January 17, 2018
In a pattern that has become depressingly familiar, the last few days have been full of seismic developments, any one of which, in the pre-Trump era, would have dominated the news cycle for days. Instead, in order to cope, we have to sift through the avalanche of awfulness and determine which of the momentous occurrences of the last several days truly merit our time and attention.
Thus, we correctly determined that the revelation that Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, had paid porn star, Stormy Daniels, $130,000 on the eve of the 2016 election to prevent her from revealing her 2006 affair with Trump (one year after his marriage to Melania), was barely a one day story. After all, we have become inured to presidential infidelity and, as Patton Oswalt drolly observed, the most shocking thing about the whole story is that Trump actually paid someone.
That news faded into the background as the news cycle continued to be dominated by the fallout from Trump’s “shithouse” comments. Tom Cotton’s memory evolved from not recalling the comment to issuing a flat out denial that it was said (Source: “Senators Cotton and Perdue are outed for lying on Trump’s behalf,” by Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post, 1/16/18). Trump promptly threw Cotton and Perdue under the bus when it became clear that his naked racism played far worse than Trump thought it would. Finally, Trump’s blatant bigotry jolted the news media out of its timidity. Journalists were openly calling Trump racist, and more importantly, linking his policies to that racism (Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/it-finally-time-call-trump-racist-n837041). Tom Cotton’s refutation of Dick Durbin’s and Lindsey Graham’s accounts fooled no one and merely exposed him as a craven liar willing to savage the reputation of a fellow senator, either to curry favor with Trump, or more likely, because he shares Trump’s racist views of immigration (Source: “Immigration Advocates: RAISE Act inherently racist,” by Tina Vasquez, Rewire.com, 8/3/17).
Cotton does not, however, hold the monopoly on using brazen dishonesty in the service of bigoted, xenophobic policy goals. Yesterday, diminutive, racist martinet, Jeff Sessions and amnesiac DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen both deliberately misinterpreted DOJ data in an effort to scapegoat immigrants. Sessions held a press briefing to trumpet a DOJ Report which allegedly supports the contention that 3 out of 4 people convicted of international terrorism are immigrants. The report reveals nothing of the kind. It makes no distinction between immigrants living in the United States and foreign nationals extradited to the U.S. to face trial on terrorism charges. It only provides a detailed description of eight of the alleged 402 people brought up on charges. Most importantly though, the DOJ Report completely omits any reference to domestic terrorists who prey upon Black Americans and other people of color in its assessment of who constitutes the greatest threat to our domestic safety and security (Source: “Justice Department report blames immigrants for terrorism, but doesn’t have the data to prove it,” by Esther Yu His Lee, Thinkprogress.org, 1/16/18).
The coordinated effort by this administration and Congressional Republicans to scapegoat, deport and imprison people of color is straight out of the playbook of Germany in the 30’s and no one should be shy about explicitly calling it that. We must maintain the energy to attack each fresh outrage and pressure our Democratic representatives in Congress to not only make emotional speeches, but to stand firm and refuse any budget deal that fails to protect the nearly one million people at risk from the revocation of DACA and TPS status. We must not be accomplices to their ethnic cleansing . Let them know there are no Good Germans here.
#DREAMActNow
#NoRAISEAct