Posts Tagged ‘immigration’
2008 PRESIDENTIAL RACE, 2012 PRESIDENTIAL RACE, 2016 PRESIDENTIAL RACE, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ABC NEWS, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, ANCHOR BABY, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BARACK OBAMA, BBC, BC NEWS, BILL CLINTON, BIRTHERS, BLOOMBERG, BLUESKY, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CITIZENSHIP, CNN, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DONALD TRUMP, FACEBOOK, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HUFFINGTON POST, ILLEGAL ALIENS, immigration, MEDIA MATTERS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, PEW RESEARCH CENTER, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAFAEL "TED" CRUZ, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE U.S. SUPREME COURT, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, X
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on August 15, 2025 at 12:05 am
Donald Trump’s all-out war on immigrants isn’t new. It’s been building for 10 years.
During his 2016 campaign for President, he gave Republican voters a taste of the terror to come if he reached the Oval Office.
It started when Rafael “Ted” Cruz, the United States Senator from Texas, accused his rival, Trump, then a billionaire businessman, of having “New York values”:
“Everyone understands that the values in New York City are socially liberal, pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage and focus on money and the media.”
Among Right-wingers, “liberal,” “pro-abortion” and “pro-gay” are the ultimate in insults.
But Donald Trump was quick to respond with an explosive charge of his own: Rafael Cruz was not an American citizen—-and therefore not eligible to be President.
What made this accusation so effective was Cruz’ having been born outside the United States—in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, to an American mother and a Cuban father.
Rafael “Ted” Cruz
The U.S. Constitution specifically states that “No person except a natural born citizen…shall be eligible to the office of President.”
Cruz has argued that because his mother was an American, he became an American citizen at birth. But courts have never ruled on the issue of what constitutes a “natural-born” citizen.
And, at a campaign event in Nashua, New Hampshire, Trump smacked Cruz with an even more incendiary attack:
“Ted Cruz may not be a US citizen, right? But he’s an anchor baby. No, Ted Cruz is an anchor baby in Canada. But Canada doesn’t accept anchor babies.”
“Anchor baby” is a Politically Incorrect term for usually poor, nonwhite aliens entering the United States to have a child born on American soil, which grants automatic citizenship.
And if the child is a citizen, its parents stand an excellent chance of being allowed to stay.
Trump asserts that children born in the United States to illegal aliens are not American citizens, as they are today considered under the law.
Donald Trump
At first, the issue of Cruz’ eligibility seemed confined to Republican politicians and those likely to vote for them. But then others outside the Right began weighing in.
Mary McManamon, a Constitutional law professor at Widener University’s Delaware Law School, concluded in an Op-Ed for The Washington Post:
“Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is not a natural-born citizen and therefore is not eligible to be president or vice president of the United States.”
How did this all start? With the ultimate target of Republican hatred—-Barack Obama.
Ever since Obama became a Presidential candidate in 2008, Republicans accused him of being ineligible to hold office.
Without a political scandal (such as Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky) to fasten on, the Republican party opted for slander: Obama was born in Kenya—not Honolulu, as his birth certificate clearly states—and thus was not an American citizen.
From this there could be only one conclusion: He would be an illegitimate President, and should be removed from office if elected.
And this smear campaign continued after he won the 2008 election. Right-wingers like Trump insisted that Obama “prove” his citizenship fitness to hold office.
During his first two years in office, Obama tried to ignore the charge.
But polls repeatedly showed that large segments of the country believed it. Thus was Adolf Hitler proved right: “The great masses of the people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.”
Finally, even Obama’s closest advisers warned him: You must address this and put it to rest.
So, on April 27, 2011, the President released the long-form version of his Hawaii birth certificate.
The long-form version of President Obama’s birth certificate
For the vast majority of Americans, this settled the issue. In 2012, to the fury of Republicans, Obama won a second, four-year term.
Fast forward to the 2016 Presidential race.
Donald Trump, seeking to destroy his foremost rival, lobbed the “anchor baby” charge against Rafael Cruz.
So long as Cruz stayed in the race, Trump continued to use the “birther” issue against him. And it continued to dog him, as it did Obama.
To most Americans, this conjures up the image of poor Mexicans flooding across the United States border to apply for welfare.
It’s a highly effective way to inflame the elderly, white voters who make up the base of the Republican party.
This has inflamed millions of Hispanic Americans—those who are here legally as well as those who are here illegally. And, in 2012, millions of Hispanics gave President Obama a second term.
Even so, the Pew Research Center shows that 48% of Latinos voted for Trump in 2024.
Majorities of Latino voters, regardless of age, said the economy was in bad shape. They wanted a bigger paycheck. And they were willing to re-elect a man who despised them in hopes of getting it.
The votes of elderly whites command the attention of Republican primary candidates. But Hispanics form one of the fastest-growing demographics, expected to increase from 19 percent to around 26 percent by 2060.
Trump’s slanders against the nationality of his political opponents and “mass deportations” campaign may come to haunt Republicans as they learn the truth of Shakespeare’s line: “The evil that men do lives after them.”
