President Donald Trump is nothing if not consistent.

Despite significant and bipartisan criticism for irresponsible and dangerous rhetoric that critics have described as fear-mongering, Trump is hitting the same “be afraid of the Caravan” note on Twitter this morning.

Trump tweeted:

The Caravans are made up of some very tough fighters and people. Fought back hard and viciously against Mexico at Northern Border before breaking through. Mexican soldiers hurt, were unable, or unwilling to stop Caravan. Should stop them before they reach our Border, but won’t!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2018

He followed that first tweet shortly after with:

Our military is being mobilized at the Southern Border. Many more troops coming. We will NOT let these Caravans, which are also made up of some very bad thugs and gang members, into the U.S. Our Border is sacred, must come in legally. TURN AROUND!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2018

Our military is being mobilized at the Southern Border. Many more troops coming. We will NOT let these Caravans, which are also made up of some very bad thugs and gang members, into the U.S. Our Border is sacred, must come in legally. TURN AROUND!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2018

These tweets came the morning after the Commander in Chief and First Lady returned from a somber visit to the Pittsburgh synagogue that saw 11 worshipers murdered by an unhinged individual that parroted right-wing rhetoric calling this mass of migrants “invaders.”

Depending on reports one follows, the caravan is comprised of roughly 3,500 Central Americans that are roughly 1,000 miles from the southern U.S. border and are traveling by foot. By most accounts, they won’t arrive at the United States for at least six to eight weeks.

President Trump has ordered 5,000 soldiers to protect the border from this mass of immigrants. To illustrate the absurdity of how clear and present a danger they present, here is a visual aid of just how far away these pedestrians:

The president’s critics see this as vilification and otherization of impoverished peoples seeking asylum from dangerous local environments that have been destabilized by Trump’s foreign policy that has cut aid to the Central American countries from where many of these individuals hail.

Some have also gone so far to compare this rhetoric to the rise of nationalism that led to the fascist regimes in the 1930’s and 40’s. Regarding the term nationalism, Trump is proud to call himself a “nationalist” but it is unclear if he understands the historical meaning of the term.

Perhaps the lasting legacy of the Trump administration is the manner in which he has us questioning the ephemeral nature of meaning itself?

Read the rest of this entry »

Washington Post global opinions editor Karen Attiah said Congressman Steve King (R-IA) and President Trump are generating a “global western poison” that contributes to the spate of violence the United States has seen recently.

Attaih joined MSNBC’s Morning Joe to talk about King’s battle with the NRCC chair, after the lawmaker from his own party condemned him for his frequent winks to white nationalists. When asked for her thoughts, Attiah argued that the rhetoric from King and Trump has an impact that goes beyond America, and “people’s lives are on the line.”

Attiah cited three Kansas men convicted of trying to bomb Somali refugees, who “said in court Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric helped to influence their decision to take peoples’ lives.”

She continued:

“This is not just a matter of rhetoric, of distractions, of cultural ploys. This is a matter of people dying over the climate that’s being created by not only the White House, being condoned by people like Steve King and even Lindsey Graham. People are dying. People are literally dying over this. I think that is one thing that Americans need to consider when they go to the polls: is this the country that we want to be? The last two weeks we’ve had, if I were any other country, I’d be issuing travel warnings to the United States over the climate and over the violence we have seen.”

Watch above, via MSNBC.

[Image via screengrab]

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>> Follow Ken Meyer (@KenMeyer91) on Twitter

Happy Halloween from Fox News! pic.twitter.com/QD3gMErlrQ

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) October 31, 2018

Comedy Central’s Daily Show mocked the Fox News caravan obsession in a fitting way on Wednesday: with a spooky Halloween video splicing shots of absurd fear-mongering from the network with clips of migrants and shots of zombies devouring human flesh.

“The migrant caravan, it’s inching closer to our border,” Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade says in the clip. “They’ll be here by election day, we’re told,” Fox Business host Stuart Varney warns, in a line that could have been fed to him by President Donald Trump himself.

