Air Date 10/8/2024

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[00:00:00] 

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast. 

Immigration dominates our politics in the worst way because one side benefits from lying about it, and the other can't get their messaging together to create an effective rebuttal. Opposing immigration and stoking blatantly racist arguments doesn't just make the right bad or unsavory, it also makes them wrong on literally all of the facts.

Sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today include

The Thom Hartmann Program,

Democracy Now!,

Deep State Radio,

The ReidOut,

and the LeBetard Podcast.

Then, in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there’ll be more in three sections

SECTION A - DISINFORMATION

SECTION B - WHITE SUPREMACY

SECTION C - LATINO ANTI-IMMIGRATION VIEWS

Trump & Vance are Reviving Dangerous Racist Myths To Win 2024 Election - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 9-16-24

 

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: [00:01:00] Using hate explicitly as a political weapon. And this is what Trump and Vance are up 

DONALD TRUMP: to:

In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats, they're eating the pets of the people that live there. 

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: They're reviving these dangerous, racist myths. and these are not even new.

In the 1890s, in the United States, East Coast German and Dutch immigrants were slandered with claims that they were making sausages from local pets. The assertion was even made into a well known folk song. And Chinese immigrants suffered the same sort of defamation, again, starting in the mid 19th century.

Right through last year, last year in Ohio there was, or in California, excuse me, there was a Thai restaurant that was forced to shut down. because local white racists were claiming that they were serving dogs and [00:02:00] cats, and it just, it blew up their business. 

So now it's Donald Trump and J. D. Vance's turn telling these vicious, racist lies. in this case, that legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, who are there legally, these are not illegal immigrants, contrary to what Donald Trump and J. D. Vance are saying, are eating the pets of local white people, which is also a lie. 

And most recently, Don Jr. even repeated his father's frequent claim that black people have lower IQs than white Americans. He said, quote, "You look at Haiti, you look at the demographic makeup, you look at the average IQ, if you import the third world into your country, you're going to become the third world." Yeah, right, Don Jr. 

But nonetheless, this rhetoric of Vance and Trump about black Haitian immigrants, legal immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, who were there in response to the town actually saying, please come, we need workers. [00:03:00] The response to this has been threats of violence. They had to shut down the schools a couple days in a row. They had to shut down city buildings. They're literally getting bomb threats from these, sick, pathetic Trump supporters who think that this is the way that you do politics, is you threaten violence.

This is what, this is how fascists think. Let's just be candid about this. 

And yesterday Trump was asked about this and he repeatedly refused to condemn the bomb threats. And this is a guy who is literally embracing stochastic terrorism, which is what bomb threats are, just random lone wolf terrorism.

And then he published, he posted a thing saying "I hate Taylor Swift." This is just hate, hate, hate, hate. This is all these guys have. And as long as they keep making these outrageous claims and the, what it does, and this, by the [00:04:00] way, this is an intentional strategy.

Several of the, of the, Vance Trump campaign people have just come right out and said it. This is a strategy. This is what, J. D. Vance said it on one of the Sunday shows, this Sunday. I think it was on CNN. He said that we have to create these stories in order to get the media to focus on immigration.

And the reason why is there's only really one subject where the Trump Vance campaign is beating the Harris Walz campaign, and that is immigration. 

And so if Trump and Vance can continue to tell outrageous lies about black immigrants, it keeps immigration at the top of the news cycle. Which, in the opinion of Trump and Vance, is to their advantage, because then the corporate media are not discussing how Joe Biden put this country back together after Donald Trump threw us into [00:05:00] the worst depression since the Great Depression.

The media are not talking about the, how we're taking, really, some pretty dramatic steps to mitigate climate change. They're not talking about the factories that are coming back to the United States as a result of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, just utterly, openly rejecting Reagan, Clinton, Bush, and Obama's neoliberal policies, and just saying, no, we're gonna go back, we're gonna go back to FDR and John Maynard Keynes's just, real economics. We're gonna go back to that. Nobody's talking about that because they're all talking about, oh my god, these poor refugees, these poor immigrants, or these bad immigrants.

It's really time for the Republican Party, what's left of it, to [00:06:00] do some serious soul searching. But I, tragically what I'm seeing is that's not happening. Instead, what you're seeing is elected Republicans and Republican spokespeople, people who are the voices of Republicans on TV and radio just out there saying, Oh, no, we're just, it's fine with us. it's there is a problem down there. I'm hearing from my constituents. 

As Madeline Albright, a former secretary of state, wrote, who fled Germany in the thirties, in her book, Fascism, A Warning decades ago, "George Orwell suggested that the best one word description of a fascist was bully." And that's what's going on. Hate has always been a tool of fascists and dictators. Because it's powerful enough to cause people to behave in ways they would normally consider offensive or even bizarre, that they normally wouldn't do it. And now we're seeing, as Vance has confessed. [00:07:00] that he is telling lies, that he's making up stories, that all the guardrails, all the limits, even common decency are gone from the Trump Vance campaign.

This is a guy who's married to the brown skinned daughter of Indian immigrants, J. D. Vance. And yet he's willing to trash people based on their skin color and do it intentionally just to gain political power. That is as sick and twisted and craven as it gets.

So this is not a problem that Democrats alone can fix. Having an overwhelming victory this fall would be a, take us a big step forward. But, I warned you about this a couple of weeks ago, the billionaire money is starting to drop. We're seeing it here in the Portland market, in the local race for Congress. Janelle Bynum, is a great member of Congress is being just viciously attacked. [00:08:00] She's actually a great member of the Georgia House of Representatives, or Senate, I'm not sure which. And she's running for Congress and we've got this Republican in the seat right now.

And just vicious ads calling her a liar and, darkening her face, the whole thing, right? It's all, it's coming from a super PAC, one of these billionaire funded super PACs. So here we are. The billionaire's money is starting to hit. And, the races are going to, they're going to tighten up.

Early voting starts this Friday in some states. So here we are.

As German conservatives learned in the late 1930s, if they don't act now, it may soon be too late.

Fascism Expert Jason Stanley on Project 2025, Great Replacement Theory, Attacks on Immigrants & Gaza - Democracy Now! - Air Date 9-15-24

 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: We're in an election year. And we were at the Republican National Convention covering it, among those who [00:09:00] spoke was Tucker Carlson.

Media Matters has accused Tucker Carlson of being responsible for, quote, single handedly introducing the White supremacist Great Replacement conspiracy theory into mainstream American politics. This is a clip of Tucker Carlson when he was still hosting a nightly show on Fox News. 

TUCKER CARLSON: So into that you throw millions of brand new people who have no connection to America whatsoever.

People who broke our laws to get here, who don't speak our language, who have no idea what the U. S. Constitution says and don't care. And what do you have when you put all of that together? You have a recipe for social collapse. 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: So you also have written a piece in Slate, Donald Trump is openly running a Great Replacement Theory campaign.

Talk about what Carlson said, what Trump repeatedly is saying, and why you think this is so dangerous. 

JASON STANLEY: I was recently talking to [00:10:00] some of my relatives who are Orthodox Jewish who are parroting this line about how our family came in legally. However, many, many thousands of Jewish refugees, from Germany weren't able to come in illegally, come in legally.

They would have had to come in illegally. Many of them were turned away. Their ships were turned away and they died in concentration camps. My fellow Jewish Americans are saying, when they're saying, we should only accept people who come in legally, is they are supporting the mass murder of Jews who were turned away from America's shores.

And that is something that I will never do. I will never turn away the victims of genocide. So this great replacement theory is the core of the message of MAGA Republicanism in this election and previously. it links to the education. framework, because in education, what you do is you eliminate the history [00:11:00] of non-White Christian cis-men.

And you instead elevate the stories of great White Christian men who are supposedly what the people who make our country great. And that way you can represent non-White immigration as an existential threat to the nation. And what we know from history is that Great Replacement Theory motivates mass violence.

It motivates mass violence on the state level and the individual level. We have many, many mass shootings since Anders Breivik, in 2011, justified on the basis of Great Replacement Theory about immigrants ruining the greatness and innocence of the nation. And it justified, of course, mass violence as we're seeing in India when they represent Muslims as sort of foreign invaders, and there's regular [00:12:00] lynchings.

And it, of course, was the core of Nazi ideology when Hitler had this crazed conspiracy theory that Jews lost World War I to, betrayed Germany in World War I in order to bring in Black Senegalese soldiers into the Rhineland to mate, have children, rape and seduce German women to undermine the White race.

So that's what we're seeing. We know from history and the present what it justifies. 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And what's so interesting is that, look, when you had the White supremacists marching in the University of Virginia, they were marching chanting, "Jews will not replace us". 

JASON STANLEY: Yeah. So, I always ask my students a quiz when I'm teaching this material.

Are they saying Jews will numerically replace Christian Americans? No, they're saying Jews are behind the engineering of this replacement. What we're now [00:13:00] seeing is we're seeing the Republicans say, Democrats are behind this great replacement, and that is actually aiming political violence, not just against immigrants, but at their political opponents.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Let's go back to Donald Trump and his debate with Kamala Harris, hosted by ABC News. 

DONALD TRUMP: Because they're destroying the fabric of our country by what they've done. There's never been anything done like this at all. They've destroyed the fabric of our country. 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: They've destroyed the fabric of our country. And of course, this is the same debate where he said that Haitians are eating your pets. 

JASON STANLEY: Yeah. So, when you have accurate history, if you knew, for example, that Haiti had the only successful slave revolution in human history, then you might be able to see what the demonization of Haitian immigrants is doing.

The demonization of Haitian immigrants has multiple aspects. It's racist, of course. It's saying [00:14:00] that exactly like Hitler did with the Senegalese soldiers, it's saying that Black immigrants are going to undermine the character—so hint-hint, what is the character of the nation?—and it's singling out Haitians as particularly dangerous. And that's a shout out to history, as it were, since Haitians have been being punished by the world for their revolution for hundreds of years. 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: I wanted to go to Project 2025 and how that fits into erasing history, how fascists rewrite the past to control the future. President Trump has had to distance himself from this, even though something like well over a hundred of his allies and aides were involved with writing Project 2025.

It was done under the auspices of the Heritage Foundation. The head of it has just written a book. It has a forward by J. D. [00:15:00] Vance, and it's been postponed for publication until after the election. But talk about the significance of it. 

JASON STANLEY: The significance of Project 2025, is that it calls for what in the Nazi parlance is called Gleichschaltung, the systematic replacement of civil servants by loyalists, by party loyalists, and the systematic replacement of teachers in schools and universities, and in general institutions throughout society by party loyalists.

In the case of education, it's completely implausible that Trump is ideologically distant from the goals of Project 2025. Trump has repeatedly said he's going to target critical race theory, which, let's face it, is simply Black History. He said he's going to replace education with patriotic education, namely patriarchy, representing the United States as an exceptional grand nation whose [00:16:00] exceptionality is due to its White, Christian, heterosexual men who've defined the nation. In Project 2025, the civil rights agenda is to base civil rights enforcement on a proper understanding of the laws and eliminating critical race theory and gender ideology.