ABC NEWS, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BANDY X. LEE, BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP, BLOOMBERG, BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, BUZZFEED, CANADA, CBS NEWS, CHRIS KREBS, CIA, CNN, CONSERVATIVE POLITICLA ACTION CONFERENCE (CPAC), CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREU, CRAIG MALKIN, CROOKS AND LIARS, CYBERSECURITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY AGENCY (CISA), DAILY KOZ, DEI PROGRAMS, DEMOCRATS, DONALD TRUMP, DRUDGE RETORT, EMOLUMENTS CLAUSE OF THE CONSTITUTION, FACEBOOK, FBI, FIRST AMENDMENT, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FLETCHER KNEBEL, GAVIN NEWSOM, GAZA, GREENLAND, GULF OF MEXICO, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, immigration, IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT (ICE), INSPECTORS GENERAL, IVANKA TRUMP, JANUARY 6 COUP ATTEMPT, JOHN T. GARNER, JOSEPH STALIN, KIM JONG-UN, LANCE DODES, LIBEL, MEDIA MATTERS, MICHAEL COHEN, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NARCISSISM, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NIGHT AT CAMP DAVID, NPR, NUCLEAR WEAPONS, OBAMACARE, PARANOIA, PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, PSYCHOSIS, QATAR, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, ROBERT S. MUELLER, ROD ROSENSTEIN, RUSSIA, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SOCIOPATHY, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE DANGEROUS CASE OF DONALD TRUMP (BOOK), THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE MEDIA, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWITTER, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, VIETNAM, VLADIMIR PUTIN, WIRETAPPING, WONKETTE, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZTION (WHO)
In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 11, 2025 at 12:45 am
Donald Trump’s appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 2, 2019 was an occasion for rejoicing among his supporters.
But for those who prize rationality and decency in a President, it was a dismaying and frightening experience.
For two hours, Trump gave free reign to his anger and egomania.
Among his unhinged commentaries:
“We have people in Congress that hate our country.”
If you don’t agree 100% with Trump on everything, you’re a traitor.
“He called me up. He said, ‘You’re a great President. You’re doing a great job.’ He said, ‘I just want to tell you you’re a great President and you’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.'”
Trump attributed these remarks to California’s liberal governor, Gavin Newsom. On February 11, 2019, Newsom had announced he was withdrawing several hundred National Guardsmen from the state’s southern border with Mexico—defying Trump’s request for support from border states.
Donald Trump at CPAC
“You know if you remember my first major speech—you know the dishonest media they’ll say, ‘He didn’t get a standing ovation.’ You know why? Because everybody stood and nobody sat. They are the worst. They leave that out.”
Once again, he’s the persecuted victim of an unfair and totally unappreciative news media.
“And I love the First Amendment; nobody loves it better than me. Nobody. I mean, who use its more than I do? But the First Amendment gives all of us—it gives it to me, it gives it to you, it gives it to all Americans, the right to speak our minds freely. It gives you the right and me the right to criticize fake news and criticize it strongly.”
Trump has repeatedly called the nation’s free press “the enemy of the people”—a slander popularized by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. And while Trump brags about his usage of the First Amendment, he’s used Non-Disclosure agreements and threats of lawsuits to deny that right to others.
“For too long, we’ve traded away our jobs to other countries. So terrible.”
While this remark got rousing applause, he failed to mention that his own products are made overseas:
- Ties: Made in China
- Suits: Made in Indonesia
- Trump Vodka: Made in the Netherlands, and later in Germany
- Crystal glasses, decanters: Made in Slovenia
- And the clothing and accessories line of his daughter, Ivanka, is produced entirely in factories in Bangladesh, Indonesia and China.
“By the way, you folks are in here—this place is packed, there are lines that go back six blocks and I tell you that because you won’t read about it, OK.”
He’s obsessed with fear that the media won’t make him look popular.
“So we’re all part of this very historic movement, a movement the likes of which, actually, the world has never seen before. There’s never been anything like this. There’s been some movements, but there’s never been anything like this.”
Trump sees himself as the single greatest figure in history. So anything he’s involved with must be unprecedented.
“But I always say, Obamacare doesn’t work. And these same people two years ago and a year ago were complaining about Obamacare.”
In 2010, 48 million Americans lacked health insurance. By 2016, that number had been reduced to 28.6 million. So 20 million Americans now have access to medical care they previously couldn’t get.
“But we’re taking a firm, bold and decisive measure, we have to, to turn things around [with North Korea]. The era of empty talk is over, it’s over.”
- Trump has boasted that he and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un “fell in love.” Then he met with Kim in Vietnam—and got stiffed on a deal for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.
- On July 16, 2018, Trump attended a press conference in Helsinki, Finland, with Russian President Vladimir Putin. There he blamed American Intelligence agencies—such as the FBI and CIA—instead of Putin for Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.
“I’ll tell you what they [agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement] do, they came and endorsed me, ICE came and endorsed me. They never endorsed a presidential candidate before, they might not even be allowed to.”
Trump can’t stop boasting about how popular he is.
“These are hard-working, great, great Americans. These are unbelievable people who have not been treated fairly. Hillary called them deplorable. They’re not deplorable.”
