Donald Trump and his working mate, Sen. JD Vance, have discovered a new favourite racist hoax within the type of Haitian immigrants purportedly stealing and consuming pets in Ohio. However that baseless lie—and one other about Venezuelan gangs supposedly taking management of U.S. cities—is just the newest in a protracted historical past of the Republican Occasion’s immigration hysteria.
The hysteria stems from how the policy-bankrupt GOP must cost up its base earlier than an election. And whereas white supremacist and xenophobic messaging has lengthy been a staple of the GOP, it hit a brand new pitch after Trump took an escalator down to announce his plans to run for president in 2015.
Throughout that marketing campaign, Trump known as Mexican immigrants drug sellers and rapists. His bluntness was characterised as uncouth, however the overt racism of his rhetoric appeared to easily be a peeling away of the extra diplomatic language of “anti-amnesty, enforcement-first” utilized by previous Republican leaders.
Additionally in 2015, Trump promised to construct a wall and have Mexico pay for it. That didn’t occur. In actual fact, MAGA celebrities like former Trump adviser Steve Bannon have been charged with defrauding folks whereas fundraising to construct a border wall.
Then got here the 2018 election cycle and the “migrant caravan.” Proper-wing operatives and media manufactured a cacophony of alarming threats about an amorphous horde of immigrants touring by means of South America on their method to the U.S.-Mexico border.
However after Election Day, speak of the caravan vanished. And the struggling on the border and all through our nation continued unabated because of the Trump administration’s horrible insurance policies. However the acute risk—{that a} mass of criminals and psychopaths, together with secret MS-13 gangs and ISIS brokers—would come crashing by means of the gates evaporated nearly in a single day.
Throughout the runup to the 2020 presidential election between Trump and Joe Biden, the best leaned right into a common anti-immigration push in battleground states. If it appeared much less centered, which may have been resulting from COVID-19 pandemic that the Trump administration was mismanaging. Clearly, the racist hysteria didn’t work for Republica that yr. Trump was crushed soundly by Biden.
That brings us to right now. The brand new plan of attacking Haitian and Latino immigrants differs from earlier iterations solely in that the lies are extra shamelessly sensational. Whether or not that’s the results of veteran MAGA advisers like Stephen Miller, or of newer and equally unhinged sycophants like Laura Loomer, might be a chicken-or-the-egg conundrum. Nevertheless it does reveal a sure sweaty desperation on the a part of Republicans, who may really feel their polling lead on immigration is both in jeopardy or just the solely ghost story they’ve left to frighten Individuals into voting for them.