In other words, civil rights law in schools is entirely there to make sure that there's no racism against non dominant groups, against Black Americans. Civil rights law is there to make sure that LGBT children or the children in LGBT families are not discriminated against. In other words, this is a mandate to eliminate civil rights enforcement.

Project 2025, in a bizarre kind of quasi fascist way targets funding [00:17:00] for disabled students. Of course, fascism involves privileging non-disabled people, privileging producers to the nation. And that, I find, a bizarre kind of resonance of fascist ideology to slash funding for disabled students.

The Daily Blast Trumps Angry, Unhinged New Rant About Fox News Offers Hidden Warning Part 1 - Deep State Radio - Air Date 9-30-24

 

GREG SARGENT, HOST, THE DAILY BLAST: At a rally in Wisconsin over the weekend, Donald Trump really cranked up the rage and hate speech about immigrants in a major way. He seethed at Kamala Harris over a speech she gave laying out her own vision of immigration. 

But something else Trump said at the rally deserves special attention. He directly attacked Fox News for the mere act of carrying Harris's speech on the network. He said they shouldn't be allowed to do that. 

This, when taken along with other things Trump has been saying lately, should be seen as a warning of sorts -- a preview [00:18:00] about what might happen to dissent if Trump wins a second term. And today we're discussing all this with Salon columnist Amanda Marcotte, who is very good at interpreting the dangerous subtexts of Trump's most unhinged public utterances. 

Good to have you on, Amanda. 

AMANDA MARCOTTE: Thanks for having me. 

GREG SARGENT, HOST, THE DAILY BLAST: So at his rally in western Wisconsin, Trump said that migrants will walk into your kitchen and cut your throat. He called Kamala Harris "mentally impaired." He said migrants will transform every American town into a third world hellhole. I think this is a way of getting the MAGA masses excited about the bloody mass deportations and detention camps to come if he's elected. 

You wrote recently in your newsletter that Trump's language is getting more violent to create permission to persecute enemies within. Is this more of the same?

AMANDA MARCOTTE: Yeah, it's getting to the point of fantasy land, right? And I think we saw that going on with the cat and dog eating [00:19:00] accusations. It's convincing people to live in a mental space that's outside of their normal reality. And I think you see in history that this has been very effective at getting people to think about committing violence and doing acts of violence that are outside of what they would normally be willing to put up with. And it's gonna cause hate crimes, there's no doubt about it. But it's also about accepting any kind of violence that's coming. It's putting people in the space of the unimaginable and keeping them there. 

DAVID ROTHKOPF - HOST, DSR: Right. It's telling people I think in a sense that look, you can just invent a whole alternate world where all this is okay, meaning the violence toward migrants. 

AMANDA MARCOTTE: Yeah, it's very much reminiscent, and I'm not the first person to say this, of the satanic panic in the 80s where [00:20:00] the level of accusations against daycare workers and other people that, heavy metal musicians and stuff, just got completely out of control, that they were engaging in human sacrifice, that they somehow had murdered thousands and hidden it and things like that.

And a lot of that was about justifying the religious right's grab for power, their crackdown on music, their censorship, other things that I think previous to that would have been not allowed in American society, but they work themselves into a frenzy of moral justification by imagining enemies that were so bad, so evil that everything was justified in stopping them.

DAVID ROTHKOPF - HOST, DSR: You just gave me a flashback to Stranger Things, which is also set in the 80s, where, there's this witch hunt for this one guy who's called a freak because he wears a denim jacket that has a heavy metal logo on the back. [00:21:00] 

I want to play a specific quote from Trump at the rally. He talked about the speech that Harris gave Friday night, laying out her plans for stricter border security and comprehensive immigration reform. Then he said this. 

DONALD TRUMP: And then I have to sit there and listen to her bullshit last night?

And who puts it on Fox News? And they shouldn't be allowed to put it on. It's all lies. It's all lies. Everything she said is a lie. 

DAVID ROTHKOPF - HOST, DSR: Amanda, this is really unhinged. Trump just said Fox News shouldn't be allowed to air the opposition's criticism of him. You have to take that along with his recent threat to prosecute Google if elected, for no reason other than it carried stories that criticize him. Amanda, does this also fit into your frame in that it creates a [00:22:00] permission structure for persecution of the media for criticizing him later? 

AMANDA MARCOTTE: Oh, absolutely. I think that Trump has long held the opinion that one of the most important benefits of power is silencing people who criticize you. And he's getting louder and louder about it and more and more obnoxious about the double standard that he holds, which is if you say things I like, then that's free speech. And if you think, say things I don't like, then that's should be criminal. And trying to hold him to any kind of legal or morally consistent standard is ridiculous because his only standard is, if I like it, it's good and legal; if I don't like it, it should be criminal. 

The scary thing here is that sort of narcissism is spreading out across the supporters. Elon Musk is a good example. He's somebody who calls himself a free speech warrior because he lets Nazis run rampant on Twitter. [00:23:00] And he published the quote unquote Twitter files, which were all these interior communications at Twitter under the guise of free speech. But then what happened was a journalist got his hands on a dossier that the Trump campaign had made up about J. D. Vance that was supposed to be private, published it, put it on Twitter, and Elon Musk censored that. The only consistent standard here is if it's for Trump, he's for it, and if it's against Trump, he will censor it. And, he doesn't even try to be consistent anymore. 

DAVID ROTHKOPF - HOST, DSR: I want to pick up on that because I think it's crucial for people to understand that the explicit declaration of a double standard is the thing here. That is the thing that Trump is promising. He's saying we no longer have to be consistent. Everything should be rigged in our favor. Elections that we lose are illegitimate. Elections that we win are legitimate. [00:24:00] The media is being fair when it criticizes our opponents. The media is being unfair when it criticizes us. He is essentially selling a kind of liberation from consistency and neutrality to his supporters, I think.

AMANDA MARCOTTE: Yeah, it's very explicitly this end of liberal democratic ideals, and replacing them with fairly classic fascist ideals, blood and soil notions. J. D. Vance's speech at the RNC was very clear on this, that what makes you an American is that you're born here and your ethnicity and your history here, and he played a little around the edges to imply that there was some for racial diversity in there, but we all heard what he was saying, which is Americans are an ethnic group. And that ethnic group is obviously a white one and a conservative one and a Christian one and all these other things. And [00:25:00] once you've redefined Americanness in those lines, you can redefine the law and who is in and who is out.

And the consistency here is not we have free speech for all citizens, it's that -- or all people actually -- it's that the in group are real Americans and they have all the rights and privileges, and the out group are not real Americans and they deserve nothing. 

Did Donald TRUMP Make Germany RACIST Again - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 9-27-24

 

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: This isn't just about necessarily race.

you look at the, the, history of Northern Ireland versus Ireland, and you can see it, it can be about a religion too. Or about national origin. the orangeman, the, the, people of i, of, Northern Ireland. You've got, basically this battle between, the indigenous loyalist Catholic or the indigenous Catholics and those who are the loyalists who are still, descendant of British overlords [00:26:00] and still loyal to Great Britain, and they're willing to kill each other o over it.

this tribalism is like deeply baked into us. And, all that, I lay out all that premise by way of saying that whenever any other country points to the United States and says, Oh, we have a race problem because of you, or because of America, I think we need to view it skeptically.

This is a, on the one hand, a human nature problem, and on the other hand, an all of society problem. But, Now the, minister Angela or Angela, I'm not sure how it's pronounced. I'm guessing Angela actually in England. Angela Eagle is the British minister in charge of irregular migration. It would be like, what you would call illegal immigration here in the United States.

she said that, [00:27:00] Donald Trump has helped create quote, vitriol against migrants through social media and that is what is cranking up. The, anti immigrant hate and race and just naked racism that the UK has been experiencing in large quantities recently. The overt, her phrase, overt racism that has spilled out onto British streets.

she said that, this is a quote from The Guardian. She said, unnamed right wing Tories, that's the conservatives in the UK, had used language that had given a yellow flashing light to racists. using a toxic discourse as they fought off the challenge from the Reform Party. In other words, the Brit, the British conservatives are using racism the same way that American conservatives and Republicans have been using racism since Nixon's Southern strategy.

Dixon, Nixon did it with the Southern strategy, talking about his all white, silent majority. [00:28:00] And then you had Reagan, of course, using it explicitly. the very first speech Reagan gave after he was nominated at the Republican convention, he went down to Philadelphia, Mississippi, to this little town, to the Neshoba County Fair, to give a speech to an all white audience, about states rights, which, what they were referring to in 1980 when they said states rights was the right to, prevent black children from going to schools with white children, specifically.

And, he, chose a location that was just a couple miles down the road from where, miss years, Schwimmer, Cheney, and Goodman were murdered. The three civil rights workers who were murdered, that they made the movie Mississippi Burning out of, Reagan and his campaign chose that site for the first speech of his election.

And then, he, went around giving speeches in which he would talk about. Doesn't it upset you when that young buck standing in front of you [00:29:00] in the grocery store is using his food stamps to buy steak and champagne when you're barely scraping by? And we all know what he meant. his welfare queen in New York City that literally did not exist, the New York Times spent years looking for her, she doesn't exist, a black lady driving a Cadillac.

Reagan was like all in on the stereotypes. And then of course you had George W. Bush. He wasn't so much going after black people. He was a little more tolerant there, but, Katie bar the door, when it comes to Muslims, he, gave some good lip service to, we need, but look at what he did in Gitmo.

look at what he did in Iraq and Afghanistan. And then, Trump comes along and starts picking on, Mexicans. And, oh my God, these Hispanic people, they're murderous and they're rapists. And. And whatnot. So we have this long history, or at least the Republican Party has this long history in the United States, a [00:30:00] 60 year history of using racism, not just race, but racism, hatred of race, hatred of a specific race as a political weapon.

this is now starting to happen in the United Kingdom. And, I get it that Donald Trump has given license to a lot of this stuff. I think Trump's presidency. And Trump's rhetoric has helped the AFD party, the Alternative for Deutschland, the, the new neo Nazi party in, the UK, excuse me, in Germany.

I, think he has helped, Giorgia Moroni, the, neo fascist leader of Italy and her party, the fascist, I, forget the name of the party, but it's basically the reinvention of Mussolini's party, toned down slightly. you've got a, an openly white supremacist party in Sweden that, that is doing very well right now.

you've got a huge openly white supremacist party in Austria that is doing very [00:31:00] well. this is happening all over Europe. And I do believe, I I think that she's right. this, member of parliament who's saying that, Trump is the, is causing an awful lot of this.

I, think there's some truth to that. But I also think that Putin just, was brilliant when he just bombed the crap out of Syria in order to, when Assad was being challenged during the Arab spring back in 2011, 2012 and the years immediately after that, when Assad was being challenged.

Putin wanted to protect his deep water ports, off Damascus. it was basically his African base. And so he had to keep, Bashir in power in Syria. And so he bombed Aleppo back to the Stone Age and bombed a third of Damascus into rubble. And what did that do? It produced, six million Syrian refugees.[00:32:00] 

And where did they go? They went to Europe. They fled north, along with the Libyan refugees following our murder of Gaddafi. And, and, refugees from other countries in the region as the Arab Spring was really cranking up. And so all of these people flooding into Europe, then that was used by Viktor Orban for his political purposes.

