I watched last night’s State of the Union speech, mainly for journalistic and comedic reasons. President Donald Trump didn’t disappoint. He told many large whoppers, such as claiming countless numbers of Americans have been killed by illegal immigrants. And claiming he has sparked a record economic boom. (However, the economic boom began under President Barack Obama, Trump just caught the wave.)
The speech was typical Trump — grandiose bragging, fear mongering and wild inaccuracies. I’m not going to fact check the entire speech, but here is a closer analysis of some of the more disturbing aspects:
- Can we talk about the fear mongering? Trump highlighted a white family that had been attacked by an illegal immigrant. Throughout the speech, he continued to inject more tropes about illegal immigrants pouring over the border to attack Americans, even though border crossings are down from the 2000s. This was a point repeated by Texas Rep. Will Hurd, on “Real Time.” But Trump keeps stoking fears among his ignorant army of MAGA lords to the point I can see one of them launching an attack on a random Hispanic person. Plus, Trump hired many undocumented immigrants at one of his properties! He’s part of the problem.
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