TRUMP’S ONE STEP FORWARD FOR 10 STEPS BACK
President Trump did a good thing Tuesday morning. Actually a very, very good thing — to borrow some Trump speak.
He spoke out against anti-Semitism and racism about half-way through his tour of the new National Museum of African-American History and Culture.
“Anti-Semitism is horrible, and it’s gonna stop and it has to stop,” Trump told NBC News in an exclusive interview. “I think it’s horrible. Whether it’s anti-Semitism or racism or any — anything you wanna think about having to do with the divide [in the country].”
That was Tuesday, and it brought him a few hours of good will on the news cycle, but we’ll come back for an update in just a few paragraphs.
His very, very good and long-awaited statements came against the backdrop of a recent rise in bomb threats against Jewish community centers across the country. Federal authorities have been investigating at least 10 Jewish community centers, including in Alabama, Ohio, Illinois, Texas and New York. No one was injured, and the threats appeared to be hoaxes, the Jewish Community Center Association of North America told NBC News on Monday.
In a separate count of hate crime incidents, the Southern Poverty Law Center found nearly 2,000 in the 34 days after the November election expressing anti-Semitic and other bias-related harassment.
But on Feb. 16, Trump’s narcissism just made it worse. In one of the most painful moments of the president’s 77-minute tyrannical news conference about his administration’s “fine-tuned machine” vs. what he views as an “enemy” press. He invited a question from “a friendly reporter,” and got one from an Orthodox Jewish journalist offering him a gold-plated opportunity to call out the rise in anti-Semitism. Instead, Trump heard the word “anti-Semitism” and thought it was aimed at him, when it clearly was not. Trump attacked the reporter, rather than offer reassurance to a nation.
Five days later, on Tuesday, he turned that around — and even sounded, for a moment, presidential.
Then came Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday and so forth. On the heels of fleeting pivot (smoke-screen?) the president and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly issued a cruel pair of memos that make up the battle plan for the undocumented immigrant “deportation force” President Trump promised in the campaign.
Gone were the Obama administration orders that gave millions of peaceful, hard-working unauthorized immigrants who’ve been here for decades — especially those with citizen children and jobs and strong ties here — a chance to get right with law, pay any back taxes owed and set themselves on a path to pass citizenship tests and become legal residents.
Instead, the new Trump policy makes nearly every undocumented immigrant in the U.S. a deportation priority. No matter anything else about their history, they came here illegally. Initially, at least those brought here as children —the Dreamers — are spared.
There will be other fallout. U.S. businesses will lose workers. America will lose the income taxes now automatically deducted from the paychecks of those workers. American taxpayers will be on the hook for the millions if not trillions needed to pay for the manpower and machinery of what is looking daily more and more like the mass deportation of an estimated 10 million people.
Remember when Trump said deportation would be done “very humanely?” Remember when he said his administration would be “kind” when he was asked about splitting up families?
Remember when this same man upped the currency of the conspiracy theory that then-President Barack Obama was an illegal immigrant born in Kenya? Remember when he announced with no apology that it wasn’t so? Here’s all he said: “President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period.”
Despite the fact that Trump’s grandparents were immigrants from Germany, that his mother was born in Scotland, that his first wife was born in Czechoslovakia and that his present wife was born in Slovenia (then part of Yugoslavia), he seems to to have little empathy for immigrants. When he mischaracterized all Mexicans as criminals and falsely labeled all Muslims as dangerous, one might dismiss possible Trump empathy altogether and instead substitute Trump disdain.
Likewise, despite the fact that his son-in-law and grandchildren are Jewish and his daughter has converted to Judaism, is there any reason we should believe Trump is sincere in his call-out of anti-Semitism and racism? Especially after 18 months of lost — even refused — opportunities he had to denounce support from the likes of Ku Klux Klan leader David Dukes or neo-Nazis?
Probably not. But we had a glimmer of hope that he was making a start when he finally spoke out against anti-Semitism and racism.
However fleeting, it was one step forward. Perhaps, he will not take 10 steps back this time.
And perhaps he also will make good on the “kind” immigration consideration he has pledged.