On the contrary: “Deplorable” is exactly the word for those who vote their racism, ignorance, superstition and hatred of their fellow citizens.
A FINAL NOTE: Trump held himself up for adoration just three days after Michael Cohen, his longtime fixer:
- Damned him as a racist, a conman and a cheat.
- Revealed that Trump had cheated on his taxes and bought the silence of a porn “star” to prevent her revealing a 2006 tryst before the 2016 election.
- Estimated he had stiffed, on Trump’s behalf, hundreds of workers Trump owed money to.
And, only two days earlier, Trump had returned from a much-ballyhooed meeting in Vietnam with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un. Trump hoped to get a Nobel Peace Prize by persuading Kim to give up his nuclear arsenal.
Instead, Trump got stiffed—and returned empty-handed.
ABC NEWS, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BANDY X. LEE, BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP, BLOOMBERG, BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, BUZZFEED, CANADA, CBS NEWS, CHRIS KREBS, CIA, CNN, CONSERVATIVE POLITICLA ACTION CONFERENCE (CPAC), CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREU, CRAIG MALKIN, CROOKS AND LIARS, CYBERSECURITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY AGENCY (CISA), DAILY KOZ, DEI PROGRAMS, DEMOCRATS, DONALD TRUMP, DRUDGE RETORT, EMOLUMENTS CLAUSE OF THE CONSTITUTION, FACEBOOK, FBI, FIRST AMENDMENT, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FLETCHER KNEBEL, GAVIN NEWSOM, GAZA, GREENLAND, GULF OF MEXICO, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, immigration, IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT (ICE), INSPECTORS GENERAL, IVANKA TRUMP, JANUARY 6 COUP ATTEMPT, JOHN T. GARNER, JOSEPH STALIN, KIM JONG-UN, LANCE DODES, LIBEL, MEDIA MATTERS, MICHAEL COHEN, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NARCISSISM, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NIGHT AT CAMP DAVID, NPR, NUCLEAR WEAPONS, OBAMACARE, PARANOIA, PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, PSYCHOSIS, QATAR, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, ROBERT S. MUELLER, ROD ROSENSTEIN, RUSSIA, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SOCIOPATHY, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE DANGEROUS CASE OF DONALD TRUMP (BOOK), THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE MEDIA, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWITTER, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, VIETNAM, VLADIMIR PUTIN, WIRETAPPING, WONKETTE, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZTION (WHO)
In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 8, 2025 at 12:24 am
“Is Donald Trump simply crazy, or is he crazy like a fox?”
That was the question that Bandy X. Lee, an assistant clinical psychiatry professor at the Yale School of Medicine, wanted to answer.
And she tried to do so as the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.
“It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to notice that our president is mentally compromised,” she and colleague Judith Lewis Herman asserted in the book’s prologue.
According to Dr. Craig Malkin, a Lecturer in Psychology for Harvard Medical School and a licensed psychologist, Trump is a pathological narcissist:
“Pathological narcissism begins,” Malkin writes, “when people become so addicted to feeling special that, just like with any drug, they’ll do anything to get their ‘high,’ including lie, steal, cheat, betray and even hurt those closest to them.
“When they can’t let go of their need to be admired or recognized, they have to bend or invent a reality in which they remain special despite all messages to the contrary. In point of fact, they become dangerously psychotic. It’s just not always obvious until it’s too late.”
Lance Dodes, a retired psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School, believes that Trump is a sociopath: “The failure of normal empathy is central to sociopathy, which is marked by an absence of guilt, intentional manipulation and controlling or even sadistically harming others for personal power or gratification.”
But an observer didn’t need to be a psychiatrist to feel frightened by Trump’s behavior at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on March 2, 2019.
For two hours, in National Harbor, Maryland, Trump delivered the longest address (so far) of his first term as President—and of any American President.
“You know, I’m totally off script right now,” Trump said early on. “This is how I got elected, by being off script.”
And from the moment he embraced an American flag as though he wanted to hump it, it was clear: He was “totally off script.”
“How many times did you hear, for months and months, ‘There is no way to 270?’ You know what that means, right? ‘There is no way to 270.'”
Once again, Trump reveals his obsession with his win in 2016—as if no one else had ever been elected President.
“If you tell a joke, if you’re sarcastic, if you’re having fun with the audience, if you’re on live television with millions of people and 25,000 people in an arena, and if you say something like, ‘Russia, please, if you can, get us Hillary Clinton’s emails. Please, Russia, please.'”
Here he’s trying to “spin” his infamous invitation to hackers in Vladimir Putin’s Russia to intervene in an American Presidential election by obtaining the emails of his campaign rival. Which they did that same day.
“So now we’re waiting for a report [from the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller] and we’ll find out whether or not, and who we’re dealing with. We’re waiting for a report by people that weren’t elected.”
It doesn’t matter to Trump that America’s foremost enemy—Russia—tried to influence a Presidential election. What matters to him is that the report might end his Presidency.
“Those red hats—and white ones. The key is in the color. The key is what it says. ‘Make America Great Again’ is what it says. Right? Right?”
