There is No New Hate Under the Immigration Sun
If we judge the similarities of past rhetoric with modern day speech we find nothing much has changed.
When President Trump tweeted out his incendiary tweets at four sitting Congresswomen, the response was swift. Many folks found it offensive, others decried it racist, and most recoiled at the idea of four American citizens being told “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
The defenses of the statements, as recapped and refuted by my friend and colleague Will Truman, went something like this:
This is far from the worst thing Donald Trump has said in his political rise and tenure. It is, however, one of the least ambiguous. There is typically some nail you can hang an argument on and have some sort of not-bigoted explanation. Not that people haven’t been reaching for some.
Actually he knew it was Brooklyn and Detroit and that’s what he meant. He said “countries”
Actually he was referring to Ilhan Omar who was born in Somalia “Congresswomen” — plural.
“Somalia is a hellhole, though” Again, wasn’t that specific. And Pressley’s and Ocasio-Cortez’s roots are in the US, going back for generations.
