Vice
By Peter Rugh
August 27, 2015
Just
when it seemed the 2016 contest couldn't get any more caustic, the
Donald Trump Show has taken another turn. In this week's episode, we
witnessed the spectacle of
a Trump security guard escorting a widely respected Latino reporter out
of a news conference in Dubuque, Iowa. "Go back to Univision," goaded
the leading Republican candidate to the journalist, Jorge Ramos, as he
was escorted away.
What's
gotten less attention is what happened when Ramos was eventually
allowed back in to question Trump, who has said repeatedly that he
doesn't have time for political
correctness. Rebuking the suggestion that his calls for removing
birthright citizenship enshrined in the 14th Amendment, deporting 11
million people and their children, and building a 'beautiful wall' along
the US-Mexico border were cruel, Trump told Ramos
"I've got a bigger heart than you." He then went on to blame gang
violence on undocumented Mexicans, remarks inline with previous
references to Mexican immigrants as murders and rapist.
The
impact Trump's candidacy is having on the race cannot be understated.
Dwarfed by the real-estate-mogul-turned-reality television star in poll
after poll, Trump's competitors
can't decide whether to attack Trump or latch on to his aggressive
style as best they can. Jeb Bush, who entered the race amid expectations
that he would be the candidate most able to appeal to moderate voters,
appears to be trying both tactics. On one hand
he has decried Trump's immigration plan as unrealistic, on the other
he's used the slur "anchor babies" to refer to children of undocumented
immigrants and told a reporter in McAllen, Texas this week, "I think we
need to take a step back and chill out a little
bit as it relates to the political correctness, that somehow you have
to be scolded every time you say something."
Trump
was quick to spot the imitation game Jeb was playing. "Sounds a little
familiar," he told the New York Times. Meanwhile, Wisconsin Governor
Scott Walker has boasted
that he thought up mass deportations and a giant wall before Trump did.
Political
analysts are wondering what will be left of the Republican Party once
Trump is through with it, even as they marvel at how the candidate can
be both divisive
and appeal to a broad swath of GOP voters. Writing for his web magazine
The Federalist last week, conservative blogger Ben Domenech fretted
that Trump is pulling his GOP away from the core principles—free
markets, limited government, et al.—that could broaden
the party's appeal to a wider swath of the electorate, turning it
instead toward what Domenech refers to as "white identity politics."
"It's
interesting how broad Trump's appeal is across factions and I suspect
that at least a portion of that is just attitudinal, because he is
saying what people think
about the political and media elite," Domenech said in an interview
with VICE. "That's not toxic or dangerous. What is toxic and dangerous
is wedding that populist frustration to the ethnic blame game, blaming
the differently colored immigrants for the problems
in your life and career without basis.
"There's
a small but significant part of the country that has held to the view
that mass deportation is a good thing," he added. "They have not had
representation on the
presidential stage—the political elites have ignored them for ages and
when that happens, someone like Trump has a window."
Political
elites likely have ulterior motives for opposing the eviction of 11
million people from US borders and building a 1,954-mile border wall.
Like, say, practicality—
Trump's deportation could cost upwards of $100 billion—or a desire to
win the general election. Still, along with a broad swath of
voters—including women, evangelical Christians, and college grads, not
to mention Dennis Rodman and Sarah Palin—it appears that
there are quite a few outright racists for President Trump.
Like
Craig Cobb, for instance, a white supremacist who been trying to buy up
land in Antler, North Dakota with the goal of establishing a white-only
enclave called "Trump
Creativity." And those Trump supporters who chanted "white power"
during The Donald's mega-rally in Mobile, Alabama last Friday. And then
there's Scott and Steve Leader, the two Southie brothers who were
arrested last week for beating and urinating ona homeless
Hispanic man near a Boston train station, and later told police "Trump
was right" about the need to deport "all these illegals."
"White
supremacists all over this country see Trump as their best hope in
many, many years," said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern
Poverty Law Center, which
has been tracking Trump's support among white nationalists. "We are
seeing this all over their online forums and their websites, as well."
In
an interview with VICE, Potok attributed some of Trump's appeal to
white angst over growing cultural pluralism in the US. "There's a large
chunk of the population who
think the country is lost," Potok said. "We were 90 percent white from
the colonial-era right up until the 1950s. Now we're about 62 [or] 63
[percent] white and there's a huge group of people who believe that the
country they grew up in has somehow been taken
away from them."
Enter
Trump, promising to "Make America Great Again." And while his remarks
regarding immigrants (or women for that matter) might just seem like
part his shoot-from-the-hip,
tell-it-like-I-see-it style, the New York Times has pointed out that
the real-estate mogul has used this divide-and-conquer strategy to his
advantage before. In 2000, Trump secretly funded newspaper ads in
upstate New York, warning that the Saint Regis Mohawk
tribe, who represented potential competition for his casino business,
had a "record of criminal activity" that was "well documented." When he
was sued for housing discrimination by the Department of Justice in
1973, Trump argued "the government was trying
to force [his company] to rent to welfare recipients."
Trump,
for his part, has repeatedly insisted that he is not a racist, and
doesn't condone racism. After the hate crime arrests in Boston last
week, Trump immediately renounced
their attack, calling it a "shame," and adding on Twitter: "We need
energy and passion, but we must treat each other with respect. I would
never condone violence."
But Potok warned that Trump's immigration remarks may continue to be used as fodder for hate crimes.
"A
lot of especially young hate criminals see themselves as somehow
standing up for their community in a heroic way, doing what everyone
behind them really wants them
to do but won't quite say," Potok said. "We see a direct correlation
between the type of remarks Trump has made in the public square that get
a lot attention and hate violence. Trump running around the country
calling immigrants rapists and murders inevitably
translates into hate violence against those people."
As
for the fate of the Republican Party after it emerges from his
vitriolic immigration swamp, Trump doesn't really seem to care. He's
made it clear, after all, that he
might still run as a third-party candidate should he lose the GOP
nomination in 2016. In the meantime, though, he's building a firewall
against level-headed political discourse—kinda like that wall he wants
to build along the border.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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