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By Skyler Voss
Yesterday, the president blamed immigrants during a speech about inflation, asking, “Why is it we only take people from shithole countries, right? Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden, just a few?”
Today, he also admitted that eight years ago he did, in fact, use the word “shithole”—though he tried to play it off like he hadn’t. Of course, with national hostility toward immigrants running high today, he seems perfectly fine with it.
During the same rally, Trump mocked Representative Ilhan Omar by saying: “Ilhan Omar, whatever the hell her name is. With her little turban. I love her. She comes in, does nothing but b****… we ought to get her the hell out … she’s here illegally.” The crowd then broke into chants of “send her back!”
Omar responded on X: “Trump’s obsession with me is beyond weird. He needs serious help. Since he has no economic policies to tout, he’s resorting to regurgitating bigoted lies instead. He continues to be a national embarrassment.”
Exactly. He has no understanding of the economic pain we feel and no plan to fix it — in fact, he makes it worse. Like many aspiring strongmen, he mocks others and fosters a mob mentality, encouraging people to lash out at those they don’t know or understand, rather than at the billionaires and their subservient allies in both parties.
Also from Tuesday, Rep. Omar raised an important point: When the president of the United States calls U.S. citizens “garbage,” no one in the GOP calls him out. I would add that we should speak up anytime someone calls another human being “garbage” and ask why they feel the need to denigrate others for kicks or cheap laughs. That was the president speaking on December 2.
By the way, border czar or thug Tom Homan responded on CNN saying was “not aware what the president was thinking” when he said he wants Somalis out of the country but added: “I agree with 100 percent what he’s doing.” He also blamed Biden, even though he once worked for him — but apparently, he only cares when it involves his own “Lieber Anführer.” This illustrates why, when Democrats hold office, they need to remove entrenched actors from key institutions. Yet the party often relies on these same institutions, which helps explain how we repeatedly end up in these crises.
About the GOP and their concern of immigrants from the same state of the union show on CNN: Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) believes compassion is fading between ICE and the community saying, “If I were mayor, the very first thing I would do is I’d sit down with ICE and I’d say, I want the bad guys out of my city, and I want my citizens to feel safe,” Curtis said. “Too much of that isn’t happening. It’s like us against them.”
Of course it is — because you’re arresting citizens instead of finding actual criminals. Normally, masked officers doing this would be considered vigilantes, yet they are funded and trained by the U.S. government. The amount of harassment is off the charts. In fact, they even tackled a sitting U.S. senator, Alex Padilla, simply for asking a question. What’s that about?
About Trump’s ICE troopers, from the venerable Southern Poverty Law Center, which reports on the Department of Homeland Security and white supremacy — covering both its historical roots and current practices, including the deployment of anti-immigrant imagery in recruitment materials:
“Historically, DHS has faced criticism for harboring in its ranks employees who hold white supremacist and antigovernment views. Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, several top DHS leaders and immigration advisers were drawn directly from groups making up the organized anti-immigrant movement.”
To get back to Trump and the comments about Norway and Sweden: One wonders why would anyone leave those countries. They rank among the happiest places on earth, with stunning natural beauty and universal, socialist-style healthcare. By the way, Sweden has long been one of the most welcoming countries for refugees; however, in recent years, the center-right government has imposed stricter limits and has complied about their immigrants as well.
This from Ann Jones writing for the Nation about coming back to America from Norway: “The Nordic model starts with a deep commitment to equality and democracy, because you can’t have one without the other,” and coming back to America from Norway, “It felt quite a lot like stepping back into that other violent, impoverished world, where anxiety runs high and people are quarrelsome.” Welcome back and enjoy your stay.
Trump continued from his speech refereeing to “hellholes like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia and many other countries.” He added for emphasis that those places “are a disaster, right? Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime.”
What about U.S. involvement in these countries? Afghanistan — come on. We destabilized that country for decades, and many of the people now seeking refuge have worked with our CIA and military to support our war efforts. Somalia has a long history with the United States in counterterrorism operations. I can’t help but think of Black Hawk Down and the U.S. military bases and interventions there.
As for Haiti, it is a kind of sweatshop for the United States, where aid and tightly controlled borders limit freedom of movement — unless you mean the movement of goods, like shirts. Forcing people into a sweatshop-driven economy through centralized planning and coercion is both ethically wrong and economically unsound. The U.S. should rethink its foreign aid strategies and avoid policies that undermine the rights and autonomy of Haitians.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) carried out U.S. policies aimed at supporting and developing economies abroad. Following the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti in 2010, which claimed over 80,000 lives, the U.S. Congress allocated more than $500 million to USAID for reconstruction efforts. A portion of this aid — approximately $170 million — was used to establish the Caracol Industrial Park, which, according to a BuzzFeed News report was “a mini city dedicated to producing cheap clothes for Americans while heralding a bright future for Haitians. Actors Ben Stiller and Sean Penn, American fashion designer Donna Karan, and British airline mogul Richard Branson cheered as Hillary and Bill Clinton took their turns at the podium.”
Hillary, then secretary of state, said “Children will go to school, will be healthier, will have more of their own dreams fulfilled because their mothers had good jobs,” Clinton told the crowd. “So this is, indeed, a great day.”
You can read more about the Clintons’ leaked emails and the Haiti disaster here.
Really quick — Trump did kill USAID, and many lamented that day, but The Guardian wrote an article about how it might not be a bad thing. Read it here and and listen to a podcast about it. Just quick food for thought, yet this warrants much discussion, because obviously cutting any aid would hurt.
A few years ago, Haitian workers were even fighting for a minimum wage. In 2022, with the ongoing fight for workers’ rights in Haiti, perhaps the president could consider a more socialist approach — one that would benefit both these countries and the United States. Here is another article about fights in labor from 2017. There is not enough action in this country, so no wonder people would want to make a better life here in the U.S. Keep in mind and I will repeat it: Immigrants Make America Great. No one, by the way, is saying keep criminals here, but let’s be fair, sir, you are not finding criminals.
Trump’s failures, like Biden’s before him, stem from a system skewed toward the wealthy and the stock market. What Walmart does may benefit its shareholders, yet it simultaneously teaches its employees how to rely on government aid. Nothing captures this more than Jon Stewart’s interview with Janet Yellen, the then Secretary of the Treasury, saying the quiet parts aloud.
The real reason Trump is blaming immigrants and “shithole countries” is to distract from the country’s economic woes, which are often caused by systemic issues rather than individual people — Walmart or Starbucks, for example, rarely get the blame. Public skepticism about Trump’s economic performance is evident: In a November survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, only 33% of U.S. adults approved of his handling of the economy. Like his approach to ongoing war crimes controversies, Trump consistently looks for someone else to take the blame.
To conclude, Mr. President, it bears repeating the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, a poem by Emma Lazarus:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Europeans were certainly welcomed immigrants when their own countries were shitholes, yet when the people don’t look like you, you slam the door shut. That is not very American.
Editor’s note: Skyler Voss is the writer’s pen name.
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