Color matters. Words, ideas don’t.
“Now, Robert Mueller never received a vote, and neither did the person that appointed him. And as you know, the attorney general says, ‘I’m going to recuse myself.'”
Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller and Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were career Justice Department officials. They weren’t voted into office.
Robert Mueller
“Number one, I’m in love, and you’re in love. We’re all in love together. There’s so much love in this room, it’s easy to talk. You can talk your heart out. You really could. There’s love in this room. You can talk your heart out. It’s easy. It’s easy. It’s easy.”
Trump apparently finds it easy to fall in love—with Right-wing audiences and Communist dictators such as Kim Jong-Un.
“And from the day we came down the escalator, I really don’t believe we’ve had an empty seat at any arena, at any stadium. They did the same thing at our big inauguration speech. You take a look at those crowds.”
Once again, he must brag about how popular he is and how many people want to listen to him.
“A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people. And they are. They are the enemy of the people. Because they have no sources, they just make ’em up when there are none.”
By January 20, 2020, The Washington Post found that Trump had made “16,241 ‘false or misleading claims” in his first three years in office. He is in no position to talk about integrity.
“But we’re going to have regulation. It’s going to be really strong and really good and we’re going to protect our environment and we’re going to protect the safety of our people and our workers, OK?”
To “protect our environment,” Trump appointed Andrew R. Wheeler, a former coal company lobbyist, to head the Environmental Protection Agency.
ABC NEWS, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BANDY X. LEE, BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP, BLOOMBERG, BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, BUZZFEED, CANADA, CBS NEWS, CHRIS KREBS, CIA, CNN, CONSERVATIVE POLITICLA ACTION CONFERENCE (CPAC), CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREU, CRAIG MALKIN, CROOKS AND LIARS, CYBERSECURITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY AGENCY (CISA), DAILY KOZ, DEI PROGRAMS, DEMOCRATS, DONALD TRUMP, DRUDGE RETORT, EMOLUMENTS CLAUSE OF THE CONSTITUTION, FACEBOOK, FBI, FIRST AMENDMENT, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FLETCHER KNEBEL, GAVIN NEWSOM, GAZA, GREENLAND, GULF OF MEXICO, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, immigration, IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT (ICE), INSPECTORS GENERAL, IVANKA TRUMP, JANUARY 6 COUP ATTEMPT, JOHN T. GARNER, JOSEPH STALIN, KIM JONG-UN, LANCE DODES, LIBEL, MEDIA MATTERS, MICHAEL COHEN, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NARCISSISM, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NIGHT AT CAMP DAVID, NPR, NUCLEAR WEAPONS, OBAMACARE, PARANOIA, PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, PSYCHOSIS, QATAR, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, ROBERT S. MUELLER, ROD ROSENSTEIN, RUSSIA, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SOCIOPATHY, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE DANGEROUS CASE OF DONALD TRUMP (BOOK), THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE MEDIA, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWITTER, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, VIETNAM, VLADIMIR PUTIN, WIRETAPPING, WONKETTE, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZTION (WHO)
In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 7, 2025 at 12:12 am
What would happen if the President of the United States went stark-raving mad?
That is the premise of the 1965 novel, Night at Camp David, by Fletcher Knebel.
At the time of its release, its plot was considered so over-the-top as to be worthy of science fiction:
Iowa Democratic Senator Jim MacVeagh is summoned to Camp David, the Presidential retreat, by President Mark Hollenbach. MacVeagh is expected to become Hollenbach’s next Vice President. But he becomes alarmed that Hollenbach is clearly suffering from intense paranoia.
Hollenbach wants to develop a closer relationship between the United States and Russia—while cutting ties with American allies in Europe. Moreover, he believes the American news media are conspiring against him with his political enemies.
Only one person possesses evidence that Hollenbach is losing his grip on sanity—his mistress, Rita. Desperate to retain his power, Hollenbach orders the FBI to investigate both MacVeagh and Rita.
So why was a 53-year-old novel re-released in 2018? The answer lay in two words: Donald Trump.
In a November 30, 2018 review of Night at Camp David, Tom McCarthy, national affairs correspondent for the British newspaper, The Guardian, wrote:
“The current president has seen crowds where none exist, deployed troops to answer no threat, attacked national institutions – the military, the justice department, the judiciary, the vote, the rule of law, the press – tried to prosecute his political enemies, elevated bigots, oppressed minorities, praised despots while insulting global allies and wreaked diplomatic havoc from North Korea to Canada.
“He stays up half the night watching TV and tweeting about it, then wakes up early to tweet some more, in what must be the most remarkable public diary of insecurity, petty vindictiveness, duplicity and scattershot focus by a major head of state in history.”
And the nightmare isn’t over.
Among the outrages Trump has committed since returning to power on January 20:
- Pardoned about 1,500 of his followers who violently tried to overturn the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election in the January 6, 2021 attack on Congress. Move than 250 of those pardoned had been convicted of assaulting police.
- Withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO).
- Withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement.
