Trump Has Poisoned The Bloodstream Of America's Politics— Is It Still Salvageable?

Don't Ask Marjorie Traitor Greene-- Try Jasmine Crockett Or Jamie Raskin Instead

"Head To Head" by Nancy Ohanian

This morning, Jamie Raskin (D-MD) noted that in Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville remarked that “voting rights and democracy in our country are either shrinking and shriveling away or they are growing and expanding. The choice is up to us. Today we live under the matrix of GOP democracy repression: voter suppression laws, gerrymandering of our districts, right-wing court packing, judicial activism to destroy the Voting Rights Act in cases like Shelby County v. Holder, and use of the filibuster to block voting rights legislation… Democracy is not just a static collection of practices and institutions, although it is partly that. Democracy is the dynamic and never-ending process of uniting the people with the power in a ‘more perfect Union.’” Earlier, Josh Dawsey and Isaac Arnsdorf had reported that incendiary Trump e-mails have been cranking up false, inflammatory claims to raise campaign cash— even asserting that he could be executed, tempting more violence from his unhinged fans— like this:

1 MONTH UNTIL ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE! THEY WANT TO SENTENCE ME TO DEATH

And here I thought it was only me who did! Matthew Hindman, a professor at George Washington University who studies digital emails told the two Washington Post reporters that he thinks the e-mails like that “are clearly an escalation over and above some incredibly heated rhetoric and some irresponsible rhetoric we’ve seen over time. The fact that those messages continue to be sent out tell us about something. The rhetoric has been driven by user response and user donations. If this extreme rhetoric continues to generate funds, it’s going to be rewarded with an even more extreme response next time.”

Meanwhile, House Republicans have promulgated a rule that forbids anyone mentioning that Trump is a convicted felon on the House floor. On Friday, Luke Broadwater reported that “In recent weeks, Republican leaders have cracked down on Democrats who refer to Trump’s court cases on the floor, citing the centuries-old rules of decorum, which date back to the days of Thomas Jefferson. Merely mentioning that Trump is a felon prompts an admonishment from whomever is presiding when the offending fact is uttered. (Trump is also indicted on felony charges in cases related to his handling of classified documents and attempting to overturn the 2020 election.) ‘The chair would remind members to refrain from engaging in personalities toward presumptive nominees for the office of the president,’ is now a common phrase heard in the chamber after the mention of the words ‘Trump’ and ‘felon.’ On one occasion, Republicans barred Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, from speaking for the rest of the day and deleted his comments from the Congressional Record after he railed against Trump and his court cases.”

Raskin told Broadwater that “When they censor any mention of Donald Trump’s criminal convictions, they are essentially trying to ban a fact. I am not aware of any precedent where factual statements have been banned in our lifetime.” Key: “in our lifetime.” Raskin, Congress’ foremost constitutional scholar noted that silencing Señor Trumpanzee’s “critics,” wrote Broadwater, “on the House floor had a historical analog: the House’s pre-Civil War ban on legislation relating to the abolition of slavery. In 1836, the House passed a so-called gag rule that automatically postponed action on all petitions related to slavery without hearing them. ‘In a legislative sense, this was of course far more important than the new rule against mentioning Trump’s criminal record,’ Raskin said. Still, he said, he considers the prohibition against criticizing Trump’s felon status ‘Orwellian.’”

Republicans have exempted themselves from that equal treatment standard when it comes to President Biden, whom they routinely accuse of criminal conduct despite having produced no evidence of any. Representative James Comer of Kentucky, the chairman of the Oversight Committee, began one recent meeting by simply declaring that the rule against speaking ill of a president “will not be in order for the duration of today’s hearing.” Given that it was part of an impeachment inquiry, he explained, “members must be allowed to speak frankly.”

Republican leaders have frequently allowed their members to trample on the rules of decorum without repercussion in other contexts as well, including when Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia insulted the makeup of Representative Jasmine Crockett, Democrat of Texas, during a committee hearing. Comer declined to take down her words, as Democrats demanded, and allowed her to continue participating.

