So yet again Donald Trump has said something stupid, wrong, bigoted and totally fracked up. This time arguing that a sitting Federal Judge who was born in Indiana couldn’t possibly fairly adjudicate the “Trump U” case because of his “Mexican Heritage.”
Shocker.
That's nothing new, but what is new is the fact that even his best Tiny Dancer of Goebbels, Harvard Law educated uber-Trumplainer Kayleigh McEnany, seriously couldn't find a safe pathway out of the mire, no matter how hard she tried to paddle against the rapids. From the Wapo.
On Friday, even McEnany conceded that Trump crossed a line when he told the Wall Street Journal that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel's "Mexican heritage" represents an "inherent conflict of interest" in a case involving Trump University.
"It's not relevant, and he shouldn't have made that comment — that's for sure," McEnany said. "It does make it harder to win the Hispanic community by making this comment."
As I've written before, McEnany was critical of Trump's rhetoric early in the campaign. Last June, she said the real estate mogul's assertion that Mexico was sending drug dealers, rapists and other criminals into the United States was "very inappropriate."
But since embracing her role as a pro-Trump pundit in February, McEnany has rarely criticized him. That's why her negative appraisal on Friday is so notable.
It once again highlights the challenge TV networks face in representing the Trump perspective. Shortly after McEnany offered her thoughts on CNN, Trump campaign spokeswoman Katrina Pierson defended her boss on MSNBC. But that's Pierson's job. At times, it is hard to find any credible commentator — not on the Trump payroll — willing to go to bat for him.
Yes, McEnany has, in the past, noted that some of Trump’s statements were “Very inappropriate.” But on CNN this weekend she resorted to the same desperate charge of “Liberal Identity Politics” as her compatriot Jeffrey Lord basically claiming that anyone who points out the bigotry of Trump’s statements — is themselves guilty of bigotry, somehow.
Watch how she attempts to turn Trump's words, and reality, literally upside-down during this discussion on CNN.
McEnany: There is one point of hypocrisy to be made here, we all sit on this panel and I’ve heard over and over again that because Donald Trump wants to build a wall he is therefore isolating the whole of the Hispanic community. The premise underlying that thought is that the whole of the Hispanic community is against building a wall. That in itself, is a very racial, racists way of thinking.
Anderson Cooper: Isn’t that Donald Trump just said?
Panelist: Yes.
McEnany: But that’s my point though, because people on this panel have said that because of their heritage people will never vote for Donald Trump, because of the Wall. Trump is using the same logic.
So she’s saying that it’s racist to claim no one Hispanic could possibly vote for or support Donald Trump because of the wall, and that that is exactly the same logic that Trump is using — but somehow his doing that isn’t racist.
Even Anderson Cooper pointed out the obvious. That’s bullshit.
Marc Lamont Hill: No, That's not the argument.
McEnany: I’m not referring to Marc in particular, but many other people on this panel have said time and time again. It’s the same idea that people because of their race are going to vote a certain way because of a particular issue.
Panelist: [Trump] is the one that categorizes things this way. He’s set the conversation with this premise, and that is destructive.
Anderson Cooper: You’ve said that was a racist idea. you’re saying what Donald Trump has said is racist?
McEnany, I’m saying it has racial undertones.
Cooper: Because what Donald Trump said is racist…
McEnany: Because Donald Trump is embracing the same Liberal thought pattern that’s been said on here. I do think that it’s not an appropriate comment to make.
Cooper: What Donald Trump is saying had racial undertones your saying?
McEnany: No I’m not saying that. [Ed: ^^ Just Look above ^^]
Cooper: You say that when Liberals say that about the Wall, it has racial undertones, what Donald Trump has just said is exactly that.
McEnany: He’s taking the exact same pattern of thinking as people have said on this network.
Cooper: Which has racial undertones?
McEnany: My point is that everyone is fine with it when a Liberal says it, but when Donald Trump says it all of a sudden people have a problem with it.
Ah, so it’s a double standard. See what she did there? Donald Trump isn’t a racist, Liberals are racists for pointing out Donald Trump’s racism. Sure...
Eventually she gets answered.
Cooper: It’s very difficult to argue, because your arguing about a hypothetical Liberal that’s not here.
That Liberal is no where because they don’t exist. Seriously.
Hill: It's made of straw
….
The argument is not because he wants to build a wall, although we could argue about that, the argument is why he wants to build the wall. He has said things about Mexicans being violent, being dangerous, the whole rapists controversy, the concern is that he’s alienating an entire race it doesn’t mean that everyone in that race is going to vote against Donald Trump, it means that particular moves he makes are going to alienate an entire race. That’s not the same argument that's being made right now, and I’m baffled how you think it is.
She doesn’t think it is, she’s talking dren and felgercard to create a smoke screen.