- Ordered the dismissal of 5,000 FBI agents who investigated his incitement of the January 6 riot and his illegal hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
- Declared “a national emergency” targeting migrants—legal and illegal.
- Tried to cancel birthright citizenship—enshrined within the United States Constitution— for U.S.-born children.
- Demanded a military parade for his 79th birthday, poorly disguised as a salute to the 250th anniversary of the United States Army.
- Fired without cause the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
- Angrily fired the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics following a weak jobs report, triggering fears about his extortionate tariff policy.
Donald Trump
- Demanded that the media refer to the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America” and banned the Associated Press from the White House for refusing to do so.
- Ordered the closure of all Federal Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility offices.
- Fired the inspectors general from more than a dozen federal agencies.
- Demanded that Canada become the 51st state and aggressively raised tariffs on Canadian goods.
- Aggressively stated that he wanted the United States to acquire Greenland, its longtime ally.
- Issued executive orders revoking the security clearance of Chris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Krebs’ “crime”: Preventing lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms from swaying the 2020 Presidential election to Trump.
- Threatened Harvard University with the loss of billions of dollars in federal funding, claiming that 2023 student protests about Gaza violated the civil rights of Jewish students.
- Accepted a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar for his personal use, a violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
Trump’s vindictiveness, his narcissism, his compulsive aggression, his complaints that his “enemies” in government and the press are trying to destroy him, have caused many to ask: Could the President of the United States be suffering from mental illness?
One who has dared to answer this question is John D. Gartner, a practicing psychotherapist.
John D. Gartner
Gartner graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, received his Ph.D in clinical psychology from the University of Massachusetts, and served as a part-time assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical School for 28 years.
During an interview by U.S. News & World Report (published on January 27, 2017), Gartner said: “Donald Trump is dangerously mentally ill and temperamentally incapable of being president.”
Gartner said that Trump suffers from “malignant narcissism,” whose symptoms include:
- anti-social behavior
- sadism
- aggressiveness
- paranoia
- grandiosity.
“We’ve seen enough public behavior by Donald Trump now that we can make this diagnosis indisputably,” says Gartner, who admits he has not personally examined Trump.
More of that behavior was on full display on March 2, 2019 at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, National Harbor, Maryland.
For more than two hours, Trump delivered the longest speech (so far) of his first term as President to his fanatically Right-wing audience.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2026 MIDTERM ELECTIONS, 2028 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BC NEWS, BLOOMBERG, BLUESKY, BOB SALLADAY, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CNN, CORY BOOKER, CROOKS AND LIARS, CUCK, DAILY KOS, DEMOCRATS, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, DONALD TRUMP, ELON MUSK, FBI, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, GAVIN NEWSOM, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HISPANICS, HUFFINGTON POST, immigration, IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT, KATIE MILLER, LIBERALS, MAGA, MEDIA MATTERS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, PETER SAGE, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REINHARD HEYDRICH, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SS, STEVEN CHEUNG, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, X
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 6, 2025 at 12:10 am
On July 11, Federal Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong ordered the Trump administration to halt its indiscriminate immigration arrests across California.
Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s White House deputy chief of policy and homeland security advisor, was outraged.
Miller has been called one of the most powerful officials in the second Trump administration. According to the Wall Street Journal, he “has written or edited every executive order that Trump has signed.”
Miller now acts as the driving force behind Trump’s effort to arrest at least 3,000 Hispanics every day.
On July 12, he responded on X:
“The ruling has just been issued. A communist judge in LA has ordered ICE to report directly to her and radical left NGOs — not the president. This is another act of insurrection against the United States and its sovereign people.”
Stephen Miller
And that led California Governor Gavin Newsom to respond to Miller on X:
“This fascist cuck in DC continues his assault on democracy and the Constitution, and his attempt to replace the sovereignty of the people with autocracy. Sorry the Constitution hurt your feelings, Stephen. Cry harder.”
Newsom defended his language at a later news conference: “I don’t think they understand any other kind of language, so I have no apologies for standing tall and firm and pushing back against their cruelty.”
Mainstream liberals were stunned.
On July 20, the Los Angeles Times mourned: “Forger the high road: Newsom Takes the Fight to Trump and his allies.”
And the story noted: “The MAGA-embraced epithet from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s official press office in response, however, was hardly typical for a Democratic politician.
“Popular among the far right and the gutters of social media, the term is used to insult liberals as weak and is also short for ‘cuckold,’ which refers to the husband of an unfaithful wife.
“The low blow sanctioned by a potential 2028 presidential candidate set a new paradigm for the political left that has long embraced Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high” motto to rise above the callousness of Trump and his acolytes.”
Gavin Newsom
Following that mantra had cost Democrats the 2016 election and that of 2024—as well as the United States Senate and House of Representatives.
But some Democrats have decided it’s time to fight fire with fire.
Questioned on the use of “Politically Incorrect” language by the governor, Newsom’s Director of Communications Izzy Gardon, said: “We were inspired by the White House’s use of the term.”
In June, Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, had called Newsom “the biggest cuck in politics.” And President Trump has repeatedly referred to the governor as “Gavin Newscum.”