He, his, slogans when he was running were build a wall and make Hungary great again. And he did build a wall along Hungary's border. And he has been keeping Syrians out of Hungary. and other countries are looking at the crisis associated with this. You can absorb, people who are different than you culturally, racially, whatever it may be, over time without a problem, but it has to be relatively gradual.

So I think, part of it is just, [00:33:00] the, radical demographic shift or sudden shock rather. that was inflicted on Europe by Putin's attacking Syria back, a decade ago. And, and, to this day, you've got refugees now being coming by boat into the UK and they're struggling with what to do about it.

So that's part of it. Another part of it is that there is now a worldwide refugee crisis. this is what's happening in our southern border. You got parts of Guatemala and Honduras and El Salvador. that have been taken over by gangs in large part because the Reagan administration destabilized all four of those democracies.

You've got, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador. It's one other country down there. Anyway, and, you've, you, you've, and this is the result of climate change. And now we're seeing people literally on the move all over the world. Because climate change is [00:34:00] rendering their environments inhospitable. there's a much larger issue here, and I have no glib or easy answers for it.

But to reduce it down to, it's all Donald Trump's fault, which I'm happy to say, but it's not true. he's just riding the wave. But the point, I think the big point that I want to make here, is that it's going to get worse.

The Daily Blast Trumps Angry, Unhinged New Rant About Fox News Offers Hidden Warning - Deep State Radio - Air Date 9-30-24

 

GREG SARGENT, HOST, THE DAILY BLAST: Right. It's a little hard to say exactly what MAGA rally attendees believe. I think certainly some of them are there for the authoritarian display, whether all of them are, I don't know. I will tell you there was some really interesting polling from the Public Religion Research Institute that found that something like 70, high 60s, low 70s percent of people who view Trump [00:35:00] positively agree with the statements that migrants are poisoning the blood of America, as Trump has put it, and agree that immigrants are invading our country, in a way that sort of eradicates our culture.

And by the way, Trump started using that word "culture" at this rally as well. 

So what do you think of that? That's really a euphemism, isn't it? Culture? In other words, it's a euphemism when Trump says, they're a threat to culture. 

AMANDA MARCOTTE: Yeah. Western civilization, Western culture. These have been euphemisms that have been used by the quote unquote, alt-right. I just consider them fascists for years now. And it is basically creating an in group, out group, denying that -- denying a lot of things that are just objectively true. One of which is that immigrant communities do assimilate into American culture. And they change it. And [00:36:00] that what we consider American culture is the result of waves and waves of immigration changing our culture. 

But it's very easy I think for a lot of people to tell themselves a story that the way things were when they were a kid is the way things have always been and should always be. When I was at the RNC, my videographer and I went around asking people when they thought America was great again. And what we found was really fascinating was no matter how old they were or young, they would say that America's greatness peaked when they were like around 15 years old.

Like it was fascinating. If they were a boomer, it was like in the early sixties. If they were my age, it was in the nineties. And, it just tells you that it's this delusion that you, it's a very narcissistic delusion, not -- the culture that you came of age in is the real American culture, and [00:37:00] he really is -- Trump is an addled-brained old man, but he still has an ability to plug into that. And what's really scary is he came of age obviously in the fifties. So that's the great America he wants. 

GREG SARGENT, HOST, THE DAILY BLAST: I think that's absolutely clear. I want to bring up the effect Trump's threats have, particularly the threats and attacks on the media, in terms of CBS's announcement that they won't be fact checking the vice presidential debate. The Associated Press explicitly wrote that the network, quote, "wants to take a step back from the heat generated by calling attention to candidates falsehoods." I mean, that formulation drove me nuts because what the AP won't say directly is that CBS is afraid of the fallout of fact checking Trump and Vance in particular. They're not afraid of the fallout of fact checking both candidates, both sides, because Democrats and the Harris campaign simply don't [00:38:00] attack the media and threaten it for telling the truth, whereas Trump and MAGA do.

AMANDA MARCOTTE: It's so frustrating, because it should be part of -- journalists often pride themselves on being able to take criticism, being able to take heat, but apparently it only is something to be proud of if you're getting it from the left and you withstand it. Like folding to the right is ridiculous. 

What's doubly frustrating about this to me is there's many other reasons that you could say that might have to be the way things are. Vance is a better liar in many ways than Donald Trump. So fact checking him could be a much more difficult proposition during a debate. I think he's going to say untrue things, but he's going to say them in this way that creates plausible deniability, very legalistic. And I could see the, don't even bother, it's just going to turn into a nightmare.

The other thing is Vance is aching to be attacked [00:39:00] by a reporter so he can whine and flip out and say this is what the media always does, blah, blah, blah. He wants to make the debate against the moderator so he doesn't have to debate Walz. I think these are all good reasons to be cautious about fact checking him in real time.

But it's very frustrating that the actual reason is that they don't want people to yell at them on Twitter. 

GREG SARGENT, HOST, THE DAILY BLAST: It's worse than that, right? It's, they don't want a president Trump to threaten to take away their license, and make it so that they are not allowed to say these things. 

AMANDA MARCOTTE: And that's so dumb too, because there's nothing that they can do that's going to make him not go after them if he thinks he has the power to do, because the entire point of this is squelching anything that he considers opposition and that's any factual reporting. So either they give up entirely on doing journalism or they're going to be feeling the heat if [00:40:00] Trump is president again.

GREG SARGENT, HOST, THE DAILY BLAST: Let's talk a little bit about sanewashing, which is how the media soft pedals Trump's dangerous authoritarian threats. As press critic Mark Jacob pointed out, one news outlet, I think Bloomberg, had a tweet saying Trump sharpened his criticism of Harris during this rally. This is how Bloomberg describes Trump's wildly unhinged claims about migrants slitting people's throats and turning every American town into third world hell holes and describing Harris as mentally impaired. Where does this leave us? I think, we actually made some progress by pushing the New York Times To actually render the reality of Trump's quotes and public utterances and to stop sane washing them, as the saying goes. 

But then there's just this constant backsliding that happens. A quick blow up happens over one particularly absurd act of sane washing. Media figures seem [00:41:00] to recalibrate a bit. They do a few pieces that do show the reality of Trump's profound mental unfitness for the presidency. But then we backslide. What do we do about that? 

AMANDA MARCOTTE: I guess we have to keep the heat up because that's inexcusable. And it's inexcusable insofar just from a writing perspective, I think there's a tendency to want to make sense out of what you've seen, but you can do that very easily without misleading people. You can say, Trump told a bunch of lies, falsely accusing migrants of being murderers. And he then told some more lies, falsely accusing Kamala Harris of being mentally impaired. Simple. Easy. And you don't have to get into what I would write as an opinion writer, which is Trump is clearly engaging and just off the charts psychological projection, everything, every finger he [00:42:00] points out needs to be pointed at himself. Like the only person in this equation, that's like unleashing, that has unleashed violence against the United States, is Donald Trump. The only person who's clearly feeling a way about his own mental impairment is Donald Trump. Like they don't have to do that. That's engaging in analysis and opinion about him. They could just say he lied. End of story. 

Trump's rhetoric on immigrants gets even darker - The ReidOut - Air Date 9-27-24

 

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: And the reality is Ray, that, there was an attempt by Republicans. So this is, a lot of this is an internal Republican struggle because Democrats have always been for immigration reform and have always been like, we're ready whenever you are.

We'll pass it. We will easily pass it. Republicans got together and negotiated a very, very conservative border patrol bill, a bill that would have largely closed the border. It was going to pass. Let me let you listen to what Republicans say happened to that bill.

LINDSEY GRAHAM: So, [00:43:00] everybody who comes on this floor and says our border's broken, we should do something about it you're absolutely right and unfortunately, we didn't get there. President Trump opposed a Senate bill. 

POLITICIANS: And then, our nominee for president didn't seem to want us to do anything at all? After

President Trump said don't fix anything during the presidential election, it's the single biggest issue during the election, don't resolve this, we'll resolve it next year, quite a few of my colleagues backed up, looked for a reason to be able to shoot against it, and then walked away.

The fact that he would communicate Republican senators and Congress people that he doesn't want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is is really appalling. 

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: And so if people are so exercised on the Republican side it's really Republicans who are mostly exercised about this, Ray, then why aren't they blaming Donald Trump for not having a border bill? 

RAY SUAREZ: Well, they are implicitly [00:44:00] blaming him. You just heard after all the leader of Republicans in the Senate acknowledge the former president's opposition to the bill. 

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: But I mean voters, I'm so sorry, I mean voters. 

RAY SUAREZ: Even Senator Lankford from Oklahoma, one of the most conservative members of the United States Senate was pretty mild in his assessment. He admitted that was what was happened. Donald Trump threw a monkey wrench in the gears and that's just what happened. And life was supposed to move on. It's really something. 

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Yeah. And, Olivia, it's hard, I think for people who probably watch this show and watch MSNBC to understand why voters look at Donald Trump and they look at the failures and they also look at the successes. Let me show you. Illegal border crossings fell in July. They're at the lowest level. They are in four years. That's just a fact. And so the reality that people are seeing on Fox, this idea that immigrants are running through the country, murdering people, it's just not true. Let me play one more thing that we also see happening. This is the [00:45:00] idea that immigration is somehow tied to people's lives, even if they're not in a border place. The great Alex Wagner, she, she talked to union members in Michigan. Let me let you listen to what some of them said. This is cut three from my director. 

POLITICAN: There are thousands and thousands of illegal immigrants coming across the border every day. And the vice president has done minimal work to fix that based on what I've seen. So I'd like that to change. 

REPORTER: Do you feel like Donald Trump's going to be better on that issue? 

POLITICAN: Based on what we've seen on his first four years, I do believe that he will be better on that. Yeah. 

REPORTER: Do you, are you leaning towards Trump right now?

POLITICAN: Yes, ma'am. 

REPORTER: Is there anything that vice president Harris could do at this point to change your mind? 

POLITICAN: Not particularly, no, unless she changes her stance completely on fixing the border. That's, no. 

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Olivia, based on what we've seen in his first four years, I do believe he'll be better on that based on what the only things that we saw in terms of immigration as you talked about with Stephen Miller, we're taking babies out of the hands of their [00:46:00] moms at the border and separating them and sending them off in two different directions and losing track of them.

You saw a lot of cruelty. You saw a lot of talk about S whole countries. He didn't build a wall. And border crossings are lower now than they were then. What are people seeing? What reality are they living in? 

OLIVIA TROY: Well, therein lies the problem, Joy. I think it's just because the fear mongering and all of these narratives, they work when the right wing media machine is coming together and pushing that.

And that's all they're seeing. And so this is a product of disinformation that they're continuing to push, devoid of policy or facts, right? Because when Donald Trump gets up there and gets these speeches, they're He, all he does is spread this divisive, hateful rhetoric on immigrants, but he's not actually telling you what he's going to do to solve the border crisis, right?

