Everyone remembers watching the first week of the Trump administration in 2017 in a state of shock with particularly strong images of the onslaught of lawyers — many working pro bono — from the nation’s most powerful firms, raining down on airports, JFK, Newark, Dulles, all in response to a typically terribly drafted executive order by Trump’s demonic consigliere Stephen Miller, banning incoming Muslims from a set list of countries, Saudi Arabia notably excluded.
That was then, and if Trump gets what he wants and is — somehow — elected again in 2024, he’s planning to do it again and get it right this time.
“Gotta bring it back,” Trump says, often calling the idea “beautiful,” according to Rolling Stone.
The very fact that Trump believes he can do it successfully this time says a fearful amount about what he believes has changed since his last tenure and how little he respects the laws that constrained him the first time.
Especially of late, Trump has more openly appealed to the racism that always fed off the entrails inside his expanding waist.
The “Muslim ban” is entirely in keeping with that portion of Trump who hates who his supporters hate.
“But the former president appears to be unsatisfied with merely reinstating the ban as it existed during his presidency. More recently, Trump has privately discussed adding more countries, including Afghanistan, to the list of majority-Muslim countries whose citizens he’s seeking to ban from the United States,” Rolling Stone wrote.
The irony is that Trump will call it a Muslim ban and yet it has almost nothing to do with religion and more to do with impoverished brown people seeking a better life.
Trump doesn’t see rich Saudis or Qataris as “Muslims,” he sees “money,” and “deals” with his type of people.
As if the irony needs to get any deeper, U.S. intelligence has spent two decades learning that the Saudi connection to 9-11 is disarmingly much deeper than ever it realized.
If one wanted to protect U.S. security interests, one would start with Saudi Arabia.
Thus any “beautiful ban” isn’t meant to keep “Muslims” out of the United States — even under the guise of terrorist threats.
Terrorist threats now come from right-wing American citizens, as proven by recent convictions for seditious conspiracy of both members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.
The “beautiful” idea would seem to mirror the “big beautiful wall.” These ideas, so near to Trump’s heart, are not rooted in U.S. security but in a more guttural disdain for poor brown people of any religion, seeking only a chance to make a new life in the United States.
Even the thought of going through another round of selective bans scares those most involved in U.S. immigration policy:
“It’s honestly kind of pathetic that this is his idea of the sort of success he wants to replicate. There are literally no grounds on which any of the three versions of the travel ban were successes by anyone’s definition — they were incoherent policy messes that also ruined countless families’ lives,” argues Dara Lind, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.
As if more irony were needed, the United States desperately needs workers. as employers find American citizens reluctant to take on poorly-paid, labor-intensive work in agriculture and manufacturing.
America’s needs will have to wait, apparently, if Trump obtains power again. He has an agenda and the bans are at the top of the list.
It’s yet another reason why Trump should never be let anywhere near the White House again.
jmiciak@yahoo.com, @JasonMiciak, SUBSTACK: MUCH LEFT ADO