Let me repeat as I've said many times that Trump's entire “they’re sending rapists” is just. plain. bullshit. Really it is. This is the report from Fusion that Trump has said inspired him to make that claim, which makes it quite clear that the “rapists” aren’t coming to the U.S. they’re living in the southern Mexican province of Chiapas and aren’t going anywhere.
Trump quoted extensively from this report yet managed to completely distort it's main point which was about migrant women being forced into prostitution to hype a false fear about "Mexico sending us bad people” and using that to build a wall, which would only replace a border fence that already exists and probably not much improve border security that is already functioning at 80% efficiency in stopping and interdicting undocumented migration with a priority on removing criminals.
In FY 2015, ICE removed or returned 235,413 individuals. Of this total, 165,935 were apprehended while, or shortly after, attempting to illegally enter the United States. The remaining 69,478 were apprehended in the interior of the United States and the vast majority were convicted criminals who fell within ICE’s civil immigration enforcement priorities.
98 percent of ICE’s FY 2015 removals and returns fell into one or more of ICE’s civil immigration enforcement priorities, with 86 percent falling in Priority 1 and 8 percent in Priority 2. In addition, ICE’s interior enforcement activities led to an increase in the percentage of interior removals that were convicted criminals, growing from 82 percent in FY 2013 to 91 percent in FY 2015. These numbers clearly illustrate the agency’s continued commitment to focus on the removal of convicted criminals and others posing a threat to public safety in the interior of the United States,[i] and the removal of individuals apprehended while attempting to unlawfully enter the United States.
Oh, and even the Wall Street Journal says Trump is wrong about immigrants being criminals, because they aren’t.
[Republican candidates opposing Trump] might start by pointing out that numerous studies going back more than a century have shown that immigrants—regardless of nationality or legal status—are less likely than the native population to commit violent crimes or to be incarcerated. A new report from the Immigration Policy Center notes that while the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. more than tripled between 1990 and 2013 to more than 11.2 million, “FBI data indicate that the violent crime rate declined 48%—which included falling rates of aggravated assault, robbery, rape, and murder. Likewise, the property crime rate fell 41%, including declining rates of motor vehicle theft, larceny/robbery, and burglary.”
A separate IPC paper from 2007 explains that this is not a function of well-behaved high-skilled immigrants from India and China offsetting misdeeds of Latin American newcomers. The data show that “for every ethnic group without exception, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants,” according to the report. “This holds true especially for the Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans who make up the bulk of the undocumented population.”
Yet McEnany continued to make her claims, saying to Hill’s it’s “Wishful thinking” that her prescribed argument hasn’t been made, on air, by these unnamed, unknown “Liberals.”
She even eventually got David Gergen to wake up and respond.
Hill: What is the argument?
McEnany: That Donald Trump wants to build a wall, therefore he is isolating the whole of the Hispanic community, that is false.
Gergen: Wait a second, that’s not what started this.
[crosstalk]
This started when he declared his candidacy for President, and he talked about Mexicans as being Rapists.
McEnany: He did not. He said when Mexico sends…
Gergen: Hold on. He was the one who went after Mexicans to start with, he talked about a wall, he’s talked about various things since then, if he isolates people and points it out that way of course we're going to look at it on these panels and say “What's the reaction within the Hispanic community? How are they thinking?” And we know right now that 80% of Hispanic community disapproves of him. That’s a very important political fact, and you think we ought to shut down that conversation, I’m sorry, I disagree with that.
But of course, fact and reality have little effect on McEnany.
McEnany: We can say that he said all Mexicans are Rapists and Criminals, but that is in fact not true. He said “When Mexico sends people” — those three words are very important — much like when Cuba sends people….
Cooper: By the way, there’s no evidence that Mexico sends people.
McEnany: No. but my point is.. [Panel erupts with incredulity] -well we can all laugh, but lets get out the facts. Donald Trump says that he's talked to Border agents that have told him that. My point is that…
The same way the Fusion report told him they were “sending rapists?” Hey Cooper, please shut this whole thing down. Thx.
Cooper: But just for the record, I’ve talked to people who are in charge of the Border Patrol, and current, former Attorney Generals and they say categorically there is no evidence…
McEnany: I’m not talking about the efficacy of that claim [Ed: Unlike 5 seconds ago when you offered the second-hand heresy evidence of unnamed, unknown border agents to support the efficacy of that claim?] what I’m saying is that it's unfair to say Donald Trump called all Mexicans criminals and rapists, it's untrue.
Gergen: Nobody said that.
[Crosstalk]
But he justifies the wall based on the fact that he claims they're sending a lot of criminals and rapists here, that’s his justification. [Which — as shown above — is a gross exaggeration]
McEnany: There are criminals and rapist who have gotten across our border and killed people like Kate Stienle out in California.
The fact that McEneny's eyes light up when she said that pretty much sickens me, particularly since the Stienle shooting was quite literally a 1 in a Million accident.
SAN FRANCISCO -- The bullet that killed Kate Steinle on Pier 14 last month as she walked with her father was fired accidentally, a ballistics expert testified Thursday on behalf of the man charged with her murder.