He's not talking about international asylum cooperation agreements. He's not talking about actual foreign policy that could decrease migration. He's not talking about like, Oh, perhaps funding law [00:47:00] enforcement on the border, which is what Kamala Harris is doing. She's actually saying, I will support that bipartisan bill.

I will fund border security. I will support CBP at the border. This is what I want to do. I'm going to slow fentanyl. She's actually talking concrete policies. But the problem is that I think that it's easier to sell a narrative on a very complicated issue like immigration. By stowing fear and instilling that in communities and getting people to be divided.

And so I think that's what you're seeing there is just that what he says is resonating in communities. Now, the problem with that is that what is Donald Trump's immigration proposal actually look like in the future? It's going to look like encampments. What is it going to look like when they're like putting people in encampments on the borders or in these cities where they're shipping them around?

What's it going to look like? When they're targeting just anyone who looks potentially like a minority in general and taking these kids out of schools and corralling them. And what is it going to look like when they're going after legal residents, right? Because denaturalization was [00:48:00] actually discussed in the Trump administration where they don't actually differentiate between a legal resident alien and someone who is here illegally.

Sometimes those were actual policy discussions that were had. And so I think, to me, to someone who actually believes in legal immigration wants to fix the immigration system, this is all just like bluster. And it's sad to see that Americans don't understand it. 

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Well, I'll tell you what it would look like.

It would look like concentration camps. In Germany in the 1930s, because that's what you call it when you put somebody in a camp with means to separate them from society. It's called a concentration camp.

Paola Ramos Explains the Rise of the Latino Far Right and Growing Anti-Immigrant Sentiments - LeBatardShow - Air Date 9-26-24

 

DAN LEBETARD - HOST, LEBETARD PODCAST: Talk to me about the Proud Boys existing in Miami. And I want to read a passage from your book to the people after you explained to me what Enrique was doing as the head of the Proud Boys and how proud he must have been when Donald Trump is saying out loud in a way that is unfathomable [00:49:00] to me, telling the Proud Boys to stand down and stand by.

PAOLA RAMOS: Absolutely. So, I met Enrique Dario. And so I meet him at a time when he starts to feel himself and feel his power, but he wasn't there just yet. So my first impression of Enrique Dario, who, by the way, grew up just a couple of minutes from where I did, my first impression was that this is a guy that is deeply insecure, who can hide who he is behind his sort of like macho, tough appeal.

He does it really well. And, but he's someone that even according to him, he never really knew where he fit in Miami. No, in his own words, he was always like too black to be considered a Republican. He felt like he was too independent and too radical to be considered a Democrat. He always said this thing that like no one would ever knock on his door to ask for his vote.

So even among the sort of Miami Dade Cuban community, which is typically an exile community that looks more like me, light skinned, privileged Latinos. As a Black Latino, he never really fit [00:50:00] into that. And then come the Proud Boys. and the Proud Boys offer someone like Enrique Tarrio, not just this sudden sense of belonging, but power.

And then you see the way that Enrique and I saw it like happening in real time, how he suddenly evolves from being this like ordinary, guano guy in Miami to then suddenly becoming this guy that is being praised by Donald Trump, praised by Roger Stone, and he takes that power and runs with it.

The funny thing though, the sad thing is that come November, 2020, after Enrique Darrio tries absolutely everything to ensure that Donald Trump wins and he doesn't win. What's fascinating is the way that the Proud Boys, you have this guy called Kyle Chapman, that they instantly try and distance themselves from Enrique Tarrio and from his blackness and his brownness.

One of the things that Kyle Chapman says when Enrique is no longer powerful, he says, you know what, the Proud Boys are actually, have always been a group that's based on the white race. And he says, and the white race alone and any other [00:51:00] race has no place in this group. And so that sort of shows you how 10, that sort of idea of why power is.

DAN LEBETARD - HOST, LEBETARD PODCAST: One of the things that my mother has said since I was a child as they came from communism, is if you want to find out about a person's character, give them power. And the reason she used to say it is because when communism came to Cuba. The neighbors who were given the government power to watch the other neighbors all of a sudden became powerful in the ways that you're describing in this book and then abused the power of taking some of their identity that was given to them by the government.

So let me read this from your interview with Enrique Taddeo. You say, why define women as housewives? You asked him at one point, why not use another word? And this is something Latin men do all the time. Quote, because it's like the end goal for us. We're big on family. He said, family is a number one priority for us.

He followed up. You need to step up as a man and make sure that you provide for everyone in that household. As a man, that is your job. And then you write, I [00:52:00] always got the sense that independent, strong, and outspoken women frightened and intimidated Enrique. I imagine that's why he reserved a special kind of vitriol for them.

He would frequently disrupt women's March events with his megaphone. He'd make appearances wearing his signature. Costume, essentially a full body outfit that resembled a phallus. He would constantly provoke women, including with the use of transphobic slurs. He called Michelle Obama a tranny and refused to apologize despite the uproar that followed.

What's happening there? It's just bravado that's wrapped around as armor the insecurity. 

PAOLA RAMOS: That's part of it. But imagine down what it was for me. No, I'm, a lesbian. I'm a queer woman. I'm a Latina. I, try and understand the privilege that comes with, these platforms that I have now. So I understand the power that I have and I always felt a sense of discomfort that Enrique was feeling among people like me and people like me are everywhere, no?

We're just people that like understand that we too can change the dynamic in this country. There was always something that sort of made him uncomfortable, [00:53:00] but Enrique, alludes to what I try and find in this book, and it's the same conversation that I had with other sort of Latinos in Miami actually that also participated in the January 6th insurrection and that is these men that were driven by the anti immigrant sentiment that we just talked about, a, by the sort of, fixation with going back to a time when these sort of gender norms, no, and these sort of more patriarchal norms were, there, and they're fixated by that idea.

And then what you just mentioned is when I asked them, what, what, was at the heart of what drove you to storm the Capitol that day? One of the main answers was, the United States is being taken over by communism. And if someone like Joe Biden won, then that means that this country would turn into communism.

And that sort of paranoia, which obviously comes from a real political trauma that a lot of Latinos hold, that just shows you the way that it's been just so injected with mis and disinformation. That can truly, drive someone to do something [00:54:00] as violent as storming the Capitol, no? 

Note from the Editor about what Democrats need to do on immigration messaging

 

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We’ve just heard clips starting with 

Thom Hartmann laying out some of the historical precedent for racist anti-immigrant propaganda.

Democracy Now! spoke with fascism expert Jason Stanley about far-right rhetoric.

Deep State Radio discussed Trump’s authoritarian, anti-speech response to the existence of opposition to him.

Thom Hartmann looked at how blatant anti-immigrant racism has been spreading around the world.

Deep State Radio discussed more of the fallout from threats against the media.

The ReidOut reflected on the impact of Trump’s rhetoric.

And The LeBetard Podcast discussed the race essentialism and white supremacy at the heart of the MAGA movement and Proud Boys.

And those were just the Top Takes. There’s lots more in the Deeper Dives sections. But first, a reminder that this show is supported by members who get access to bonus episodes featuring the production crew here discussing all manner of [00:55:00] important and interesting topics, often trying to make each other laugh in the process. 

To support all our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new, members-only podcast feed that you’ll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support [there’s a link in the show notes], through our Patreon page if you prefer, or from right inside the Apple Podcasts app. Members also get chapter markers in the show, but I’ll note that anyone, depending on the app you use to listen, may be able to use the time codes in the show notes to jump around the show similar to chapter markers, so check that out. 

If regular membership isn’t in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership, because we don’t let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information.

Now, before we continue on to the Deeper Dives half of the show, I just want to highlight one important point from a couple of different angles: The Democrats are terrible at messaging on immigration, and they have all the reasons in the world to start changing that discussion. [00:56:00] 

The first point is that it’s simply never a good idea to let your opponents set the terms of the debate. Democrats' relative silence on immigration - even when they have policies and ideas - leaves a gap that the right can fill however they like. Unsurprisingly, they fill it with anything they think will scare people into voting for them - and their rhetoric has only been getting more extreme with time.

The second point is that there actually is a positive story to tell about immigrants, and it’s a dereliction of duty to not being telling that story. A failure to highlight the benefits of immigration puts immigrants themselves at greater risk of demonization, while also hurting the Democrats politically, so it’s a real hitting-themselves-in-the-face kind of a mistake to not take the issue head on.

The New Republic, in their article, “The Democrats’ Shameful, Foolish Surrender on Immigration” put it this way: Democrats should “point to how immigrants helped economically revitalize a [00:57:00] depressed Springfield, Ohio, and cities across the United States, instead of just ridiculing the pet-eating lie. Don’t let the right ever get away with talking about birthrates without hounding them over how this squares with the prospect of new arrivals. Force right-wing figures to explain how, exactly, the United States would have become a global economic and cultural locus without massive immigration, or how all this contemporary business about revitalizing domestic high-tech manufacturing or keeping domestic food production running could be accomplished without it. Ask voters: Do you like the prospect of Social Security and Medicare remaining solvent? Great! Immigration is the straightest path there.

“Just say it: Immigration is good. We should consider ourselves lucky to have had so much, and we should strive to have more. This psychopathic and—you can say it—white supremacist fixation on punishment and [00:58:00] control of migration is not just a moral stain but a disastrous economic policy. If carried out to its full effect, it would represent one of the greatest acts of national self-immolation in our history.”

In a different article, this one from The Nation, “Kamala Harris Needs to Meet the Moment and Reframe Our Poisonous Immigration Debate”, they lay out the historical precedent for the kind of shake up on messaging the Democrats need right now:

“Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette, a presidential contender, mounted a 1924 campaign that decried the race hatred of the 1920s, and welcomed the support of the Blacks, Jews and Catholics who were targeted by the Klan. Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a future presidential contender, delivered her 'Declaration of Conscience' and challenged the McCarthyism of the 1950s. Just two years before he was elected president, [00:59:00] Ronald Reagan, then the country’s most prominent conservative, became the most high-profile foe of a 1978 California initiative that proposed to fire openly gay and lesbian teachers, warning in widely circulated public statements that the measure threatened to infringe ‘on basic rights of privacy and perhaps even constitutional rights.’"

The article continues, “None of those moves were made casually, or easily. In each circumstance, supposed 'leaders' in the two major parties had looked the other way. Political counselors and strategists urged candidates to keep silent in order to preserve their electoral viability. Sometimes there were penalties for doing the right thing. But, more often than not, these acts of courage came to be seen as both morally sound and politically smart.”

SECTION A - DISINFORMATION#

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now, we’ll continue to dive deeper on 3 topics. Next [01:00:00] up: 

SECTION A - DISINFORMATION

Followed by SECTION B - WHITE SUPREMACY

and SECTION C - LATINO ANTI-IMMIGRATION VIEWS

Matt Walsh PAINFULLY Unprepared For Ryan Grim’s Haiti Facts - The Majority Report - Air Date 9-20-24

 

RYAN GRIM: We're a much bigger country. We don't want a marine invasion and occupation of, The United States that constantly decapitates governments and, and takes, takes the money out of the country.

