Again, Trump Reaps The Violence That He Continues To Sow
It bears repeating thought it is stating the obvious that violence is exactly what trump wants.
A man was held for his possible connection with a second, alleged assassination attempt on trump at his Mar-a-Lago golf course. The suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was quickly arrested and has told reporters that he has been active in supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia and reportedly has tried to recruit Afghan soldiers who fled the Taliban to fight in Ukraine.
The attempted assassination came days after trump made statements that put the lives of Haitians and other immigrants in danger. In speaking about two situations that have proven not to have happened, trump said he would target Haitians who eat kittens and Venezuelan gangs who have taken over a building in Aurora, Colo.
An Ohio woman has admitted that she posted the false claims on Facebook that sparked the rumors about Haitians and pets. Trump ignored her confession and continued to target Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, when he said in the presidential debate that was viewed by millions that Haitians were guilty of “eating the pets of the people that live there.” There were no credible reports of such abominations but trump’s words primed mocking and threats of Haitians in Springfield.
In Springfield the Haitian population has soared since 2020. In the wake of trump’s flaming lies, some Haitians have been keeping their children home from school, fearing bullying or worse. Others have reported harassment on the street, in their cars and at stores.
Trump’s claims about Venezuelan criminals “taking over” Aurora, Colo., a Denver suburb, are equally false.
“We’re going to get these people (Venezuelans and Haitians) out,” trump said in a news conference, intensifying his attack and promising to stage “the largest deportation in the history of our country” if reelected.
Thousands of Venezuelans began arriving in Aurora in 2022. Many of the migrants said they have been told their nationality makes them ineligible for jobs or housing. Residents of buildings that some officials have alleged are under gang control said the false rumors have led to threats and even drawn armed groups to the properties, claiming to offer protection, vigilante-style.
Asked about the Jan. 6 insurrection during the presidential debate, trump said “I had nothing to do with that other than they asked me to make a speech.” The facts are that trump juiced the rioters to attack the Capitol, bellowing out to his electrified followers, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
At a recent trump rally in Philadelphia, trump said that Ashli Babbit was “shot by an out-of-control police officer that should have never, ever shot her,” and that “Nobody on the other side was killed.” Babbit joined the mob and was killed while trying to break into the House chamber during the insurrection and three police officers died in the aftermath of the attack.
Trump’s confidants might want to explain to the wannabe dictator that his ever increasingly violent and dishonest rhetoric might be inflaming more than a few people on both the right and the left. And as it is written in the Bible, to paraphrase, trump will reap what he sows or said another way, the chickens have come home to roost.
After the aborted assassination, trump could have issued a contrite response that violent words have no place in American politics and that lawmakers and would-be lawmakers like himself must tune down the extreme rhetoric. But he didn’t because violence is baked into his campaign; he needs it to justify his deranged plans and to maintain the support of his base.
Within minutes of the incident, the trump campaign issued a fund raising press release that said, “I AM SAFE AND WELL! Nothing will slow me down. I will NEVER SURRENDER. I will always love you for supporting me. Unity. Peace. Make America Great Again. May God bless you.”
The money will probably come rolling in from the furious MAGA world that their anointed leader may have come close to another shot in the ear.
Shame on trump for pouring gasoline on the flames of violence and hatred. He has bamboozled and catfished America’s most vulnerable, downtrodden members of the MAGA world and the tragedy is that the victims don’t know they’ve been used.
Trump controlled the dialogue at the debate with Vice President Kamala Harris and undecided voters may see it as a sign that trump is the stronger candidate. It is all smoke and mirrors; trump is nothing beyond his bumbling, hate mongering and as far as policies, he has made no attempt to explain them, beyond his grandiose fantasies.
At the debate, trump trumpeted his musty, stale, overused collection of tropes, exaggerations and lies. But what he didn’t talk about were the details of his plans if he is again elected president and as everyone knows, the devil is in the details.
There is no more critical foreign policy issue facing the U.S. and the world than the continuing Russian invasion of Ukraine. Keeping in form, trump refused to say that Ukraine should defeat Russia. Instead, he boasted that he can end the war, without explaining how or whether America’s national security would be jeopardized.
Trump has frequently expressed his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his opposition to continued funding of Ukraine’s war effort. He also has had a longstanding animus toward Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, dating back to the 2019 phone call trump made when he tried to force Zelensky to find political dirt on his then-opponent, Democratic Joe Biden. The call led to trump’s first impeachment.
There is no question but that trump’s plan to end the war would involve ending American military support, leaving Ukraine in the position of continuing to fight at a terrible cost or negotiate a peace plan and lose the land that Russia has seized.
“The reason that Donald Trump says that this war would be over within 24 hours is because he would just give it up, and that’s not who we are as Americans,” said Harris.
A Russian victory would send Putin the message that further aggression will not be opposed and that military action can defeat the west. World War III would not be far behind.
Trump was on the attack for his traditional bogeyman, as he again railed against the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, which has provided affordable health coverage to tens of millions of Americans.
