Just hours before President Trump takes to the Oval Office for what is undoubtedly going to be eight straight minutes of racist lies and xenophobic fearmongering, the American people got a little taste of what to expect with the release of an appalling white nationalist propaganda video from the White House.
So ahead of his speech tonight, the Trump campaign is airing a pretty racist ad fearmongering about "drugs, terrorists, violent criminals and child traffickers entering our country." Then straight up blames Chuck Schumer and Pelosi for "Drug deaths. Violent murder. Gang violence" pic.twitter.com/46Fi44fxPE
— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) January 8, 2019
It’s the same serious of images we’ve come to expect from the Trump administration and all the usual tropes of white nationalist rhetoric: images of ISIS members waving black flags over a map of the American South, clips of smiling gang members and “child traffickers” while a Very Serious Voiceover blames the opioid epidemic and a nonexistent immigrant crime crisis on the lack of proper border security and the devious obstruction of the radical leftist opposition.
It appears the release of this video was accompanied by a 2020 election fundraising email campaign that similarly blamed Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for the “national security crisis” and for “flooding the nation with illegal criminals.”
The Trump team then turns the grift up to 11 with a laughable promise that any donor would be placed on a “list of patriots” that would be personally delivered to President Trump, who will likely wipe the Big Mac sauce off of his fingers with it before tossing it in the trash.
— George Conway (@gtconway3d) January 8, 2019
The mainstream media broadcast executives made a huge show of hemming and hawing over whether or not they were going to grant Trump’s request for primetime access in order to address the nation from the Oval Office before inevitably caving and giving him everything he wanted.
One executive even had the gall to state that he knew the president was going to be selling viciously offensive lies against millions of people of color, which was obvious to anyone with two working brain cells, but decided would still rather rake in the ratings and ad revenue than do anything socially beneficial for once in his miserable life.
TV exec texts: "He calls us fake news all the time, but needs access to airwaves… If we give him the time, he'll deliver a fact-free screed without rebuttal. And if we don't give him the time, he'll call every network partisan. So we are damned if we do and damned if we don't."
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) January 7, 2019
Whether or not the President is going to declare a national emergency in a last-ditch effort to forcibly build his border wall remains to be seen, though whether that’s even constitutional is unclear.
But the uptick in racist rhetoric is a clear sign that the president is feeling cornered and desperate, as he did right before the midterms. With no end to the shutdown in sight and the political cost quickly mounting, he’s pulling out all the stops — which means that he must have something truly heinous in store for us tonight.