And it saddles us with, like, debt from a revolution. Right. Although I don't, I don't, we wouldn't want to be like a, basically a colony that the entire West spends 200 years punishing after the Haitian revolution. 

MATT WALSH: I, I get that, but I, but I understand that, but also at a certain point. We wouldn't want that, no, yes.

We wouldn't want that, but I would also say that, that, uh, That's not entirely why Haiti's in the position that it's in, I mean, at a certain point. As a country, you have to stand on your own two feet and take care of yourself. And, 

RYAN GRIM: uh What point is that? They [01:01:00] elect Aristide and we overthrow Aristide. Then they elect Jovenel Moise.

Jovenel Moise has assassinated a bunch of Pause it, sorry. I 

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: hate to Grim's doing such a good job here, but I just want to re insert what I just said about the, we don't have to go back far. We can go back to the Obama administration, Matt Wallace, what do you think about that administration? 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Even Emily, uh, points it out as a conservative.

Yeah, 

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: the Clintons! The Clinton Foundation, even, yeah, putting the, uh, Haynes Levi Strauss minimum wage for textile production aside, you still have the, uh, botched response by the Clinton Foundation after the hurricane, or the, uh, hurricane or earthquake in 2010. Like, which was a notoriously, uh, failed too.

Um, which who played a lot in 2016, well, I mean, not as much as we wanted it to, but which I was paying attention to. 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, right. Um, and, and also like, you know, Matt Walsh's doesn't even know what he's talking about there. He's completely on the back foot, but, uh, when, when he refers to the Haitian revolution, that's a part of it too.

There it's the racism that conservative, that conservatives reflexively have towards, uh, Towards Haitian people is just [01:02:00] that, but for conservatives that actually know the history, and Matt Walsh clearly isn't one of them, a lot of their resentment towards Haiti is what, what Ryan describes, is the fact that, uh, Haiti successfully had a slave revolt.

Uh, and Haiti has been paying for that with reverse reparations, uh, for centuries, uh, reverse reparations because of the loss of capital from the slave owners in France. That's part of why Haiti is in the situation and that they're, that it is in, in terms of political and economic turmoil and the privatization, disaster capitalists that have come in, aided by, uh, NGOs like the, you know, the Clinton Foundation and other organizations.

And so that's what Ryan is alluding to, but, but, but, but he, Matt Walsh isn't even like a well researched racist here. 

RYAN GRIM: He's out of his depth. 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, 

RYAN GRIM: what point is that that let's say that they Elect they elect Aristide and we overthrow Aristide then they elect Jovenel Moise Jovenel Moise is assassinated a bunch of bunch of people with [01:03:00] American connections and then we install in 2021 like the United States installed The prime minister that we just ousted.

Like, so we can say, okay, yeah, you got to get over the, you know, 200 years ago, but like we're still doing it, 

MATT WALSH: right? Yeah. I mean, and I'm not in favor of, um, I'm very non interventionist in my policy. So I'm not in favor of most of the things that we're doing. 

RYAN GRIM: We just made the new government in Haiti in a hotel room in Jamaica.

And then we insisted that whatever government we made in Jamaica had to allow Kenyan police. Kenyan troops to come in under the flag of the UN in order to go to war with, uh, the gangs. 

MATT WALSH: Yeah. I mean, I'm not, look, I'm not interested in, if it were up to me, I'm not interested in doing anything in Haiti. Like, let Haiti be Haiti and take care of them.

That's sort of my, my whole point here. Oh! Uh, let them take care of themselves and their own problems. I'm also not saying, That there's like never a scenario where we let someone from Haiti into the country. Uh, but, and [01:04:00] it doesn't have to just be about Haiti, but when you're throwing open the gates and just inviting anyone, uh, in particular, you know, the third world.

I guess your 

RYAN GRIM: assumption there was that it is Haitian people that are creating the conditions on Haiti and that if the Haitian people come to Springfield they will recreate the conditions in Haiti in Springfield. Whereas what I'm saying is that it's actually. The U. S. that is, largely. 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Oh wow. Check out Dropsite, check out Ryan's work everywhere, but yeah.

I mean, the United States violently occupied, uh, Haiti, uh I'm 

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: so against intervention, I don't even really know about it. Right. I'm against learning about it, being aware of it, as the context that sets, uh, the conversations I'm having. 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Into the 20th century, the United States was occupying Haiti. Go on, Brandon, sorry.

BRANDON SUTTON: I'm so I'm so against intervention. I'm not going to intervene in my own stupidity. I'm so against intervention. You guys are taking a neutral position. 

MATT BINDER: The, the, the main part of [01:05:00] intervention that he seems to be against though, is the small part where America takes responsibility for the innocent people who are caught up in this and we bring them here so they can live a ostensibly a better life than under the conditions that we put the country of Haiti in.

BRANDON SUTTON: I'm actually surprised he didn't have a better answer to that because this is not the first time Republicans or far right commentators have been confronted by like, Hey, you know, a lot of the countries that you're saying people are coming from, it's because America's like conducting a drug war there or because we did a coup or because we're like exploiting them in all of their natural resources.

They use this against, just to 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: buttress your point quickly, uh, Brandon, they use this against, uh, Biden because of, uh, the Afghan parolee problem, right? Or the Afghan parolee initiative, right? 

BRANDON SUTTON: Yeah, I mean, usually the response is just like, who cares who, you know, you're saying that like they're weak, they're weak country, you know, blah, blah, blah.

So it's just weird that he didn't even go that far. He just seemed almost shocked by the fact that this is happening. It's very like shows his ignorance. 

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I think that ignorance is exactly right. I [01:06:00] think they legit think when people say, well, look, this is what America did, uh, 20 years ago. Five years ago, fifty years ago.

I think they literally think that is like some kind of fallacy. 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: No, I think it's whining. 

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: To historicize. Yeah, it's like this is some sort of woke, uh, hand waving when it's actually just, no, Historically situating the problem that we're trying to fucking address. But 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: the, but the entire, all of conservatism is based on no understanding of history.

I mean, like, I guess this is kind of a, a, a point that we've made many times. It's nothing new, but Once, if you learn history, it's quite clear when patterns emerge. It's myth versus history. Right. It demystifies things like, you know, American exceptionalism, or what capitalism really means in the context of the global south, or 

Walz Decries Demonizing Immigrants After Trump & Vance Spread Lies About Haitians in Springfield, OH - Democracy Now! - Air Date 10-2-24

 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: On Tuesday night, Governor Walz criticized Trump and Vance’s comments while answering a question from debate moderator Margaret Brennan of CBS.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Governor, [01:07:00] what about our CBS News polling, which does show that a majority of Americans, more than 50%, support mass deportations?

GOV. TIM WALZ: Look, we fix this issue with a bill that is necessary. But the issue on this is, this is what happens when you don’t want to solve it. You demonize it. And we saw this, and Senator Vance — and it surprises me on this — talking about and saying, “I will create stories to bring attention to this.” That vilified a large number of people who were here legally in the community of Springfield. The Republican governor said, “It’s not true. Don’t do it.” There’s consequences for this. There’s consequences.

We could come together. Senator Lankford did it. We could come together and solve this, if we didn’t let Donald Trump continue to make it an issue. And the consequences in Springfield were the governor had to send state law enforcement to escort kindergarteners to school. I believe Senator Vance wants to solve this. But by standing with Donald Trump and not working together to find a solution, it becomes a talking point. [01:08:00] And when it becomes a talking point like this, we dehumanize and villainize other human beings.

SEN. JD VANCE: Now, Governor Walz brought up the community of Springfield, and he’s very worried about the things that I’ve said in Springfield. Look, in Springfield, Ohio, and in communities all across this country, you’ve got schools that are overwhelmed. You’ve got hospitals that are overwhelmed. You have got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes. The people that I’m most worried about in Springfield, Ohio, are the American citizens who have had their lives destroyed by Kamala Harris’s open border. It is a disgrace, Tim. And I actually think — I agree with you. I think you want to solve this problem, but I don’t think that Kamala Harris does.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Very interestingly, further on in this debate, JD Vance complained about the fact-checking. Margaret Brennan of CBS said, “Just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, [01:09:00] Ohio, does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status, temporary protected status,” she said. Vance spoke up to complain about the fact-check. He said, “Margaret, the rules were that you were not going to fact-check. And since you’re fact-checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on,” he protested.

Well, we’re joined right now by Guerline Jozef, co-founder and executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, which recently used an Ohio state law to bring criminal charges against Trump and Vance over their false claims.

Guerline, welcome back to Democracy Now! As they were making these claims, we interviewed you when you came to New York. Now you’re in Washington, D.C. You’ve met with many public officials. Can you respond to what they said, and particularly this criminal complaint you’ve brought against Trump and Vance in Ohio for endangering the Haitian community?

GUERLINE JOZEF: Thank you so much, [01:10:00] Amy.

And the reality is they continue to spread those lies, even after we have brought criminal charges against them. They must be held accountable. What they are doing, as we have seen over the past few weeks, is creating chaos, creating division and really making an environment of fear, not only in Springfield, Ohio, in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, in Long Island, New York, in places in California. We cannot allow this to continue, Amy. We have lives at risk. Real people’s lives are at risk. And the Haitian community in Springfield and around the country along with our allies and the people of America are standing up to say, “Enough is enough.”

So, these criminal charges that we have brought against Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance is we need to hold them accountable, make sure that they understand that they are not above the law, and what they are [01:11:00] doing is unacceptable as people who are seeking to be really leading this country forward. This cannot be the case.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And can you also talk about what’s happened, as early as a week ago, or less than a week ago, the continued deportations of Haitians back into Haiti, where now, according to the World Food Programme, something like one in two people, half the population, is suffering severe hunger, not to mention violence?

GUERLINE JOZEF: Thank you, Amy. And I want to make it clear that the Haitian Bridge Alliance is a nonpartisan organization. We have lawsuits filed against President Biden for what happened in Del Rio. And we continue to push back against deportation that President Biden and his administration continues today to Haiti, as you just mentioned, as we see that we continue to deal with [01:12:00] extreme political turmoil in Haiti and the famine that is happening right now. And President Biden and his administration continues to deport Haitians, immigrants, to Haiti right now. So, we are calling on President Biden and his administration to stop the deportation, while we are also calling on Mr. Vance and Mr. Trump to be held accountable for the criminal acts that they continue to terrorize a community and the entire country, for that matter of fact.

SECTION B - WHITE SUPREMACY

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering SECTION B - WHITE SUPREMACY 

Fascism Expert Jason Stanley on Project 2025, Great Replacement Theory, Attacks on Immigrants & Gaza Part 2 - Democracy Now! - Air Date 9-15-24

 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And also you have Trump saying these are too far left people who tried to assassinate him. When I think in both cases, I mean, uh, the mental health, uh, Problems of both men, you know, are, uh, have yet to be fully laid out, but, [01:13:00] uh, they were originally Trump supporters.

And this last one, Ralph, um, voted for President Trump. 