Bob Salladay, Newson’s top communications advisor, added: “Sometimes the best way to challenge a bully is to punch them in the metaphorical face.
“These tactics may seem extreme to some and they are, but there’s a significant difference here: We’re targeting powerful forces that are ripping apart this country, using their own words and tactics. Trump and Stephen Miller are attacking the powerless like every fascist bully before them.”
By calling Miller a “fascist cuck,” Newsom was stealing a page from the Right-wing’s playbook.
In this case, “cuck” clearly refers to unsubstantiated online rumors that Miller’s wife, Katie, became romantically involved with Elon Musk after he set up the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Musk selected her as a DOGE official. And when the billionaire left DOGE in May, Katie Miller left with him—to take a job at xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company.
Katie Miller
The Democratic party’s official X account posted a “cuck chair” meme, representing a hotel room chair where a husband or wife would sit while watching a partner have sex with someone else.
Political blogger Peter Sage had mixed feelings about Newsom’s foray into Trump-style rhetoric:
“I am not a big fan of Newsom adopting the Trump tactic of trolling and name-calling. There is a me-too quality to it. But my instincts here may be out of date for this media environment.
“Maybe trolling the other party needs to be everybody’s brand in a world where people get news via social media.
“Policy discussion bores most people. Many people think they want serious political discussion of the issues, but people at the margin who decide elections respond to quick shots that position a politician in the political universe. One defines oneself by one’s fights.”
In April, a Pew Research Center study found that a majority of Democrats believe in pushing back against Trump rather than finding common ground with him.
This division was demonstrated on July 29 by New Jersey United States Senator Cory Booker, who screamed at his Democratic colleagues that they needed “a wake-up call!”
He angrily blocked the passage of several bills—popular with Democrats and Republicans—to fund police programs. His reason: The Trump’s administration had withheld law enforcement money from Democratic states.
“This is the problem with Democrats in America right now,” Booker yelled, “we’re willing to be complicit with Donald Trump!”
Only the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections—and, more importantly, that of the 2028 Presidential one—will decide which was a better tactic for Democrats: Attempted conciliation with Trump—or brutal confrontation.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2026 MIDTERM ELECTIONS, 2028 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BC NEWS, BLOOMBERG, BLUESKY, BOB SALLADAY, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CNN, CORY BOOKER, CROOKS AND LIARS, CUCK, DAILY KOS, DEMOCRATS, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, DONALD TRUMP, ELON MUSK, FBI, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, GAVIN NEWSOM, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HISPANICS, HUFFINGTON POST, immigration, IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT, KATIE MILLER, LIBERALS, MAGA, MEDIA MATTERS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, PETER SAGE, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REINHARD HEYDRICH, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SS, STEVEN CHEUNG, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, X
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 5, 2025 at 12:13 am
Cuck: 1. a weak or servile man (often used as a contemptuous term for a man with moderate or progressive political views); 2. a man whose wife is sexually unfaithful; a cuckold.
It’s a term often used by Right-wingers to attack the masculinity of their enemies.
So imagine how Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s White House deputy chief of policy and homeland security advisor, felt when the term was trained on him.
And by no less a major political figure than California Governor Gavin Newsom.
Miller has been called one of the most powerful officials in the second administration of President Donald Trump. According to the Wall Street Journal, he “has written or edited every executive order that Trump has signed.”
And as Reinhard Heydrich, second-in-command of Adolf Hitler’s Schutzstaffel, or SS, acted as the architect of the Holocaust, Miller now acts as the driving force behind Trump’s wholesale effort to arrest at least 3,000 Hispanics every day.
Stephen Miller
During an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Miller claimed that illegal aliens were a “clear and present danger” to national security, and charged that federal judges were “telling President Trump he can’t deport these threats from our community.
“This is the choice facing every American: Either we all side and get behind President Trump to remove these terrorists from our communities, or we let a rogue, radical-left judiciary shut down the machinery of our national security apparatus.”
Miller orchestrated the June 6 raids on Los Angeles by agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
On July 2, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its sub-agency, ICE. Its introduction reads:
“Since early June, this District [Los Angeles] has been under siege.
“Masked federal agents, sometimes dressed in military-style clothing, have conducted indiscriminate immigration operations, flooding street corners, bus stops, parking lots, agricultural sites, day laborer corners, and other places, setting up checkpoints, and entering businesses, interrogating residents as they are working, looking for work, or otherwise trying to go about their daily lives, and taking people away.
“The raids in this District follow a common, systematic pattern. Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force, and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from.
“If they hesitate, attempt to leave, or do not answer the questions to the satisfaction of the agents, they are detained, sometimes tackled, handcuffed, and/or taken into custody. In these interactions, agents typically have no prior information about the individual and no warrant of any kind.
“Those who have borne the brunt of Defendants’ heavy-handed pattern of unlawful conduct include day laborers, car wash workers, farm workers, street vendors, service workers, caregivers and others who form the lifeblood of communities across Southern California.
“Over a thousand residents in [Los Angeles] have already been impacted, including a shocking (though hardly surprising) number of U.S. citizens and individuals lawfully present in the country.”