Asked how he would revise Obamacare, trump responded feebly, “I have concepts of a plan.”
Concepts do not a health plan make.
At the debate, trump repeated his foul plans to deport 15 million to 20 million undocumented immigrants and said later that he would start in Springfield, Ill. and Aurora, Colo., based on the disinformation and rumors. It’s like announcing a U.S. nuclear strike on North Korea because Steven Bannon reported on his War Room podcast that North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, was gassing up his missiles for a strike on the U.S.
Trump has consistently insisted that millions of migrants have been released from prisons and psychiatric institutions in their home countries and have entered the U.S. There is nothing to prove his claims. He also always bellows that immigrants are causing a rise in crime. Again he is ignoring the inconvenient fact that most measures of violent crime in the U.S. have actually been falling.
Pew Research Center estimated the number of undocumented migrants in the U.S. was around 10.5 million in 2021. As of 2021, it estimated about 3 percent of the U.S. population and about 22 percent of the foreign-born population were undocumented. The numbers are nowhere near the many millions that trump would deport.
Trump has been mum on how the government would pay to deport tens of millions of people, although it would likely add billions to the national debt, which totaled slightly over $35 trillion as of August 2024. But Project 2025 leaves no doubt about the goals and tactics, including the use of military force and local police. They were spelled out in Project 2025, a proposed presidential transition project crafted by the right wing, Heritage Foundation and written by numerous former trump employees.
“Prioritizing border security and immigration enforcement, including detention and deportation, is critical if we are to regain control of the border, repair the historic damage done by the Biden Administration, return to a lawful and orderly immigration system, and protect the homeland from terrorism and public safety threats,” says the 2025 manifesto, which would require Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to remove, arrest, and detain violators without warrant, when possible, by removing due process rights.
Trump has said that detention camps would not be necessary because undocumented immigrants would be sent to their home countries.
That’s not what Kris Kobach, Kansas’ former secretary of state and current attorney general, said on Fox Business Network five years ago. Kobach said that in order to quickly deport undocumented immigrants seeking asylum in the United States, the trump administration would need “camps” or as he put it, “processing towns.” Kobach said the U.S. government owns “thousands of empty mobile home trailers,” that should be deployed “to border cities” to house the migrants.
Stephen Miller, trump’s lead advisor on immigration, said last year that camps will be built “on open land in Texas near the border” and should have the capacity to house as many as 70,000 people. Miller said the camps would have “constantly” operating runways, with a packed schedule of lights, shipping deportees around the world.
Miller was trump’s most draconian voice on immigration, including crafting trump’s notorious family separation policy and his ban on immigrants entering the U.S. from several Muslim-majority countries.
And then there were the comments by Thomas Homan, who served as acting director of Immigration and Enforcement under trump.
“Trump comes back in January — I’ll be on his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen,” Homan said. “They ain’t seen shit yet. Wait until 2025.”
The GOP platform calls for immigration arrests by local police and “massive portions of Federal Law Enforcement” who’ve been shifted from their normal work over to immigration enforcement, alongside “thousands of Troops” who would be transferred to the border. Trump has been urged to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century law that gives the president broad powers to deport people from hostile nations.
Project 2025 calls for a nationwide detention standard that “allow[s] the flexibility to use large numbers of temporary facilities such as tents.” It also repeats a goal of trump’s first term to end the Flores Settlement Agreement, a 1997 consent decree that places limitations on the detention of migrant children.
Project 2025 also would weaken the protections offered by “sanctuary cities,” where police or municipal employees are barred from questioning people about their immigration status. Local police also must refuse requests by national immigration authorities to detain people beyond their release date, if they were jailed for breaking local law
Project 2025 also offers a detailed plan to revise the national health care policy, and it is very bad news for millions of people who cannot afford traditional health insurance.
A trump administration would roll back the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) which was signed into law by President Biden two years ago. Among other measures, the act capped insulin costs at $35 per month for people on Medicare. Trump and Vance have supported a repeal of the IRA which would make drugs like insulin more expensive and force patients to pay more of the costs of the medications.
The IRA also caps annual out-of-pocket spending on prescription drugs and not just insulin for seniors, starting next year. The law also for the first time, allows Medicare to negotiate prices with Big Pharma, achieving significant discounts and saving billions. The savings to consumers and the government would be gone if trump gets his way and repeals the IRA.
Project 2025 weakens Medicaid, which provides vital health care for more than 70 million low-income Americans. The trump blueprint would institute lifetime caps on benefits and require recipients to work as a condition for coverage. The provisions could cause millions of people, including those who are currently working, to lose coverage.
Regarding the ongoing Republican attack on reproductive rights, Project 2025 would further restrict abortion and eliminate no-cost coverage for some contraception.
Another major Project 2025 plan is to prevent public health agencies from requiring vaccination in school children. The plan proposes invalidating state laws intended to stem gun violence, and eliminating Head Start, a critical program for early childhood development, especially in low-income and rural communities.