JASON STANLEY: Right. Misrepresentations of reality, as we know, are no barrier to, uh, the campaign that the Republicans are, are waging. Uh, now J. D. Vance, I think he should be thought of. Uh, as one of the emerging intellectuals of this authoritarian movement. Uh, initially people said, how could it be fascism when you don't have intellectuals?

Uh, the fascist intellectuals. I think that's what we're starting to see. J. D. Vance, uh, is a Yale man. When I came to Yale soon after he, he left. Uh, everyone spoke glowingly about him. Uh, he is someone that Yale loves. Uh, like Ron DeSantis, like Tom Cotton at Harvard, the, these, these leaders of this movement, uh, come from the very elite institutions that they are supposedly decrying.

Both Vance and his spouse are [01:14:00] Yale graduates. Now, Vance is entirely inconsistent. Hillbilly Elegy is a book about how Poor whites reject meritocracy and the promise of America to wallow in self pity and resentment. And now, uh, Vance is running a campaign about, uh, self pity and resentment, saying to the dominant group, you're being replaced by immigrants, your misery is not your fault, it's the fault of the very institutions that created you.

trained me to become the vice presidential candidate of the United States and connected me to billionaires like Peter Thiel, who are supporting me, who are my mentors. Uh, so J. D. Vance comes from the billionaire world of private equity and hedge funds. So He is being supported by billionaires who are exploiting, who want him to exploit resentment, uh, to elect, uh, uh, an administration [01:15:00] that's going to cut their taxes and eliminate regulation against them.

So, uh, J. D. Vance, I think his internal ideology is, uh, a far right, uh, anti woman ideology that is based around great replacement and natalism, the idea that women should be having large families to replace the true Americans, the real Americans. 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And then going after, of course, uh, the childless so called cat ladies.

JASON STANLEY: Absolutely. Because in this ideology, in this kind of, uh, far right fascist ideology that draws in both social conservatives, uh, anti democratic social conservatives, uh, as, uh, the ideal, as well as sort of macho men who, who think men should be men, the sort of musk, uh, who also, uh, has a lot, you know, goes in for, we have to replace our populations.

There's a simple solution to, uh, dealing with declining birth rates in the United States, and it's on the southern border. It's immigration. If that's really what you care about, [01:16:00] is declining U. S. populations, then you're going to open the floodgates to, to immigration. Really J. D. Vance is asking for there to be more immigrants, but because what is meant Uh, non black immigrants, specifically.

Uh, because what is meant are, uh, Christian immigrants. Uh, are, are, uh, well, because, sorry, what is meant are black immigrants and non Christian immigrants as a threat to the nation. Uh, J. D. Vance is, uh, is calling for rigid gender roles, denouncing women who don't have children. And that's the ideology here.

That's the ideology that sweeps in, uh, that sweeps in social conservatives. Uh, they see, uh, women's rights being then diminished along the lines that democracy allows. It's an anti freedom agenda. Women's rights are central to the democratic value of freedom. And attacking women's rights, Is the most central way attacking the freedoms of 50 percent of the population [01:17:00] is the most central way to attack freedom.

Erasing History Yale Prof. Jason Stanley on Why Fascists Attack Education & Critical Inquiry - Democracy Now! - Air Date 9-17-24

 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Election Day is now seven weeks away. On Monday, Republican vice presidential nominee J. D. Vance lashed out at Democrats, saying liberal rhetoric is to blame for Sunday's apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump at his golf course in Florida.

Vance made no mention that the man arrested was actually a former Trump supporter. Brandt spoke on Monday at a Faith and Freedom Coalition event in Atlanta. 

RON DESANTIS: You know the big difference between conservatives and liberals is that we, no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months.

I'd say that's pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric and needs to cut this crap out. 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And a Trump ally, Elon Musk, posted a message on social media [01:18:00] platform, his social media platform X, that read, and no one's even trying to assassinate Biden Kamala, along with a thinking face emoji.

Musk deleted the message after widespread criticism. Criticism is now being investigated by the Secret Service. J. D. Vance's remarks for Democrats to tone down their rhetoric came just days after Donald Trump repeatedly used inflammatory language to attack Vice President Kamala Harris during last week's ABC News presidential debate.

DONALD TRUMP: She's destroying this country, and if she becomes president, this country doesn't have a chance of success. Not only success, we'll end up being Venezuela on steroids, because they're destroying the fabric of our country by what they've done. There's never been anything done like this at all. They've destroyed the fabric of our country.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: We're joined right now by Jason Stanley, author and professor of philosophy at Yale University, his new book titled [01:19:00] Erasing History. How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. Professor Stanley is the son of Holocaust survivors. This is your second book on fascism. Why are you writing it now?

And the significance of its publication as this election, to say the least, heats up in its last weeks? 

JASON STANLEY: Well, I faced a puzzle when writing this book. Why authoritarians always target schools and universities? Uh, so we see that, uh, all over the world. We see that with Victor Orban, who provides a kind of template for U.

S. authoritarianism. He attacked Central European University for gender ideology and leftism and being pro immigration. And so we know about the courts. Uh, the authoritarians targeting the courts, but why do authoritarians always target voting? Uh, that's, that's clear. And schools and universities. [01:20:00] So, uh, so when last year when the anti genocide, anti war protests on campus were happening, I thought about, you know, The international context.

I thought about what happened in India in 2019 when they passed the, uh, the Citizenship Amendment Act, which made Muslims into second class citizens. And there were nonviolent protests on campus denounced as anti Indian. So I Uh, so and violent militarized responses. So this, this tactic of tarring school teachers, tarring university professors as Marxists and communists and ruining the country and replacing this kind of education, uh, replacing black history, replacing LGBTQ perspectives by a kind of grandiosity of white Christian nationalism as we're seeing right now.

Uh, this seemed to me a democratic emergency. Okay. 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: This is Republican vice presidential nominee J. D. Vance speaking in [01:21:00] 2021 at the National Conservatism Conference. At the time, he was a candidate for the U. S. Senate in Ohio. 

RON DESANTIS: I think in this movement of national conservatism, what we need more than inspiration is we need wisdom.

And there was a wisdom in what Richard Nixon said approximately 40, 50 years ago. He said, and I quote, the professors. You are the enemy. 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: So, that was J. D. Vance, the professors are the enemy. I also want to quote, um, First Things Magazine, a right wing magazine. It says, University should be places of sober analysis, but at Yale, philosophy professor Jason Stanley and history professor Timothy Snyder published books of political propaganda that described Trump as the second coming of Adolf Hitler.

TV newscasters in tone rants rather than report on [01:22:00] events. And of course, J. D. Vance, your fellow Yale, um, uh, 

JASON STANLEY: So, uh, so that's a strangeness about this moment that all these people, the leaders of the movement to attack universities and schools are all Ivy League grads. Ron DeSantis is a Yale and Harvard grad.

Ted Cruz is a Princeton and Harvard grad. Uh, uh, J. D. Vance is a Yale law school. Grad Tom Cotton is Harvard, Harvard, at least Stephanie is Harvard. So what's going on? That's a mystery. These guys are sending their kids to Harvard, Yale and Princeton. They're not sending their kids to Hillsdale College. It's Hillsdale College for the rest of us and Harvard, Yale and Princeton for their kids.

So they're attacking the institutions, the universities. Because the universities provide critical inquiry into the kind of myths that's required for the, for these kinds of politics. Uh, this kind of politics, uh, elevates the dominant group, in the case of the United States, [01:23:00] white Christian men. Uh, it diminishes, uh, women, the agency of women by, it represents history as the exploits, uh, in the United States of white Christian men.

Like in India, uh, history is represented as the exploits of Hindus. In Israel, it's represented as the exploits of Jewish nationalists. Who founded the state. Uh, this kind of erasure of history, uh, justifies it doesn't just justify wars and genocide. If you look at, uh, at Russia, a case I look at, uh, extensively in the book as well as Israel, uh, in Russia, the erasure of Ukraine as an independent place, the complete erasure of Ukrainian history justifies Vladimir Putin's, uh, war on Ukraine because it says it is sort of a fake identity, a fake.

Country. Uh, it represents all Russian incursions as justified by supporting independence movements. Israel has erased the existence of the Palestinian people. It has erased the history, [01:24:00] uh, making the desert. Jews made the desert bloom, uh, this kind of thing represent a racist Palestinians from the narrative of the country and of, of the area.

And, and paves the way for genocide. Uh, this kind of erasing history paves the way for ethnic, racial, and religious nationalism, which is the core of the message we're hearing from MAGA Republicans today. Uh, when you represent, when you erase black history, when you erase LGBTQ perspectives, when you erase social history of social movements.

Then you represent history as just the exploits of great white men. You erase social movements, you make citizens feel like they have no agency, and so it's an anti democratic education. And then you justify Great Replacement Theory, which is their core message, that the greatness of America comes from the exploits of great white men, and so we need to protect that identity.

Kamala Harris blasts Donald Trump for playing political games with border policy - Alex Wagner Tonight - Air Date 9-27-24

 

ALEX WAGNER - HOST, ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT: [01:25:00] Elon Musk is hiring all across the country. There are job openings in states like Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, Georgia, and Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada.

A few other places too, but mainly those swing states. Because the job is to canvas door to door for Donald Trump. Let me clarify. Technically it isn't Elon Musk himself who is hiring here. It's the super PAC Mr. Musk created and the one he funds and it's called the America PAC. And technically, this PAC is not canvassing for Donald Trump, they're just canvassing door to door to convince people to vote for Donald Trump on their own accord.

If those sound like meaningless technicalities, that is because they are. When you remove the layers of legal and optical separation that a super PAC magically provides, the reality here is that Elon Musk, through his super PAC, is spending [01:26:00] millions of dollars to do the Trump campaign's door knocking.

And while the Trump campaign and the RNC both claim that they are still doing some of that work themselves, we have seen numerous reports of Republicans at the state level saying there are not many signs of a Trump ground game that they can see. That is, no signs other than the door knockers hired by Elon Musk's super PAC, which is frankly surreal.

Get out, the vote efforts have traditionally been the bread and butter of political campaigns. They're basically half the reason you need a campaign staff to begin with. Outsourcing that work, having the richest man in the world and his super PAC do that work for you and pick up the tab, well, that is an unprecedented contribution to a political campaign.

And it may not even be the biggest contribution Elon Musk is making to Donald Trump right now. Today, the New York Times published an analysis of five days of [01:27:00] Elon Musk's posts on his website X. In those five days, Musk posted 171 times, and almost a third of those posts Were false, misleading, or missing vital context.

For instance, the Times found that on one of the five days, a rumor circulated online claiming that a bomb had been found near a Trump rally in New York. That rumor was quickly debunked. But Elon Musk pushed that rumor anyway, sharing it with his nearly 200 million followers. Now, the thing about all of these falsehoods that Elon Musk was pushing, the secret sauce that makes what he is doing here so nefarious, is that the falsehoods he is spreading are not just factually incorrect, they are also nakedly political.