The clip moves on to the series of Fox News guests who have warned, baselessly, that the migrant caravan is bringing diseases like leprosy and polio to the United States. Fox News reporter Griff Jenkins is shown hiding in the bushes ready to catch border crossers. “It’s an invasion,” Tomi Lahren says. “There is a mob of humanity driving towards the U.S. border,” Chris Stirewalt adds.

The terrifying video peaks, naturally, with a shot of Jeanine Pirro demanding the military be dispatched to the border to meet the incoming invasion.

The clip concludes with Fox News host Shepard Smith, who explained on his show this week: “There is no invasion. No one’s coming to get you. There is nothing at all to worry about.”

Tell that to the flesh eating invaders, Shep.

Watch above, via Comedy Central.

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The Young Turks trolled Donald Trump on Tuesday night by saying the president’s family will be personally affected if he tries to use an executive order to roll back 14th Amendment birthright citizenship.

As Cenk Uygur ran through the news from Trump’s interview with Axios, he questioned whether Melania Trump was a U.S. citizen by the time she gave birth to the president’s youngest son, Barron. Eventually, Uygur focused on Ivana Trump, the president’s first wife and mother of most of his children, and asked when did she become a U.S. citizen.

Ivana Trump became a naturalized citizen in 1988 after giving birth to Donald Trump Jr. in 1977, Ivanka Trump in 1981, and Eric Trump in 1984. Since the Trump children weren’t born when their mom was a citizen, Uygur wondered if Trump intends on applying the same standards of his proposed executive order to his own kids.

“Send ’em back,” Uygur said sarcastically. “I dunno. Lock ’em up first, probably, then send ’em back.”

John Iadarola and Aida Rodriguez got in the mix eventually as the panel opened up, though Uygur maintained the lead on the conversation, saying it remains in question whether Trump’s order would apply to the children of undocumented parents or the children of all non-citizens.

It’s not clear if Trump’s executive order would address birthright citizenship of children born from parents who are both undocumented, or if one parent being an American citizen would allow full citizenship. What is clear is that even Republican allies have pushed back on the recent announcement.

Watch above, via The Young Turks.

[Image via screengrab]

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>> Follow Ken Meyer (@KenMeyer91) on Twitter

Desperate times call for desperate measures. But in today’s bitterly divided political world, the desperation is in the eyes of the beholder.

With the midterm elections less than a week away, Joe Scarborough took a tough look at the troubling trend of fear-mongering and otherization of undocumented immigrants from the Republican side of the aisle.

Yesterday, President Donald Trump floated the idea of using an executive order to end the 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which would ostensibly end birthright citizenship for anyone born in the United States by parents who are not legal citizens.

This comes after weeks of fear-mongering rhetoric that has described a group of Central American migrants currently on the Mexico-Guatemala border who are described as “invaders” despite the fact that they are almost 1,000 miles away and are traveling by foot.

If you see Trump’s hard-line rhetoric – gleefully amplified by many pro-Trump programs on Fox News — as a craven and dangerous ploy to gin up support for the midterms, well then you’d be in accord with the assessment of Scarborough.

But the Morning Joe host went one further, comparing (though not by name) the scary political tactics to how Nazi Germany treated “gypsies and jews.”

“He’s been playing the racist card” he opened, adding, “He said I’m a nationalist. David Duke comes out the next day saying thank you. Thank you so much for finally admitting that you’re a white nationalist.”

Scarborough then listed the rhetorical supporters, saying “Then you have some Republican benchers that are linking George Soros and these anti-semantic threads to the caravan. You’ve got Fox News talking about smallpox and leprosy coming up.”

Apologizing, he then made this approach to an unnamed “regime from the 20th century” saying “might as well be certain countries talking about gypsies. It lines up historically with what people were talking about when they talked about gypsies and Jews.”

Nazi Germany included Gypsies as part of the Holocaust that led to the death of 6 Million Jews.

Now if you feel that comparing Trump to Nazi is unfair, please return to the lede of this blog post. Some are sure to see Scarborough’s line of thinking as the true desperation on display here.

Even if the rhetorical evidence supports his claim.

Watch the clip above, courtesy of MSNBC.