Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour
President Donald J. Trump talks to members of the press on the South Lawn of the White House Tuesday, July 30, 2019, prior to boarding Marine One to begin his trip to Williamsburg, Va.
Donald Trump wasn’t just trying to please racist supporters by telling dark-skinned Democratic congresswomen to go back where they came from. He also was hoping to turn Jewish voters against the Democrats by accusing two Muslim congresswomen of anti-Semitism.
It won’t work. Jewish voters recognize bigotry in all its forms. That includes Trump’s policies slamming the door on non-white immigrants and his hateful rhetoric telling black and brown folks they’re not wanted here. Jews were told throughout history they didn’t belong either, even in the lands where they were born.
Like most Americans, I wasn’t taught anything in school about the S.S. St. Louis. I learned that shameful story by visiting the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The St. Louis was a German ocean liner carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust in 1939. The passengers had transit visas for Cuba where they intended to wait until U.S. visas were approved. But Cuba refused to let the ship dock.
Instead, the ship waited offshore from Florida as passengers cabled President Franklin Roosevelt pleading for asylum. At that ugly time, polls showed two-thirds of Americans opposed accepting Jewish refugees. The State Department ultimately turned them away, telling them to go to the back of a mythical waiting line. After Canada also turned them away, the St. Louis returned to Europe where several countries accepted passengers. But many were later rounded up during Nazi occupation. Historians estimate a quarter of the original passengers died in concentration camps. Throughout the war, the U.S. barred thousands of Jewish refugees, claiming national security fears they could be German spies.
Making up for sins during the war, international protections for refugees were established in 1951. President Jimmy Carter increased annual U.S. admission of refugees to 50,000 in 1980. Trump is contemptuous of refugees from Central America seeking asylum with their children from gang violence and life-threatening poverty. Trump calls asylum claims a scam, implying Latinos are all lying, dangerous criminals. He’s slashed refugee admissions to 30,000 per year and may cut admissions to zero next year as a special pre-election promotion.
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Caging the Children
Trump advertises his racism by using the verb “infest” to describe large numbers of black and brown people entering the U.S. That’s how he defended the massive caging of children after his cruel family separation policy. Trump blamed Democrats. “They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country,” Trump tweeted.
Trump knows nothing about history, so he probably didn’t plagiarize The Eternal Jew, a notorious anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda film. The film used “infestation” to compare Jews to rats carrying contagion and swarming across Europe devouring resources. Others recognized the connection. Commentator Bill Kristol, a rare Republican who continued opposing Trump after his election, tweeted: “Trump’s statement that immigrants will ‘infest our Country’ probably sounds better in the original German.”
Trump clearly enjoys equating dark-skinned people with vermin and roaches. He told four non-white U.S. congresswomen to go back to their “crime-infested countries.” Then, he called the Baltimore congressional district of African American House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings “a disgusting rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.”
Trump uses the same vile rhetoric to attack cities throughout the country that vote Democratic including New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland. He suggests human beings don’t want to live in disgusting places with multi-racial populations. Real Americans live in nice, white communities that vote for Trump. “His spewing of white supremacist rhetoric is unending,” said Democratic Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf. “I fear that rhetoric will only get louder and more hateful the closer we get to the election.”
Outrageous, Inflammatory Rhetoric
Because Trump’s overt racism worked so well to elect Trump the first time, many Democrats fear it could work again. Could Trump really be the very stable political genius he claims?
Hardly. Trump’s totally blind to how much his inflammatory racism repels and energizes decent voters of all stripes. Those Jewish voters he thought he could win over by calling Democrats anti-Semitic may be the most anti-Trump religious group in America for their own protection. Nearly three-quarters of Jewish voters (73%) say they feel less safe since Trump’s election. Their fears are supported by two deadly synagogue shootings and a record number of anti-Semitic hate crimes.
Last October’s mass shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, killing 11, was the deadliest act of anti-Semitic violence in U.S. history. The shooting during Passover six months earlier at the Chabad of Poway synagogue, in California, killed a woman who threw herself in front of the rabbi to save his life. Both shooters were motivated by a bizarre racist belief Jews supported a plot to destroy white control over America by encouraging massive non-white immigration.
Where in the world would unstable, violent people get such a crazy idea?