He published misleading posts claiming that Democrats are making memes illegal, that Democrats are trying to open the border to gain votes from illegal [01:28:00] immigrants. In one post, Musk falsely implied that the Springfield, Ohio city manager had received reports of Haitian immigrants eating pets, when in reality, the city manager had said there were no credible reports.

Musk is using one of the biggest bully pulpits in the world, one that he just bought for himself as the world's richest man, to push misinformation unchecked. And that misinformation just so happens to bolster the completely twisted worldview of Donald Trump, whose politics do not seem based in reality.

Now, you could ask, what is the difference between what Elon Musk is doing here and the spin on Fox News or Newsmax or OANN or any of the other conservative information silos? And the answer is not much. But that's the problem. More and more of our country's information ecosystem has been transformed into a machine that takes what Donald Trump says [01:29:00] and pushes it out as the truth.

And that means that Donald Trump can get away with blatant lies. 

DONALD TRUMP: Make up some lies, like she said about the border bill that Trump stopped. Let me tell you, number one, I didn't stop it. 

ALEX WAGNER - HOST, ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT: That was Donald Trump today in Michigan, telling a rally that he did not stop the bipartisan immigration bill that was drafted earlier this year.

Now that may sound like a small detail, but because polls show immigration is a top issue for voters this year, and because Trump is trying to pin the current status of our country's immigration system on Vice President Harris, Whether or not Trump killed something that would have addressed immigration in a big way is a key detail here.

And the truth is, he did. He did kill it. But don't just take my word for it. 

LINDSEY GRAHAM: Everybody who comes on this floor and says our border's broken, we should do something about it, you're absolutely [01:30:00] right. Um, and, Unfortunately, we didn't get there. President Trump opposed a Senate bill. We couldn't find a better way 

REPORTER: forward.

President Trump said don't fix anything during the presidential election. It's a single biggest issue during the election. Don't resolve this. 

ALEX WAGNER - HOST, ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT: Just a couple of months ago, Republican senators were loud and proud about the fact that it was Donald Trump who killed that bipartisan immigration bill. And you know who else is loud and proud about it?

Donald Trump. 

DONALD TRUMP: There is zero chance I will support this horrible open borders betrayal of America. It's not going to happen. I noticed that, and I'll fight it all the way. I noticed a lot of the senators, a lot of the senators are trying to say respectfully they're blaming it on me. I said, that's okay.

Please blame it on me. Please. 

ALEX WAGNER - HOST, ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT: Blame it on me, please. But of course, now that that particular detail is complicating Trump's [01:31:00] presidential campaign, he is rewriting history in front of our eyes. And to a huge swath of the country, he will probably get away with it. Meanwhile, back on Earth One, in reality, today, Vice President Harris made a trip to Douglas, Arizona, to the U.

S. Mexico border. Where she did her best to tell the truth about Donald Trump. 

KAMALA HARRIS: It was the strongest border security bill we have seen in decades. It was endorsed by the Border Patrol Union. And it should be in effect today, producing results in real time right now for our country.

But Donald Trump tanked it. He picked up the phone and called some friends in Congress and said, stop the bill. Because you see, he prefers to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.[01:32:00] 

ALEX WAGNER - HOST, ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT: Which version of this story will more of the American public believe? Harris version or Trump's? 

Erasing History Yale Prof. Jason Stanley on Why Fascists Attack Education & Critical Inquiry Part 2 - Democracy Now! - Air Date 9-17-24

 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Jason Stanley, you write in your book, Erasing History, um, The most visible current manifestation of the black American tradition of reclaiming history is Nicole Hannah Jones 1619 Project. She's, of course, the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for The New York Times Magazine, creator of the landmark 1619 Project, which reframes U.

S. history by marking the year 1619, when the first enslaved Africans arrived on Virginia soil as the country's foundational date. This is then President. Donald Trump denouncing the project at a White House conference on American history in September 2020. 

DONALD TRUMP: Critical race [01:33:00] theory, the 1619 project and the crusade against American history is toxic propaganda, ideological poison that if not removed will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together.

We'll destroy our country. 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Professor Stanley, your response? 

JASON STANLEY: This is an erasure of black history. This is an erasure of black perspectives. What we need to, to, to improve our democracy is we need knowledge of who has been denied equality and why. We need to know, democracy is a system all play a role in the formation of the policies that govern us, the laws that govern us without black perspectives, without the black perspective on history.

We don't know. We don't understand their voices. We can't. We can't. With the grounds for eliminating and responding to [01:34:00] stereotypes and prejudice have been robbed from us. Without critical race theory, the study of structures that maintain racial hierarchy, the study of say, uh, mortgage redlining. Uh, you won't, uh, children won't understand why there are poor black neighborhoods and wealthy white neighborhoods in their cities protected by military police.

Black children will be led to believe the stereotypes about themselves and, ironically, uh, feel shame about their own identity. These divisive concept laws that are being passed. All over the country that invite students at public universities and students at public schools to report on their own teachers and professors.

These are purportedly justified as students, uh, we shouldn't have teaching that makes students feel shame about their race. Well, when you don't allow teachers Professors and teachers to teach black history, you're making black students feel ashamed about their race. When you don't allow [01:35:00] LGBT perspectives, when you declare them as obscene and pornographic, you do you rep, or you make LGBT families feel ashamed about their identity.

People say, okay, it's not really banning because you can look at, uh, at the web, but what's taught in schools, the perspectives that are taught in schools affect us through our whole lives. They represent an authority, a state authority, and we're being told by MAGA Republicans that that perspective is the perspective of Christian, white, and black.

SECTION C - LATINO ANTI-IMMIGRATION VIEWS

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: and finally, SECTION C - LATINO ANTI-IMMIGRATION VIEWS

Kamala Harris blasts Donald Trump for playing political games with border policy Part 2 - Alex Wagner Tonight - Air Date 9-27-24

 

KAMALA HARRIS: In the four years that Donald Trump was president, he did nothing. For to fix our broken immigration system. He did not solve the shortage of immigration judges. He did not solve the shortage of border agents. And what did he do instead? Well, let's talk about [01:36:00] that. He separated families. He ripped toddlers out of their mother's arms.

Put children in cages and tried to end protections for dreamers. He made the challenges at the border worse. 

ALEX WAGNER - HOST, ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT: Vice President Kamala Harris was in Douglas, Arizona this evening, marking her first visit to the U. S. Mexico border since she became the Democratic presidential nominee. Arizona, where 33 percent of the population is Latino, is the only battleground state facing daily migrant crossings.

Since President Biden's executive order in June restricting asylum at the border, those numbers have seen a sharp decline. In July and August, the Border Patrol's Tucson sector saw less than 12, 000 encounters per month, which is down from 80, 000 encounters in December of last year. But recent polling shows that former President Donald Trump still holds an edge on immigration in Arizona, which is a key issue among his supporters.

It is also a [01:37:00] top issue among Latino voters overall, who rank it among the most important concerns this election cycle. But when it comes to who they will vote for at the ballot box, registered Latino voters still favor Harris over Trump 57 to 39 percent. Joining me now is Paola Ramos, MSNBC contributor and the author of defectors, the rise of Latino far right and what it means for America, which is available now, wherever books are sold.

First of all, congratulations on putting this out like literally at exactly the right time. No, you're super genius is what you are. And it's deeply reported. Super relevant and essential read for right now. Um, I, I thought about it actually while I was watching Harris at the border. And then first of all, I just wonder what you thought of her remarks were, it was a combination of, you know, here's, here's some sort of detailed policy, how am I going to get tough?

Um. But with a reiteration that we have to have a humane policy, right? 

PAOLA RAMOS: I'll give you two answers. No, the one is the surface answer, which is I thought it was effective. I thought it was balanced. She [01:38:00] did something that's very hard, which is a combination of toughness and softness. And the reason why I say it's the surface answer is because we're not the average listeners.

Yeah. The average listeners are the folks that you were interviewing in Michigan. No. And I say this because. The first question in an American voter's mind right now, when you're thinking about immigration in an electorate that has fundamentally shifted to the right on this issue that is fundamentally threatened by this idea of a border crisis, when you think about immigration, there's one question that comes to mind, and that is who is tougher at the border.

That's it. Who's tougher? And so I think within that context, Within a context that is so politicized and so toxic, that is the only thing that Donald Trump has in this moment, the only thing. And so the idea that you can out Trump Trump at the border, you know, because he's infused so much fear mongering and disinformation, it is so hard.

So, yes, I understand what the Vice President was doing to crystallize this image of someone that's tough. of someone that can take on the cartels, of someone that will pass the [01:39:00] border bill. But then I think about the potential backlash of that image, and I'm thinking about some Latino voters that were so instrumental in 2020, precisely because of the way that Biden could humanize immigrants.

And maybe they're thinking like, why don't you lead with that message? Why don't you flip the script? 

ALEX WAGNER - HOST, ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT: Can we talk a little bit, because I think most people don't understand how far the right, some in the Latino community have gone on the issue of immigration. And you, you know, this. You know what's happening here better than almost anybody else.

Can you talk about how these Latino voters are thinking about immigration and why they lust for the tough hand on, on the border wall? 

PAOLA RAMOS: So the first time, Clare, because people come at me, Kamala will, will win the Latino vote. Right? And that's clear in the overall numbers. And that's clear. Okay. Um, but then, okay.

So even think about this idea, send them back. Now, there is a group, a small but growing group of Latinos that when you say send them back. They do not see themselves reflected in that them, no, they see themselves reflected as the other. And then you make sense of, of the [01:40:00] numbers that you're seeing out there right now.

The Latino electorate is so different from our parents generation, no? And it is an electorate where third generation Latinos are the fastest growing segment. It is an electorate that is overwhelmingly young. The majority are U. S. born under the age of 50. And most people speak in English. And so Trumpism, is sort of betting on this idea that you can invoke a certain type of racial and ethnic grievance.

No, they're betting on this idea that within that segment of Latinos, within that picture, Um, they have become so Americanized, you know, and so assimilated that they too can sort of buy into the nativism and the anti immigrant rhetoric, and even perhaps with more force. Why? Because there is a fear among some Latinas that we will always be otherized, you know, and we will always be these perpetual foreigners.

And when you put all of that together, infused with that fear mongering, you know, it's 

ALEX WAGNER - HOST, ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT: Trumpism is powerful. It's an intoxicant for that group of people. I mean, and I think you make a really important point, which is that she will overwhelmingly win the Latino vote. But within that vote, there is a [01:41:00] growing subsection that's really critical and explains a lot of Trump's growth among Hispanic Americans.

Same, you know, the, that phenomenon exists in, in other racial subgroups as well. I just, I guess I wonder, When you talk about authoritarianism that exists in some Latin American countries and the authoritarianism that Donald Trump presents in terms of his vision for the country, does that also have to do with the sort of interest in the right wing politics over immigration?

PAOLA RAMOS: It's so complicated because I think, so Democrats typically are betting on this idea that if you cast Donald Trump as a strong man, you know, because of so many Latinos really complicated history with authoritarianism, that that in and of itself will sort of drive some to towards Democrats. But here's the thing.