"The gun was pointed at the ground," James Norris, the former head of the San Francisco Police crime lab, said repeatedly on the stand Thursday during the preliminary hearing of Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a Mexican national and five-time deportee who has ignited a national debate on illegal immigration and drawn the ire of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Out of court, Norris called the shooting an accident. "You couldn't do this on purpose," he said of intentionally ricocheting a shot and hitting a person roughly 100 feet away.
So “immigrants are criminals” on the basis of the fact that the bullet which ricocheted off the ground and killed a innocent young woman was accidentally discharged when an undocumented immigrant picked up a abandoned gun laying on the ground which had been stolen — by someone else who was in all likelihood not an immigrant — from a Federal agents car? Well, that’s obviously conclusive. The odds of that happening again are staggering, but naturally that doesn’t even slow McEnany down.
McEnany: This has happened time and time again.
No, it hasn't. Seriously. No. Really not.
Hill: As David said, from the beginning of his candidacy, it very much hinged on a certain xenophobic impulse among voters in his rhetoric. And then as we walk through this he tried to ban Muslims, even though he walked that back...
McEnany: Again, no specificity there, “Temporary ban on non-U.S. Citizen Muslims until we understand…”
Hill: That’s not what he said.
No, it’s not that’s the walk back, he initially said it was an “absolute ban on all Muslims”, and now he’s admitted that he wouldn’t trust the integrity of a Muslim Judge in the same way he doesn’t trust the integrity of Judge Curiel because of his “Mexican Heritage.” And it’s not racist because he simply doesn’t agree with Curiel’s decisions, and did you hear he’s part of a pro-Mexican immigrant group — except that’s it’s really a completely different lawyers organization? [Note: the below is from RedState.com]
Anyway, in addition to Trump’s overtly racist attack on Curiel, in which Trump explicitly said that Curiel cannot be trusted to rule fairly on any case involving Trump or any of his companies solely on the basis of his Mexican heritage, both Trump and certain lazy/dishonest conservative bloggers have attempted to affiliate Curiel with “La Raza.”
What they are attempting to do is associate Curiel with the National Council of La Raza, the radical left-wing and pro-illegal-immigration group that has gained significant notoriety in the news over the years as a group that is both anti-American and open to fomenting violent pro-immigration protests.
Curiel, however, has no affiliation with this group whatsoever. He is a member of La Raza Lawyers of California – aka the Latino Bar Association of California. They have absolutely no affiliation with National Council of La Raza.
But again, it’s not racial. Yeah. Anyhoo…
McEnany: And he said “until we isolate the problem.”
Hill: And the problem is terrorism, so he's saying no Muslim can enter the country until we can isolate the problem of terrorism.
And when exactly will that problem be "isolated” — if ever? “Temporary” until when, the next Millennia?
The issue is that even with McEnany repeatedly slicing and dicing every minute detail of Trump statements as if “When Mexico Sends" completely changes the argument, even when that categorically isn't happening and oh yeah she isn't claiming it’s happening, except for when she is claiming Trump says somebody in ICE said it to him, but the actual head of ICE & DHS says the opposite and invisible Liberals are saying that “building a wall is just so racist” when those who are informed don’t say anything of the kind.
That’s just pretzel logic. Without the salt.
What Liberals on the panel say is that Trump started this by using bogus, biased and exaggerated racial claims targeting Mexicans — even though most undocumented immigrants who cross the southern border are not coming from Mexico, they’re coming from Honduras, Guatemala and other Central American nations, and 40% of undocumented immigrants originally came here using a legal visa not by sneaking across the border at all, the majority of the undocumented today come from Asia not Mexico and nearly all terrorists who’ve come into America have done it with legal visas and not as refugees — yet, it’s the people who criticize Trump for his bogus bigoted claims who are the racists.
And somehow, Trump himself isn’t racist, even when he says “racist Liberal statements.”
Got it?
However, I still don’t think this is the biggest knock on Donald Trump. The real brewing problem that hasn’t even begun to be addressed is the fact that if he can claim that this Judge has a “conflict of interest” because of his “Mexican heritage” and the donation given to the Clinton Foundation are a “conflict” because some of come from or gone to friends of the Clinton’s — then exactly how can he serve as President while also being CEO of the Trump organization without suffering from the same or even worse accusation of “conflict” when any of his decisions or bills as President happen to benefit any of his business interests?
I mean, Dick Cheney had the forethought to resign as head of Halliburton before he became Vice President, even though he still held stock in the company and made $Millions from their contracts in Iraq.
Does anyone think Trump would be willing to even go that far to avoid the appearance, if the not the actuality, of gross impropriety? I doubt it. I mean, if his handling of Trump University -— which for starters didn’t even begin to meet the rules of what’s required to actually be a “University” — is any indication, then he has an achilles heel that has yet to be fully exposed.
Hopefully people come to this realization before it’s far too late, but time is running out.