ICE agents in Los Angeles
The ACLU lawsuit specifically blamed Miller for these outrages:
“Federal immigration enforcement is constrained by law. But since the federal government began its mass immigration enforcement operations in [Los Angeles] on June 6, 2025, all of these legal requirements have given way to one overriding consideration: numbers, pure numbers. Quantity over quality.
”In late May, the White House and the Department of Homeland Security imposed a quota of 3,000 immigration-related arrests per day—with ‘consequences for not hitting arrest targets.’ In order to reach this target, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller directed high-level officials to change their approach to stops and arrests in the field.
“Agents and officers, according to him, should no longer conduct targeted operations based on investigations. Instead, they should ‘just go out there and arrest [unauthorized noncitizens] by rounding up people in public spaces like ‘Home Depot’ and ‘7-Eleven’ convenience stores.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom immediately protested the raids. They charged that Trump’s dispatching 4,700 federal troops to Los Angeles—4,000 National Guardsmen and 700 Marines—was both unnecessary and inflammatory.
Karen Bass
On June 9, Newsom sued the Trump administration for what he called an illegal federalization of the California National Guard. But a three-judge appeals court panel allowed Trump to maintain the Guard in Los Angeles.
On July 11, Federal Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong ordered the Trump administration to halt its indiscriminate immigration raids across California.
Concluding there was a “mountain of evidence” to prove that ICE was systematically targeting brown-skinned people in Southern California, she issued temporary orders which:
- Prohibited immigration agents from arresting people without reasonable suspicion that they were in the country illegally;
- Restricted ICE from relying on factors like race, language, or occupation when determining reasonable suspicion; and
- Required agents to allow detainees immediate access to legal counsel.
On July 12, Miller responded on X: “The ruling has just been issued. A communist judge in LA has ordered ICE to report directly to her and radical left NGOs — not the president. This is another act of insurrection against the United States and its sovereign people.”
ABC NEWS, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BANDY X. LEE, BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP, BLOOMBERG, BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, BUZZFEED, CANADA, CBS NEWS, CHRIS KREBS, CIA, CNN, CONSERVATIVE POLITICLA ACTION CONFERENCE (CPAC), CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREU, CRAIG MALKIN, CROOKS AND LIARS, CYBERSECURITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY AGENCY (CISA), DAILY KOZ, DEI PROGRAMS, DEMOCRATS, DONALD TRUMP, DRUDGE RETORT, EMOLUMENTS CLAUSE OF THE CONSTITUTION, FACEBOOK, FBI, FIRST AMENDMENT, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FLETCHER KNEBEL, GAVIN NEWSOM, GAZA, GREENLAND, GULF OF MEXICO, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, immigration, IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT (ICE), INSPECTORS GENERAL, IVANKA TRUMP, JANUARY 6 COUP ATTEMPT, JOHN T. GARNER, JOSEPH STALIN, KIM JONG-UN, LANCE DODES, LIBEL, MEDIA MATTERS, MICHAEL COHEN, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NARCISSISM, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NIGHT AT CAMP DAVID, NPR, NUCLEAR WEAPONS, OBAMACARE, PARANOIA, PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, PSYCHOSIS, QATAR, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, ROBERT S. MUELLER, ROD ROSENSTEIN, RUSSIA, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SOCIOPATHY, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE DANGEROUS CASE OF DONALD TRUMP (BOOK), THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE MEDIA, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWITTER, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, VIETNAM, VLADIMIR PUTIN, WIRETAPPING, WONKETTE, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZTION (WHO)
In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 4, 2025 at 1:28 am
“Is Donald Trump simply crazy, or is he crazy like a fox?”
That was the question that Bandy X. Lee, an assistant clinical psychiatry professor at the Yale School of Medicine, wanted to answer.
And she tried to do so as the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.
“It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to notice that our president is mentally compromised,” she and colleague Judith Lewis Herman asserted in the book’s prologue.
According to Dr. Craig Malkin, a Lecturer in Psychology for Harvard Medical School and a licensed psychologist, Trump is a pathological narcissist:
“Pathological narcissism begins,” Malkin writes, “when people become so addicted to feeling special that, just like with any drug, they’ll do anything to get their ‘high,’ including lie, steal, cheat, betray and even hurt those closest to them.
“When they can’t let go of their need to be admired or recognized, they have to bend or invent a reality in which they remain special despite all messages to the contrary. In point of fact, they become dangerously psychotic. It’s just not always obvious until it’s too late.”
Lance Dodes, a retired psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School, believes that Trump is a sociopath: “The failure of normal empathy is central to sociopathy, which is marked by an absence of guilt, intentional manipulation and controlling or even sadistically harming others for personal power or gratification.”
But an observer didn’t need to be a psychiatrist to feel frightened by Trump’s behavior at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on March 2, 2019.
For two hours, in National Harbor, Maryland, Trump delivered the longest address (so far) of his first term as President—and of any American President.
“You know, I’m totally off script right now,” Trump said early on. “This is how I got elected, by being off script.”
And from the moment he embraced an American flag as though he wanted to hump it, it was clear: He was “totally off script.”