Yes, it works, but Latinos have a very complicated relationship with strongman rule. In fact, this idea is pretty present, you know, that at times, because history has repeated itself in Latin America, that at times when democracy feels messy, um, the appeal of strongman is perhaps required, no? And [01:42:00] let's also remember that the United States government sort of conditioned that.

among the Latin American population, right? In the 20th century during the Cold War, um, in the name of sort of ridding the West of communism, the United States government supported strongman rule and military juntas in places like Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua. And so considering the fact that so many migrants and asylum seekers come to this country with those political traumas, again, when you're facing something that because mis and disinformation tells you that things are feeling weird, Trumpism, again, has an appeal.

Paola Ramos Explains the Rise of the Latino Far Right and Growing Anti-Immigrant Sentiments Part 2 - LeBatardShow - Air Date 9-26-24

 

DAN LEBETARD - HOST, LEBETARD PODCAST: Do you have a plausible make sense explanation for how Hispanics can be against immigration? 

PAOLA RAMOS: Um, the, the only explanation I have is that anti immigrant sentiment and xenophobia, no one's immune to that. No, just because [01:43:00] we're sort of descendants of immigrants and just because we're Latinos, that in no way makes us sort of immune to, uh, to also having, like, carrying these anti immigrant sentiments.

No, the sort of fear and the, what we're hearing from someone like Donald Trump, that every single day tries to create this idea that we're invaded, no, that immigrants are bad people, that immigrants are out there eating pets and dogs, like, what? I understand why people would be scared if that's what you hear every single day.

And so I think our job is to sort of ground people in the facts, you know, get people to understand that even statistically, like, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U. S. born natives. And so I understand where their fear comes, particularly when you have a Republican candidate that uses that megaphone Every single day.

And why is he doing that, Dan? Well, that's exactly how he won the 2016 election. No, he made build the wall, um, his central message, and that's how he won. In 2020, he toned it down, and now here we are in 2024, where he's trying to make that the centerpiece of his [01:44:00] campaign because he knows that it works.

DAN LEBETARD - HOST, LEBETARD PODCAST: What was your initial reaction, immediate visceral reaction, to the news that Donald Trump was talking about putting serial numbers on immigrants in something that felt a bit holocaust y? 

PAOLA RAMOS: It was, I mean, it was that. It's even surreal that we're, like, it is surreal that we're in 2024 and we're literally talking about this.

No, and what's even more surreal is the idea that over 50 percent of Americans could actually fathom, I'm not even talking about being a Republican or a Democrat, But that over 50 percent of Americans could even fathom bringing this country back to those dark days now. And so I think part of the problem is, and when we're talking about these things and serial numbers and mass deportations and like immigrants in this way, like it's just become this talking point and we hear it on TV, but people have to be grounded in what this means.

Now, what would it mean to deport over 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country? In Donald Trump's own words, like, it can turn bloody. And more than anything, Dan, and I think this is important, [01:45:00] we're at a point where even Donald Trump doesn't really know where, where he's drawing the line, right?

It used to be that he was just targeting undocumented immigrants, and now what we heard after his comments about Haitian migrants, it's like, Haitian immigrants are legal immigrants right now. They are protected under temporary protected status. And so where is he drawing the line? If you're a legal immigrant, would you also be deported?

If you are the sort of U. S. born child of immigrant parents, are you also going to be deported? So I think that's, that's sort of the scary part of all of this. 

Trump's rhetoric on immigrants gets even darker Part 2 - The ReidOut - Air Date 9-27-24

 

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: And we begin tonight with just 39 days to go until election day with early and absentee voting already underway in some states. And while Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are barnstorming the country talking about what they call an opportunity economy and making things more affordable for Americans, including housing food and starting a business, Donald Trump has forced another issue into the center of the campaign with a lot of help from right wing media, including Fox, [01:46:00] his running mates admitted lies, the internet and social media and conspiracy theories cooked up by literal white supremacists.

That issue of course is immigration. Donald Trump knows he can't win the election based on the crappy job he did as president or his frankly crazy ideas for another administration like spiking the cost of everything we buy through tariffs. So instead he's going with fear of immigrants. Ironically, immigration is how modern America was built, right?

Both during and after slavery, someone had to replace all that free labor and immigrants fit the bill. Most of us here today, unless you are indigenous American, come from a family of immigrants. And yet there's always been resistance by the old immigrants. To the new people, there was the no nothing party of the 1850s, the America first Nazi curious movement in the 1930s.

And now we have Donald Trump who has decided to make fear mongering about immigration, the center of his entire campaign. With [01:47:00] fascistic rhetoric, like promising the largest mass deportation operation in history and promising it would be a bloody story, spreading racist lies about immigrants eating people's pets, and even talking about giving immigrants serial numbers, Nazi style.

At this point, his entire plan is trying to scare people into voting for him, despite two of his three wives being immigrants. And just to remind you, as we talk about this. Border crossings are actually down to the lowest levels in four years. Violent crimes also way down across the country and everything you hear on right wing media to suggest otherwise is a lie.

There is no migrant crime wave. Immigrants actually commit fewer crimes than people born in the US. They also don't eat pets, but the facts don't matter to Trump. Instead, he just keeps ramping up the rhetoric more and more every day. Here's what he said today at what was supposed to be a speech about the economy in Michigan.[01:48:00] 

DONALD TRUMP: These are killers. These are people at the highest level of killing that cut your throat and they won't even think about it. The next morning, a lot of gang members, they take their gangs off the street. Like in Caracas, Venezuela, the criminals have all been brought to the United States. She let our American sons and daughters be raped and murdered at the hands of vicious monsters.

She let American communities be conquered. They're conquering your communities. We have to get them the hell out of our country because they've ruined, I mean, they're ruining the fabric. Okay. 

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: And then on the other side of this adjudicated sexual assaulter slash rapist and 34 count felon on the other side of that ironic dude, you have vice president Kamala Harris, the daughter of two immigrants.

Right now she's in the swing state of Arizona, visiting the Southern border for the first time since she became the democratic nominee. Harris met with border patrol [01:49:00] agents and will receive a briefing on efforts to To curb the flow of fentanyl, you know, presidential stuff. Now compare that to Donald Trump's super awkward meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier today.

Later this hour, the VP will also speak on immigration, where she'll likely highlight her record prosecuting transnational gangs and drug traffickers as California Attorney General. She's also expected to go after Trump for killing the bipartisan border deal earlier this year, just because he wanted to run on the issue.

But despite all of this, recent polling has shown a majority of voters say they trust Trump more when it comes to dealing with the border. A man who doesn't know the difference between political asylum and an insane asylum, and whose plan to deport every immigrant, or anyone who just looks like an immigrant, would send our economy into a free fall, because fear, whether real or irrational, can be an effective political tactic.

The question now for America is, have we gotten to the point [01:50:00] where we would destroy economy? And walk willingly into a Hitlerian dictatorship because of the fear Donald Trump and his MAGA cronies are perpetuating solely for their own political benefit. Joining me now is Olivia Troy, a member of Republicans for Harris, who previously served as the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor to former Vice President Mike Pence.

And Ray Suarez, host of the podcast On Shifting Ground, an author of We Are Home, Becoming American in the 21st century, an oral history, an apt book, uh, Ray Suarez. I, I am going to start with you because this is the irony of all of this is that this is a country that wouldn't exist in its present form without immigrants.

It certainly wouldn't without slavery, but set aside slavery. That's not immigration. After that, when the slaves were free. They still needed workers. So they went all around the world and they attracted people here literally to work because workers are what built the economy and what built the country.

And [01:51:00] yet each new group of immigrants says, Oh, we don't want those new people. Oh gosh, we don't want them. You're even seeing that, uh, Mr. Suarez among some Latinos who also want to shut the border and kick people out and even mass deport them. Why is that? 

RAY SUAREZ: But you know, critically, Joy, part of this story is that the first century plus of immigration was almost solely from Europe.

And then as America law, American law changed in the 20th century, people started to come here from more places in the world. So that created A bifurcated, stratified immigrant population in this country, where most of the new people are non white, and most of the people with pictures of their grandparents and great grandparents, sepia toned photographs, lovingly kept on mantelpieces, those people are almost exclusively European.

And that sets up a difficult social change for us [01:52:00] now as the new folks, nine out of the 10 sending countries of people born in another place in the world are sending non white immigrants to the United States. That's a really important part of understanding the unease we're having about this right now.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Yeah. And I mean, Olivia, during the Trump administration, when you were working in the administration, I mean, Jeff Sessions, when he was attorney general, he is an open supporter of the 1927, I believe immigration act, which essentially was to Mr. Suarez's point, the goal of it was to shut down immigration from everywhere.

But Europe was to say, we don't even want, Southern Europeans. They didn't even want Italians. They certainly didn't want Asians. They certainly didn't want Africans, North Africans, et cetera. The idea was to whiten immigration. And of course it was Reagan who did the opposite. Three million people given open amnesty by Ronald Reagan.

And those people were largely non white. They were largely Mexican migrants. So, so how do you square a party where Ronald Reagan did amnesty or George Herbert [01:53:00] Walker Bush was very open about saying, we welcome immigration. We want immigrants. And where George W. Bush said the same and even made positive noises about Muslim and Arab immigration to this.

OLIVIA TROY: Well, I think the fact of the matter is that that's. Republican party of the past is gone, Joy. I mean, that's the bottom line. Um, what it is today is a complete fear mongering, anti immigrant sentiment. And, you know, you mentioned Jeff Sessions. I've brought back a lot of memories of the immigration meetings I was in.

I spent all four years of the Trump administration working the immigration portfolio when we could spend hours talking about the things that I witnessed and the things that were said. And it wasn't Jeff Sessions. I'll be very clear. I could just remember Stephen Miller. Was a big proponent of all these things.

And so when I hear actually Donald Trump speaking the way he is this week, the way he has in the past couple of weeks, he actually sounds like Stephen Miller did in actual immigrant immigration policy meetings at the very highest levels. I'm talking about cabinet meetings, Joy. Where traditionally [01:54:00] you would not hear this type of language being spoken, but this is how he would speak.

He would talk in this manner and he would engage fear because that's the only thing he had. Right. And then he would push these extreme policies. And so I think in the contrast here, when we're looking at this and the Republican party of today under Donald Trump, which breaks my heart. Right. As a lifelong Republican and as a daughter of a Mexican immigrant who believed in the Republican Party in the past, watching what is happening here is so just detrimental to who we are as a country.

And it's also dangerous as we're seeing with all the threats that we're seeing throughout the country when they push these messages out. 

Credits

 

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That’s going to be it for today.

As always, Keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today’s topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at: 202-999-3991 or simply email me to [email protected] 

The additional sections of the show included clips from 

The Majority Report

Democracy Now!, 

Alex Wagner Tonight, 

The [01:55:00] LeBetard Podcast, 

and The ReidOut 

Further details are in the show notes.

Thanks to everyone for listening, thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes, transcriptionist quartet, Ken, Brian, Ben, and Andrew for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together, thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting and thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships 

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So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of [01:56:00] Washington, DC, my name is Jay! And this has been the Best of the Left podcast, coming to you twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show, from bestoftheleft.com.