began by gathering his constituency of support by declaring the President of the United States was not born in America.
Yes, he formally began his run for the Presidency on the escalator in Trump Tower, from which he bellowed that all Mexican immigrants (presumably he meant males) were rapists, but remember too that his preparation for leadership of the GOP and the nation included inflammatory ads against 5 young teenagers, 4 black, 1 Latino, all under 16, calling for their deaths.
Their convictions, based on coerced confessions, were vacated in 2002, and New York City paid them $41 million for the mistake after DNA evidence linked a serial rapist to the brutal Central Park rape for which they were falsely charged, but “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!" he shouted in The New York Times ads against them.
On June 18th of this year, he dug in to defend his position, echoing his "both sides" comments about white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. "You have people on both sides of that," Trump said of the Central Park case too.
And of course, we all have the special memory of Trump racism centered on that white supremacist Charlottesville rally where Nazis and KKK and others of their ILK, replete with torches and Nazi banners, marched and one murdered a young woman, Heather Heyer, a counter protester.
Who can ever forget that special Trump Press Conference in which Trump, surrounded by a full house of GOP enablers - rescinded an earlier condemnation of the white supremacists marchers and replaced it with perhaps the most memorable words of his time in the White House to date.
And then there was this past weekend, a weekend that was special even in Trump Admin racism standards, and those are pretty low.
Pence and Lindsey Graham at border cages.
The weekend began with Mike Pence and Lindsey Graham and a retinue from Homeland Security visiting two federal detention centers in Texas on Friday.
Pence's trip was scheduled as a response to the outcry about conditions at Border Detention Centers, after a Government Report detailing the horrific circumstances in the Centers was cited in a major article in the New York Times on July 2nd. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/02/us/politics/bor...
In an apparent response to that scrutiny, Trump said in a tweet, "If Illegal Immigrants are unhappy with the conditions in the quickly built or refitted detentions centers, just tell them not to come. All problems solved!"
But still the outcry forced the Admin to send Pence to the border.
Images of his visit showed an emotionless Pence and Graham starring at cages packed with male detainees shouting at the news cameras, "No shower, no shower!"
It was quite a scene, one of the dark moments in American history.
Further, agents in charge of the imprisoned migrants wore face masks, and videos showed reporters accompanying Pence described the facility as smelling "horrendous." A reporter on the tour said that he was not allowed to speak to children or adults being held, nor did the visitors speak to the men in cages. They offered no words of comfort or concern.
Instead, stone-hearted Pence's only condemnation was of what he called were "the slanderous allegations of heartless mistreatment by Customs and Border Protection." On Sunday, sidekick Graham weighed in too,
“I don't care if they have to stay in these facilities for 400 days," Graham said on the Fox Business Network after his visit with Pence to Texas. "We're not going to let those men go that I saw. It would be dangerous."
Watch the sad sight of their visit here.
Pence confronted with nearly 400 men crammed behind caged fences in Texaswww.youtube.com
Trump "Go back to where you came from" tweets.
As Peter Baker wrote in the New York Times (July 14,), “President Trump woke up on Sunday morning, gazed out at the nation he leads, saw the dry kindling of race relations and decided to throw a match on it. It was not the first time, nor is it likely to be the last. He has a pretty large carton of matches and a ready supply of kerosene."
"So interesting to see 'Progressive' Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world, Trump wrote on Twitter, "now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run."
Trump's attack was aimed at 4 freshman Congresswomen: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts. Only one of the women, Omar, who is from Somalia, was born outside the United States. Ocasio-Cortez was born in the Bronx. Pressley, who is black, was born in Cincinnati and raised in Chicago. And Tlaib was born in Detroit. All 4 fight for progressive causes.
The reality of the Congresswomen's backgrounds was of no matter to Trump, nor was the fact that they were elected officials important to him. He embraced a familiar racist taunt, Go back to where you come from..you who are not white and therefore not American." Trump's loud voice spoke a racist's commitment. It was a statement of his bond with the lowest of the lowest white supremacists.
Monday there were even more inflammatory words from the racist Hater-In-Chief.
An aside, while even Boris Johnson of the UK, a notorious right wing crackpot himself, and one of the two men likely to be the new Prime Minister of the U.K., felt called upon to call out Trump's racism, Republicans, for the most part, remained mute. There are a few voices in the GOP in the House who have spoken: Will Hurd of TX, Mike Turner of OH, and two not seeing re-election: Susan Brooks of Indiana and Pete Olson of TX.
Meanwhile, the GOP leadership says crickets.
The sole leadership exception was Senate Republican Conference Vice Chairwoman Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) who on Monday when pressed by reporters said that she thinks President Trump's tweets suggesting that minority Democratic lawmakers "go back" to the countries they came from was racist. She spoke only once.
On the other hand, on Monday this happened too- Trump lackey Lindsey Graham, rather than condemn Trump, chose to amplify Trump's attacks on the Congresswomen, "We all know that AOC and this crowd are a bunch of communists," Graham said on Fox & Friends "They hate Israel. They hate our own country. They're calling the guards along our border, the border patrol agents, concentration camp guards. They accuse people who support Israel of 'doing it for the Benjamins.' They're anti-semitic. They're anti-America."
ICE raids began on Sunday. Trump's instrument to intimidate and disrupt.
On July 11, 2019, The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/us/politics/ice-families-deport.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share) and other papers reported that Trump's reign of terror via ICE was expected to begin.
According to two current and one former homeland security officials, Sunday would be the start day for ICE raids in 10 major cities which would result in arrests of thousands of members of undocumented families.
The operation, backed by President Trump, had originally been scheduled for June 23, but was canceled on June 22 by Trump himself (by Twitter). Here is Trump's original tweet, on June 17.
The hyperbolic nature of Trump's tweet, threatening “millions" highlights the fact that in Trump's deranged mind the raids exist as much for intimidation as for policy. The reality of what really did happen on Sunday exposed this same horrible and cruel truth too.
The Times reported, "The raids, which will be conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement over multiple days, will include "collateral" deportations, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the preliminary stage of the operation. In those deportations, the authorities might detain immigrants who happened to be on the scene, even though they were not targets of the raids."
“Millions," “collateral" arrests and deportations, raids around the country ...the reality was very different.
As the LA Times reported, “The first day of President Trump's long-threatened ICE raids didn't result in the large numbers of arrests some had expected.
In fact, for all the hype, there was only a scattering of enforcement actions across the nation Sunday.
But the threats did change life for many in immigrant communities.
Residents reported far fewer people on the streets."
For Trump, these raids and the threat of them are his cruel game, a demonstration of the power he feels is his, power which he can exercise whenever he wants.
Briefly then, on a weekend of extreme Trump racism across America, a terrified and impotent populace is what Trump sought - and what he got.
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July 16, 2019
Voices4America Post Script. This weekend was a new low even for Trump. What are we going to do about it. Yes, #Blue2020 but is that enough? I hope you will share to spread the word of one terrible weekend in Trump's America! As we know, we need a plan.
