April 18, 2024

Trump just told a preposterous, racist lie in his Monday morning Twitter rant

Donald Trump has found a new inane talking point to distract his supporters from his controversy-ridden presidency and — as is so often the case with him— it’s racist to the core.

Several thousand migrants are currently moving through Mexico towards the U.S. border seeking asylum. These displaced people, desperate for some kind of better life, are being referred to as the “caravan,” a technically accurate term but also a buzzword that allows Trump and his media surrogates to distill these people into a fearmongering meme, with some of his  supporters even referring to the mass of men, women, and children as an “invading army.”

It’s a delicate issue that must be handled with compassion and understanding, so of course, Trump has already proven himself not up to the task.

Today, he took to Twitter and unleashed a barrage of xenophobic tweets about the migrant caravan. He started off by making the unfounded claim that there are “unknown Middle Easterns” mixed in with the caravan.

The racist implication couldn’t be any less subtle. The president is trying to conjure images of Al-Qaeda and ISIS operatives infiltrating the group, a conspiracy theory with no foundation in reality. In other words, just in case anti-Hispanic bigotry wasn’t enough to incite his base, he decided to randomly throw in some Islamaphobia.

Since it’s Trump, there was also a typo thrown in as he spelled “emergency” as “emergy,” because apparently the President of the United States can’t be bothered to read over his messages before blasting them out to millions of people.

He wasn’t done there though and made the absurd claim that the migrant caravan’s very existence can be blamed on the Democrats as if they have any say over how people in other nations act or decide to move. Trump is attempting to tie his enemies to this issue, even though there’s no connection and anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the migrant issue will immediately recognize that. It’s pathetic, transparent partisan hackery.

Finally, Trump ended his little rant by threatening Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. He accused them of failing to do their “job” of stopping the caravan and said that his administration will now be “cutting off” or “substantially reducing” U.S. aid to those countries.

It’s another example of Trump engaging in pathetic geopolitical bullying and does nothing except further weaken our relationships with these countries. He’s sacrificing diplomatic stability in the hopes of raising his poll numbers a few points

The Washington Post’s Kevin Sieff has been covering the migrant caravan and his Twitter offers some valuable insight into what’s really unfolding on the ground.

This sordid saga is a reminder that Trump will even exploit tragedies and humanitarian crises to push his divisive, egocentric agenda. He and every last one of his Republican enablers must be voted out as soon as possible.