Speaking of which… a star was born:

Jasmine Crockett, who represents central Dallas, was in college when she changed her mind about pursuing a medical career and decided to study law instead. That’s because she personally experienced a hate crime. She graduated from the University of Houston’s law school. Started her own firm and has been well-known for working pro bono for Black Lives Matter activists. MarjorieTraitor Greene, on the other hand— from a wealthy family in Georgia— was a skanky anti-Semitic yenta spreading sick Q-Anon conspiracy theories before her father bought her a CrossFit gym in Alpharetta where she lured clients from other gyms by offering to blow them. She then discovered Trump and threw her career (and family) away.

Crockett became something on national political celebrity when she responded to Traitor Greene’s hateful remarks towards her by referring to someone as “Bleach-Blonde Bad-Built Butch-Body.” When Kimmel asked her “Is she the dumbest person in the House of Representatives?” Crockett responded, thoughtfully, “I’d be hard-pressed to find someone dumber.” She also told Kimmel she’s been congratulated by plenty of congressional Republicans who hate Traitor Greene as well.

Yesterday, a quartet of Politico writers noticed that Señor T— who believes in nothing but himself— keeps flip-flopping his policy positions after meeting with rich people, which should surprise no one who’s been paying even teh vaguest attention. He’d sell any position at all for enough money, although who knows if he’ll flip back again when it’s advantageous!

He’s even shifting on immigration policy at the behest of wealthy donors who need foreign workers. “On the All-In Podcast on Thursday, Trump said foreign nationals who graduate from U.S. colleges and universities should ‘automatically’ be given a green card upon graduation. It was the latest major policy shift from a candidate who has proven equal parts hardline and chameleon-like over time. Trump’s pivot on immigration followed his reversal on TikTok, embracing an app he once tried to ban, and his shift on cryptocurrency.”

To the former president’s allies, the reversals are evidence of a nuanced politician taking thoughtful new positions on rapidly changing issues.

But there is also plainly a pattern of Trump aligning his political stances with the views of wealthy donors and business interests.

“What Trump has always had an instinct for is figuring out how to scoop up people that he might not have previously thought he could get,” said Republican strategist Scott Jennings. “Now some people might say that’s craven or he doesn’t have any core values or whatever. But he’s got to win the election.”

Trump’s latest comments on visas did not come out of the ether, but evinced an evolution on immigration, an issue that has been a raison d'être of his political story. When he spoke to the Business Roundtable last week, some of the titans of the tech industry seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when Trump appeared to support keeping high-skilled immigrants in the United States.

Then, on Thursday, Trump fielded a question on the All-In Podcast, hosted by Silicon Valley venture capitalists and Trump donors David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya: “Can you please promise us you will give us more ability to import the best and brightest from around the world to America?”

“Let me just tell you that it’s so sad when we lose people from Harvard, MIT, from the greatest schools and lesser schools that are phenomenal schools also,” Trump said.

“But what I want to do, and what I will do is you graduate from a college I think you should get, automatically as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country, and that includes junior colleges too. Anybody graduates from a college, you go in there for two years or four years, if you graduate, or you get a doctorate degree from a college, you should be able to stay in this country.”

For Trump— who has demonized undocumented immigrants and railed against the record levels of migration at the Southern border as a cornerstone of his 2024 presidential campaign— it was a significant change. Trump has called for mass deportations on the first day of his administration, has said that migrants are “poisoning the blood” of this country, and has highlighted high-profile crimes committed by migrants in the U.S. illegally.

On Friday, Trump’s critics pounced on his green card remarks.

“I’m very happy some adviser told him maybe he could take his foot off the massive deportation, prison camp, they’re all rapists and murderers narrative,” said Ben Johnson, of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “I just don’t know how serious to take this coming from somebody who’s spent 95 percent of his time being horrible on immigration.” And a spokesperson for President Joe Biden’s campaign, Kevin Munoz, said, “Trump’s empty promise is both a lie and an insult, especially to the countless people that have been permanently damaged by his first-term in office.”

Trump floated a similar idea during his 2016 campaign, saying at the time that forcing non-citizens to leave the U.S. shortly after graduating from college was “ridiculous” and that they should have a path to citizenship.

But once elected president, Trump reversed himself, restricting immigration and limiting visas for high-skilled professionals and employers, much to the frustration of business leaders who rely on those visas to keep engineers and scientists in the U.S. Trump issued an executive order, “Buy American Hire American,” which encouraged businesses to protect American jobs and resulted in fewer H-1B visas. Biden revoked the order soon after taking office.

