February 5th, 2019
Tonight the Prevaricator-in-Chief will ascend to the podium in our august Capitol and unleash a steady stream of lies. We know this because he has been documented making 6420 false claims in 649 days. We know this because previews of the speech have indicated that Trump will stress unity and bi-partisanship, claiming that “together we can break decades of political stalemate,” (Source: “Trump to offer ‘aspirational,’ ‘visionary’ path in State of the Union address,” by David Nakamura and Josh Dawsey, The Washington Post, 2/1/19).
That would be risible if it were not our own American tragedy. Trump cannot credibly call for unity when he has taken every opportunity to sow division among Americans since he began his campaign by demonizing Mexican immigrants as drug dealers, criminals and rapists. Throughout his tenure, he has pursued policies that single out people of color and LGBTQ Americans for particular harm, whether by attempting to end Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of people from Haiti, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Nepal and Sudan; refusing to provide protection for Dreamers or banning transgender troops from serving in the military.
Similarly, Trump’s calls for bipartisanship fall flat. He has mocked Democratic legislators, delighting in tagging them with derisive nicknames like “Crying” Chuck Schumer or Adam Schi[tt]. Trump has repeatedly insulted Maxine Waters’ intelligence. All that has changed is that Democrats control the House and are not shy about flexing their muscle. Trump’s calls for comity are a “Hail Mary” pass designed to peel off a few centrist Democrats. Trump should have learned from the shutdown fiasco that it won’t work.
Trump’s guests for the State of the Union betray that there is no “new and improved” Trump. He remains a corrupt, racist charlatan determined to distort reality for his own selfish ends. He has invited the family of a couple killed by an undocumented immigrant, part and parcel of Trump’s ongoing effort to demonize immigrants. This sensationalist move desecrates the memories of Felipe Gomez Alonso and Jakelin Caal Maquin, two migrant children who died in ICE custody, to say nothing of the four immigrant women who died at the hands of an alleged serial killer employed by Customs and Border Patrol.
Another guest is special DHS agent Elvin Hernandez, who focuses on “drugs, gangs and human trafficking, (Source: “State of the Union 2019: Donald Trump’s guest list hits on all his expected talking points,” Associated Press, USAToday.com, 2/4/19). That is rich, considering recent revelations that the U.S. may have separated thousands more children at the border than the nearly 3000 previously thought and that the government has no way of tracking these children’s whereabouts. In fact, government lawyers argued that removing refugee children from sponsors to reunite them with their families would be traumatic, (Source: “Finding all migrant children separated from their families may be impossible, feds say,” by Jacob Soboroff and Dennis Romero, NBCNews.com, 2/2/19).
Lastly, Trump has invited a young man named Joshua Trump who was bullied because of his last name (Source: USAToday.com, op. cit.). The truth is that there is a much stronger correlation between support for Trump and increased bullying, and Trump’s cynical exploitation of a victimized child should not obscure that point, (Source: “Early evidence of a ‘Trump effect” on bullying in schools,” by Jill Barshay, Hechingerreport.org, 9/17/18).
No amount of slapdash stagecraft or shopworn rhetoric can obscure the lived reality of our last two years. We know that we suffer under a Commander-in-Chief marked by criminality and cupidity. We know that he is surrounded by an administration full of craven opportunists who labor mightily every day to immiserate the vast majority of Americans. We know that, far from appealing to the better angels of our nature, Trump has emboldened violently racist thugs and bullies.
The good news is that most of us survey the havoc wrought by Trump in the last two years and respond with revulsion. Nearly 60% of Americans disapprove of Trump, with 4 in 10 calling this the “worst governing of their lives,” (Source: “CNN Poll: 4 in 10 call this the worst governing of their lives,” by Jennifer Agiesta, CNN.com, 2/4/19). We reject Trump’s toxic brew of creeping authoritarianism and virulent racism and the clear eyed among us know that it will require focused and sustained work to defeat it. The state of our union is determined.