Trump visits the only part of his legacy still standing: his “monument” to hate on the southern border

Contrary to the braggadocio of Donald Trump and his media supporters, there is precious little to point to as legitimate “accomplishments” by his administration that benefit the country. That scrolling-too-fast-to-read list of “accomplishments” that Fox News’ Laura Ingraham showed us after conceding that Joe Biden won the election was mostly just a list of his executive orders—many of which have no force of law, and much of the rest emblematic of the administration’s assault on environmental regulation. Trump in fact leaves the economy in much worse shape than he found it in, largely because if his deliberate mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. His attempts to bully China and other countries through tariffs have been not changed trade dynamics, save to raise prices for American consumers.

The only major piece of legislation passed in Congress during his term was the so-called tax “reform” law, which only further enriched the rich and had almost no benefit for those in the lower-income brackets. His foreign policy has been a disaster; allies have been alienated, and Russia, Iran and North Korea have only become further emboldened in destabilizing the world because of Trump’s self-deceptions and nanosecond attention span. If Afghanistan sees renewed control by the Taliban because of the “peace” deal being formulated by the Trump administration, it may once again become a breeding ground for terrorists.

But one must not completely dismiss Trump and underestimate this carnival barker selling a freak show to entertain his base, particularly when it comes to his favorite topic—immigration, especially the southern border variety. In the waning days of his infamy as the House of Representatives was preparing to impeach him a second time, Trump traveled to Texas yesterday for one final “hurrah.” Trump knows his audience and what excites them, and the one place where his white nationalist supporters can actually “see” its manifestation is in that “big, beautiful wall”—of which all but 47 miles of it are just those slats replacing old barriers—to keep out the “infestation.” Who are these “vermin”?  Families seeking asylum for safety and a better life for their children? No, they are “vicious criminal organizations" who “spread misery and suffering and drugs all across the hemisphere” who took advantage of the dangerous “catch and release” program, simply running off into the night to rape and murder.  

Austin Kocker, a Syracuse University researcher, found that the “catch and release” program for asylum seekers was not in fact abused by “dangerous, vicious criminals”: "Families that were released at the border, almost 85% of them attended all of their immigration hearings, all of them. The truth is, and the data is there, it's not a political statement, it is just fact that the vast majority of them go to all their hearings." The “fix” for this nonexistent “crisis” is to “detain and remove,” because it “sounds better.” That is one hell of a rationalization for an inhuman policy.

Trump went on to say that it is the “most ridiculous thing anyone’s ever seen” to “merely request asylum” because all asylum requests are a “fraud” because they are all “bad” people, murderers and rapists; well, some of them may be “good people,” but his administration has no time to “weed out” the “good people.” They all need to go because those children locked up in cages “may be murderers, they may be cartel heads, they may be some really vicious people.”

The changes that former Attorney General Jeff Sessions made in asylum policy were designed specifically to eliminate the most valid reasons for Central American and Mexican asylum requests under current asylum law: individuals or family members who are persecuted or physically threatened by the gangs who feed the U.S.’ addiction to drugs no longer fall under the designation of “a particular social group.” Trump boasted in his speech that “98 percent of aliens that remain in DHS custody are removed. Simply put, if you enter the United States illegally, you are apprehended and immediately, safely removed from our country.” 

Those include asylum seekers; U.S. asylum law states that migrants have the right to come into this country and claim asylum and have their cases heard—but not if you are from a “shithole” country; it's better to come from a “good” country, like Norway, as if Norwegians want to move to country which from their television screen vantage point reminds them of the time their country was also occupied by Nazis.

Remember those 680 workers who were detained at those Mississippi poultry plants, and those tens of thousands of people all over the country who are rounded up every year by ICE Gestapo at their work places? This is what Trump’s defamatory, racist mind thinks they do: “Where they’d come up, go in our welfare system, and live for years on American welfare without ever having a job." No, they are all looking for “gravy," and asylum seekers seeking freedom and to find a decent life for themselves and their families are “an unmitigated calamity for national security, public safety, and public health. It would destroy millions and millions of jobs and claim thousands of innocent lives.”

Trump also falsely claimed that “We also have, and we had, but we have them all the time, we have terrorists from the Middle East coming into our country through the southern border.” In fact, in its most recent terrorism report, the U.S. State Department admitted that “there is no credible evidence indicating international terrorist groups established bases in Mexico, worked directly with Mexican drug cartels, or sent operatives via Mexico into the United States."

None of this is new, of course. Trump announced his decision to enter the 2016 presidential race by claiming that Mexicans were all “rapists.” After the 2015 Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas, The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper held a “focus group” discussion with some Trump supporters. They liked that he “has no filters,” that they don’t want a president who walks on eggshells, not caring if he hurts this community or that community. One white woman thought it was possible than not every single migrant coming from the southern border was a “criminal, rapist or drug dealer,” but she agreed with Trump that the “majority” of them are because “no one is disputing this.”

When Klepper suggested that “the vast majority (of migrants) are reputable people who want to give to the community,” the woman doubled-down, asserting “Unfortunately a vast majority are smuggling drugs and raping women and everything.” Klepper responded by observing that “A vast majority of what you just said is bullshit,” which perhaps in acknowledgement that she (and Trump) were short on actual facts to support these inflammatory, racist claims, admitted that “OK, that might very well be.”

 But does it really matter what Trump says to his supporters, no matter how despicable or dehumanizing or simply not true? One member of Klepper’s group had this to say about it: “Trump getting negative attention is sometimes a good thing. It’s better than no attention at all. The more bizarre he acts, the more I like him.” Why? “I don’t know.”

The truth of the matter is that this country is no better for Trump and Stephen Miller’s anti-immigration policies, and arguably worse off not just for draining the pool of needed legal immigrant labor that they arbitrarily decided has no “merit,” but in fact making this country more dangerous and violent by feeding into the ignorant bigotries of people who simply don’t like the way some people “look” with lies and the terms and language of the Nazis to demonize and dehumanize a whole group of people for the sins of the few; we only need to remember the El Paso massacre to know that. After having incited the violence of the coup attempt, this is what Trump hopes his “legacy” will ultimately be judged on.

The reality is that his “beautiful wall,” as evidenced by the way he describes the people he is trying to keep out, is a “monument” to hate. Trump and Miller have made it plain that they want to keep them all out, because they are all “undesirables” simply because they are Hispanic and not “white.” That is what Trump’s “wall” means to him, and his racist supporters. Pat Buchanan once fulminated on The McLaughlin Group that “Hispanics are out to destroy America.” Hispanics don’t want to “destroy” this country; they just want to work and live like everyone else. Trump’s wall as he perceives it is not to enforce immigration laws, but to simply keep “them” out simply because he doesn’t like the way they look.