Trump, his campaign and his allies have sought to distinguish between those who have immigrated illegally versus those who have legally made their way through the immigration system. The former first lady, Melania Trump, immigrated to the U.S. on an employment visa, and last December spoke at a naturalization ceremony for immigrants at the National Archives. On Friday, the Trump campaign said any green cards would come only after “the most aggressive vetting process ever.”

Willkommen

“President Trump has made it clear that on day one of his new Administration, he’s going to shut down the border and launch the largest mass deportation effort of illegal aliens in history,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, said in a statement, adding that he has “outlined the most aggressive vetting process ever to exclude all communists, radical Islamists, Hamas supporters, America haters and public charges.”

She said that Trump “believes, only after such vetting has taken place, we ought to keep the most skilled graduates who can make significant contributions to America. This would only apply to the most thoroughly vetted college graduates who would never undercut American wages or workers.”

Trump has changed course before— not so much moderating on his positions but accommodating allies who have briefed him on the complexities of changing technology and business.

In office, Trump tried to unilaterally restrict social media platform TikTok from operating in the U.S., but he reversed course recently amid its popularity with youth, whose votes he and Biden are courting. [And after getting a bribe from right-wing billionaire and TikTok investor Jeffrey Yass.]

As a candidate, he said he would end a tax preference that is highly lucrative to private equity and some Wall Street financiers. Ultimately, however, the 2017 tax overhaul he assembled with GOP lawmakers included only some tweaks that made it somewhat harder to claim the tax break.

Trump took several positions on whether China should be labeled a currency manipulator— vowing to do so in the 2016 campaign and backing off after he took office. His administration ultimately made the move in 2019.

And then there’s Trump’s new embrace of cryptocurrency, which he criticized during his first term. Trump told the crypto faithful at Mar-a-Lago last month that they “better vote” for him because of the Biden administration’s regulatory clashes with the industry.

It was by no means an unexpected shift. Though Trump tweeted in 2019 that “I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies,” top GOP policymakers have spent the ensuing years rallying around crypto interests and working to advance industry-friendly regulation.

“People’s positions evolve,” said Republican strategist and Trump ally David Urban, who lobbied for TikTok.

With cryptocurrency, TikTok, technology, Urban said, “a lot of these newer issues, there is some room for some thoughtful reflection. He’s hearing from different people, different voices, weighing different opinions. He gathers information about any topic, whether it’s the Vice President or a trade deal, he talks to people. He takes input from Steve Schwarzman to the police officer in the receiving line, and so his positions evolve.”

On TikTok, for example, Trump now has a personal account with over 6.5 million followers. He became interested in getting on the app, which has alleged Chinese connections, after learning about its potential and political reach from advisers and lobbyists.

Trump’s malleability on these issues is, according to detractors, a craven campaign ploy. But Trump’s flip flops, according to his own supporters, are unlikely to cost him anything with his base.

At the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual Road to Majority conference in Washington, D.C., on Friday, a gathering of social conservatives, attendees said they trusted Trump with his new green card idea. Acknowledging, when pressed, that they would prefer students to have come to the country legally and have undergone a vetting process, Trump supporters nevertheless deferred to him. If it’s an immigration policy Trump is suggesting, several attendees said in interviews, he will ensure it’s one without safety risks.

“Obviously it’s following other immigration policies that he’s going to go through and put in place,” said Shea Thompson, a 20-year-old college student from Spokane, Washington. “Because as it stands, no, that would be a horrible thing, because of the problems with illegal immigration and everything.”

But it’s likely a “smart” idea from Trump, Thompson explained, with Trump having figured out how it would fit in with his plans to secure the southern border and “streamline legal immigration.”

Abigail Galán, 45, who co-pastors a predominantly Hispanic church in Columbia, Maryland with her husband and is originally from Puerto Rico, cheered on the proposal.

“It’s a good idea because the worry of the border is not students who want to do good in this country, it’s the bad people we’re scared of,” Galán said. “If they make the effort, if I had a son in that position, I would be thankful for that.”

Others were of a similar mind. Irving Widelitz, a 65-year-old conservative Jewish voter from Houston, said he could get behind Trump’s green card proposal “as long as they’re properly vetted.”

And if the student enrolled in college while in the United States illegally?

“That’s a slippery slope,” Widelitz conceded.