Remember when President Trump said during the 2016 campaign said that Hispanics “didn’t build this country” and that they’re “getting away with murder”?
Me neither. Because he never said that about Hispanics, or even about illegal immigrants. He said it about hedge fund managers. And yet I don’t recall any Democrat or anyone in the national media fretting that he was “inciting hatred” against wealthy financiers.
Remember when he called the four minority congresswomen “weak, ineffective & stupid?”
Me neither, because that was actually former House Speaker Paul Ryan about whom Trump said that. I don’t recall any Democrat or anyone in the national media suffering in great worry that Ryan might start receiving death threats.
What about when Trump said of ABC News anchor Lester Holt, who is black, that if you “take away the glasses, he looks like a dumb guy?”
Me neither, because he said that about Washington Post writer George Will. I don’t recall any Democrat or anyone in the national media shocked that Trump was “dog whistling,” as they do every time Trump calls a liberal minority dumb.
Noticing a pattern? Democrats only care to rage over Trump’s “rhetoric” when they think there’s a political advantage to be gained. Otherwise, it’s all a fun show to them.
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens on Thursday advanced the frustratingly stupid narrative that Trump’s opposition to the endless stream of illegal immigration is what caused the mass shooting in El Paso last weekend. Stephens wrote that the shooting “directly implicates the immigrant-bashing xenophobic right led by Donald Trump.” He said that Trump “is guilty, in a broad sense, of a form of incitement.”
Stephens’ premier example of that “incitement” is a tweet from June in which Trump said Democrats “want” more illegal immigrants to “pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13” because the party views them “as potential voters.”
Yet every single word of that tweet is demonstrably true. Somebody tell me one proposal by any of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates that would limit the inflow of illegal immigrants. There isn’t one. And why is it that Democrats turn their fingers raw clawing against any attempt to deport the millions of illegal immigrants currently living in the U.S.? Ask any Democrat in the 2020 field if illegal immigrants should be granted citizenship and the answer will invariably be yes. That’s because they know what party all of them will vote for.
Apparently under the impression that Trump is a dedicated student of African civil wars, Stephens said that his use of the word “infest” stirred echoes of Rwanda. I’m sorry to wake Stephens up from his sweet fantasy where every illegal immigrant is an aspiring doctor and teacher, or simply a young mother who wants to work as his nanny, but it’s not true. There really is an infestation of America by immigrant gang members, particularly on the East Coast. If he read the Washington Post, he would know that.
In June 2018, the Post reported on MS-13’s stronghold of an entire Maryland middle school. “Gang-related fights are now a near-daily occurrence at Wirt, where a small group of suspected MS-13 members at the overwhelmingly Hispanic school in Prince George’s County throw gang signs, sell drugs, draw gang graffiti and aggressively recruit students recently arrived from Central America,” the report said. “Teachers feel threatened but aren’t backed up. Students feel threatened but aren’t protected,” one of the school’s teachers said. “The school is a ticking time bomb.”
And from a report by the paper in December 2017: “As the gang has grown in strength in recent years, so has its sway over communities across the country. From Boston to Northern Virginia to Houston, a string of grisly MS-13 murders has highlighted its resurgence … ” Innocent people who find themselves in the grips of MS-13-controlled neighborhoods complain of gang violence, frequent robberies, drug dealing, and extortion. One woman who unknowingly moved into an MS-13-ravaged neighborhood of Maryland told the Post that one MS-13 leader threatened her, lest she pay $60 “rent” each week.
Stephens has been and always will be someone who isn’t bothered by mass illegal immigration. He’s free to live that way. But there are a lot of people who are bothered by it and they don’t have to shut up or speak in the way he wants them to because he thinks it sounds mean or because someone somewhere might use the same language before they shoot up a Walmart.
Democrats and their allies in the media don’t care about Trump’s “rhetoric” or any possible “incitement.” They care that he’s pushed them on an issue where they know they’ve been exposed.
