WASHINGTON: Former US President Donald Trump denigrated countries across the world on Wednesday, claiming without any evidence that “criminals, rapists, vicious gang members” and people from “mental institutions and insane asylums” are pouring into the United States from South America, Asia, Africa and the Middle-East.
Expanding his racist rhetoric to include regions beyond Latin America in his dystopian vision of illegal immigrants wreaking havoc on the United States, Trump blamed his opponent, “border czar” Kamala Harris, for the “gigantic invasion,” saying “she will destroy our country” and she should “get the hell out of here.”
The former President, seemingly driven to desperation after polls show him falling behind Harris in the Presidential race despite surviving an assassination attempt, doubled down on his rant in illegal immigration, which previously centered largely on Central and South America.In his iteration, countries such as Venezuela and El Salvador are emptying out their prisons and mental institutions to deliberately send criminals and lunatics to the US, bringing down crime rates in their countries while increasing it in the US.
So ludicrous is Trump’s allegation that leaders from countries and regions he has named — and their representative envoys in the US — have simply ignored the rant, which is lapped up by his MAGA crowd.
Fact checkers, who have found no evidence or data to back Trump’s claim, have simply thrown up their hands, although one journal warned that he will continue to lie about immigration because it has worked for him in the past, “but we can’t just ignore the vitriol he spews as if it’s normal.”
“It’s worth looking at Trump’s outrageous invasion fantasies in depth—and the media, in general, does little to counter the craziest of them. He repeats them so often they become a mantra,” the journal Bulwark said in a commentary, highlighting Trump’s thesis that the US is “being invaded by would-be Hannibal Lecters. X country (fill in any Latin American, Caribbean or African nation you like) is sending criminals, murderers, rapists, and insane asylum inmates to our southern border, and the Biden administration is letting them in to wreak havoc, steal jobs, killing hundreds of thousands of people a year.”
“The media fact-checks Trump with anodyne comments that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than the American born—which is certainly true but doesn’t fully call out the danger of Trump’s dark obsession,” it warned.
Trump’s rhetoric has taken on a particularly vicious tone since Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee, with a naked attempt to otherize her as a foreigner (an Indian) despite her well-chronicled record of embracing a primarily black identity. In fact, Trump has even asked some non-white Democratic lawmakers to “go back to your country.”
On Thursday, some Democrats struck back, reminding the Trump campaign that his running mate’s wife is also Indian.
Expanding his racist rhetoric to include regions beyond Latin America in his dystopian vision of illegal immigrants wreaking havoc on the United States, Trump blamed his opponent, “border czar” Kamala Harris, for the “gigantic invasion,” saying “she will destroy our country” and she should “get the hell out of here.”
The former President, seemingly driven to desperation after polls show him falling behind Harris in the Presidential race despite surviving an assassination attempt, doubled down on his rant in illegal immigration, which previously centered largely on Central and South America.In his iteration, countries such as Venezuela and El Salvador are emptying out their prisons and mental institutions to deliberately send criminals and lunatics to the US, bringing down crime rates in their countries while increasing it in the US.
So ludicrous is Trump’s allegation that leaders from countries and regions he has named — and their representative envoys in the US — have simply ignored the rant, which is lapped up by his MAGA crowd.
Fact checkers, who have found no evidence or data to back Trump’s claim, have simply thrown up their hands, although one journal warned that he will continue to lie about immigration because it has worked for him in the past, “but we can’t just ignore the vitriol he spews as if it’s normal.”
“It’s worth looking at Trump’s outrageous invasion fantasies in depth—and the media, in general, does little to counter the craziest of them. He repeats them so often they become a mantra,” the journal Bulwark said in a commentary, highlighting Trump’s thesis that the US is “being invaded by would-be Hannibal Lecters. X country (fill in any Latin American, Caribbean or African nation you like) is sending criminals, murderers, rapists, and insane asylum inmates to our southern border, and the Biden administration is letting them in to wreak havoc, steal jobs, killing hundreds of thousands of people a year.”
“The media fact-checks Trump with anodyne comments that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than the American born—which is certainly true but doesn’t fully call out the danger of Trump’s dark obsession,” it warned.
Trump’s rhetoric has taken on a particularly vicious tone since Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee, with a naked attempt to otherize her as a foreigner (an Indian) despite her well-chronicled record of embracing a primarily black identity. In fact, Trump has even asked some non-white Democratic lawmakers to “go back to your country.”
On Thursday, some Democrats struck back, reminding the Trump campaign that his running mate’s wife is also Indian.