President Trump hosted a media event yesterday attacking California’s leaders for creating a welcoming environment for immigrants. The transcript of his remarks really bears reading. The headline pulled from the meeting by most of the news media is that he called deported immigrants “animals” (again), but there is so much more hatred and misinformation in his discussion of the immigration issue.
The press event was called to denounce Gov. Jerry Brown and everyone else in the Golden State who supports “Sanctuary” legislation. Trump made the mayor of Oakland a particular target, calling for a Justice Department investigation into her acts to protect her city’s immigrants. Here is what Trump said:
You know, you had the Mayor of Oakland that I read where you had 1,000 people — Tom, you know this because it was your deal — it had 1,000 people together. Many of these were illegals. They were criminals. They were all sorts of — it was work. And she informed them and they all fled, or most of them fled. And that whole operation that took a long time to put together — I mean, you talk about obstruction of justice; I would recommend that you look into obstruction of justice for the Mayor of Oakland, California, Jeff. She advises a thousand people. They told, “Get out of here, the law enforcement is coming.” And you worked on that long and hard. And you got there, and there were very few people there.
To me, that’s obstruction of justice. And perhaps the Department of Justice can look into that with respect to the mayor, because it’s a big deal out there and a lot of people are very angry about what happened. There’s a lot of hard work and a lot of danger involved. And that was a terrible thing.
Of course, as we know from ICE enforcement on Long Island, most of those arrested are hardly dangerous criminals. In fact the biggest increase in ICE arrests under Trump has been of those immigrants without any criminal convictions at all.
Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen was at the event. She performed the obligatory “All praise the Great Leader” ritual that all Trump cabinet officers have to stoop to in order to retain their jobs. Nielsen’s position has been shaky for a month, with Trump reportedly yelling at her angrily just a week ago, so she wanted to appear as servile as possible.
Trump used his response to Nielsen to denounce the Democrats for passing laws that supposedly require her to break up immigrant families. No one knows what those Democrat laws are. Here is what Trump said to Nielsen:
Thank you. And you’re doing a good job, and it’s not an easy job. I know what you’re going through right now with families is very tough. But those are the bad laws that the Democrats gave us. We have to break up families. The Democrats gave us that law. It’s a horrible thing. We have to break up families.
The Democrats gave us that law and they don’t want to do anything about it. They’ll leave it like that because they don’t want to make any changes. And now you’re breaking up families because of the Democrats. It’s terrible.
The Trump administration recently announced that it would take children away from their mothers and prosecute the moms for crimes. That was not being done by the Bush or Obama administrations. The new policy is a Trump policy, not a Democratic Party policy or law.
Then, of course, there is the headline grabbing quote that you might have seen. Trump discussed the people who are being deported:
We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in — and we’re stopping a lot of them — but we’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals. And we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before.
So, lies, hatred, and mentally unstable ranting. Pretty much what immigrants are used to.
