Pretty much all credible studies show the crime rate among illegal immigrants in the United States to be lower than that of natural-born citizens, but people tend to fear what they don’t know most, so a QVC quisling like Donald Trump was able to successfully peddle his gutter-level demagoguery as if it were just another crate of mediocre steaks.
The leader of our country threw this same red meat to his base once again in a Youngstown rally a few hours ago, just a day after he managed to turn the Boy Scout Jamboree into something akin to an auto-da-fé. But if you’re a guy who spent the last two years projecting every last creepy desire of your own onto others, from accusing your opponent of rigging the election to calling undocumented immigrants sexual predators to decrying the “swamp” before causing it to overflow, the most unsettling thing you could possibly do would be to specifically detail bizarre child torture and murder scenarios that you believe are overrunning the country. An excerpt:
Donald Trump:
One by one, we are finding the illegal gang members, drug dealers, thieves, robbers, criminals, and killers. And we are sending them the hell back home where they came from. And once they are gone, we will never let them back in, believe me.
The predators and criminal aliens who poison our communities with drugs and prey on innocent young people — these beautiful, beautiful, innocent young people — will find no safe haven anywhere in our country. And you’ve seen the stories about some of these animals. They don’t want to use guns, because it’s too fast and it’s not painful enough. So they’ll take a young, beautiful girl, 16, 15, and others, and they slice them and dice them with a knife, because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die. And these are the animals that we’ve been protecting for so long. Well, they’re not being protected any longer, folks.•
I will never sleep again.
Any working-class Republican hoping for more from Trump than talk of torches and pitchforks should be prepared to be disappointed. That’s all he has. Should he actually impact healthcare or tax reform in a meaningful way, it will be in a manner devastating to his most devout supporters–those who can least afford it. I’ve joked that I would play the world’s smallest violin for these folks if the GOP hadn’t just slashed the school music program, but this may be the first time in the history of American politics that a major political party has actively tried to kill off its base.
From Dake Kang’s Associated Press piece about struggling Youngstowners:
Judy Martin, 72, of McDonald, Ohio, “tosses and turns” in bed at night, wracked with leg pain and worried about her medical bills.
Martin, a factory worker for 51 years, said she burned through her $20,000 in life savings on medical expenses a year after her retirement. She now relies on a monthly $1,500 social security check and Medicare subsidies, but still has to pay roughly $400 a month for medication and supplemental insurance.
“It feels like we’re getting punished as we’re getting older,” Martin said. “I earned my time out there. Here we are, stuck.”
Martin, who voted for Trump, “has faith” that Trump will make things more affordable for her, and is excited to hear what Trump has to say about health care when he comes to Youngstown, a 15 minute drive from her home. Though she won’t be there in person, she plans to watch his speech online and hear about it from her son who plans to attend.
“I believe that Trump can do it, and that he will take care of the little people,” Martin said.•