The insurrectionist former president launched his 2016 campaign by descending some golden escalators and calling Mexicans criminals and rapists. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said in June 2015, claiming they “have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us.”
“They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people,” he continued. Some, how generous. During that same speech, he also pledged to build “a great wall,” claiming that “nobody builds walls better than me, believe me.” Unless those U.S. taxpayer-funded walls encounter a commercially available handsaw. The same undocumented immigrants he attacked for political gain also helped build his hotels, by the way.
The racist attacks were clear from the very first day, and his supporters loved him for it. It’s a huge reason why they flocked to him and have remained loyal. Yet a former Republican congressman turned Fox propaganda network contributor still had the gall to blurt an absurd lie that the insurrectionist former president “went after people individually, but he never went after a whole group of people.”
The former Republican congressman, ex-reality television star Sean Duffy, made his bold lie during an appearance on the Fox propaganda outlet Tuesday, telling guest host Brian Kilmead (that one’s another piece of work, but we’ll get to that later) that, sure, the insurrectionist former president might’ve gone after plenty of people, but never entire groups. Both Duffy and Kilmead were pretending to be outraged over President Joe Biden’s accurate description of the MAGA types as “semi-fascists.”
“You look at Donald Trump’s presidency—and Donald Trump used harsh language—when he went after people, he went after George Bush, he went after Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, he went after John McCain,” Duffy claimed to Kilmead. So far, that’s actually all true. But then came the real doozy. “He went after people individually [emphasis by Duffy] but he never went after a whole group of people!”
Get that folks? One of the main reasons why his campaign attracted so many racists never really happened. But as The Daily Beast notes, the “Mexicans are rapists” lie was far from the only time the insurrectionist former president attacked entire swaths of people and communities.
There was his official call in 2015 for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” followed by numerous versions of a Muslim ban as president. “Beyond that, then-President Trump also called Latin American and African nations ‘shithole countries,’ relentlessly labeled the mainstream media ‘the enemy of the people,’ attacked Black Lives Matters protesters as ‘thugs’ and ‘anarchists,’ and described cities run by Democratic mayors as ‘crime infested’ and a ‘real mess,’” The Daily Beast continued.
The insurrectionist former president in fact sought to starve entire cities of federal funds unless they cooperated with mass deportation agents, in early 2020 even floating an idea to withhold pandemic funds unless they helped federal agents deport people. Around that time, about 60,000 Americans had died from COVID-19.
Regarding the “shithole countries” remark, recall the insurrectionist former president also made it clear he was perfectly content with a whole other group of people, questioning why we couldn’t welcome more people from Norway instead. Republican Sen. Tom Cotton was present for the racist “shithole countries” remark but later pretended he couldn’t remember anything. He was, however, later able to remember tweets from a Biden nominee that he just happened to oppose. Funny how the brain is sometimes. Sen. Lindsey Graham was at that meeting too, and seemed to confirm that something terrible had been said by the insurrectionist former president. Not that he deserves even the slightest bit of praise for anything. He’s all in on the fascism too.
But back to the segment at hand. It’s funny that Kilmead is also pretending to clutch his pearls over Biden’s comment, considering he’s also made plenty of remarks that could have easily come out of the mouth of the insurrectionist former president. Kilmead has targeted undocumented children and their access to a public school education in numerous segments, claiming they “don't belong there.” In 2018 he also defended the insurrectionist administration’s family separation policy, claiming “it’s not like he’s doing this to the people of Idaho or Texas. These are people from another country.”