“How many times did you hear, for months and months, ‘There is no way to 270?’ You know what that means, right? ‘There is no way to 270.'”
Once again, Trump reveals his obsession with his win in 2016—as if no one else had ever been elected President.
“If you tell a joke, if you’re sarcastic, if you’re having fun with the audience, if you’re on live television with millions of people and 25,000 people in an arena, and if you say something like, ‘Russia, please, if you can, get us Hillary Clinton’s emails. Please, Russia, please.'”
Here he’s trying to “spin” his infamous invitation to hackers in Vladimir Putin’s Russia to intervene in an American Presidential election by obtaining the emails of his campaign rival. Which they did that same day.
“So now we’re waiting for a report [from the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller] and we’ll find out whether or not, and who we’re dealing with. We’re waiting for a report by people that weren’t elected.”
It doesn’t matter to Trump that America’s foremost enemy—Russia—tried to influence a Presidential election. What matters to him is that the report might end his Presidency.
“Those red hats—and white ones. The key is in the color. The key is what it says. ‘Make America Great Again’ is what it says. Right? Right?”
Color matters. Words, ideas don’t.
“Now, Robert Mueller never received a vote, and neither did the person that appointed him. And as you know, the attorney general says, ‘I’m going to recuse myself.'”
Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller and Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were career Justice Department officials. They weren’t voted into office.
Robert Mueller
“Number one, I’m in love, and you’re in love. We’re all in love together. There’s so much love in this room, it’s easy to talk. You can talk your heart out. You really could. There’s love in this room. You can talk your heart out. It’s easy. It’s easy. It’s easy.”
Trump apparently finds it easy to fall in love—with Right-wing audiences and Communist dictators such as Kim Jong-Un.
“And from the day we came down the escalator, I really don’t believe we’ve had an empty seat at any arena, at any stadium. They did the same thing at our big inauguration speech. You take a look at those crowds.”
Once again, he must brag about how popular he is and how many people want to listen to him.
“A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people. And they are. They are the enemy of the people. Because they have no sources, they just make ’em up when there are none.”
By January 20, 2020, The Washington Post found that Trump had made “16,241 ‘false or misleading claims” in his first three years in office. He is in no position to talk about integrity.
“But we’re going to have regulation. It’s going to be really strong and really good and we’re going to protect our environment and we’re going to protect the safety of our people and our workers, OK?”
To “protect our environment,” Trump appointed Andrew R. Wheeler, a former coal company lobbyist, to head the Environmental Protection Agency.
ADOLF HITLER, ALEX PADILLA, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BC NEWS, BLOOMBERG, BLUESKY, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CELLPHONES, CNN, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, DONALD TRUMP, FBI, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FRANKIE LOCASCIO, GEORGE FLOYD, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HISPANICS, HOLOCAUST, HUFFINGTON POST, immigration, IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT, IMMIGRATION AND NEUTRALITY ACT, JEWS, JOHN GOTTI, JOSEPH BIDEN, KRISTI NOEM, MAFIA, MEDIA MATTERS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, MUSLIM TRAVEL BAN, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NIGHT AND FOG ORDER, NPR, NUREMBERG LAWS, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, RODNEY KING, SALON, SAMMY GRAVANO, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, THOMAS HOMAN, TIME, TRAVEL BAN, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, UPI, USA TODAY, WHITES, WORLD WAR ii, X
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 30, 2025 at 12:10 am
Even natural-born American citizens—such as Kenny Laynez—now risk arrest and detention by overzealous agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
On May 2, Florida Highway Patrol officers and Border Patrol agents stopped the 18-year-old landscaper and his three coworkers—one of them his mother—as they drove past luxury buildings to a job in Palm Beach County.
They—with the exception of Laynez’ mother—were arrested and taken to the Riviera Beach facility.
After almost four hours, a female officer asked him to unlock his cellphone, saying that she needed to see if he had filmed videos of the arrest.
Which, in fact, he had.
Laynez refused to open it—and she threatened to press charges if he didn’t.
But then a supervisor appeared and said that Laynez wasn’t supposed to be in that room because he is a U.S. citizen.
After Laynez was released six hours later, he still had the video on his cellphone. He shared this—to back up his account—with the Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Network.
Laynez pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of obstruction without violence simply to get the incident over with. He entered a pretrial diversion program on June 4. The state will drop the charges July 30 if he completes the program by then.
His coworkers—as illegal aliens—were transferred to the Krome Detention Center in Miami. They are free on bail but fear arrest if they appear in court.
* * * * *
There’s a reason for such cruelty—the same one that existed for Jews in Nazi Germany before World War II.
Contrary to popular belief, Adolf Hitler didn’t initially decide to exterminate the Jews—in Germany or throughout the rest of Europe. He simply wanted to evict them from Germany. And he employed a wide range of methods to convince them to leave.
Adolf Hitler
The infamous Nuremberg Laws, for example, stripped Jews of German citizenship, forbade marriage between Jews and non-Jews, and barred them from such professions as the judiciary, teaching, law, medicine, acting, music and journalism.
Jewish shops were picketed by members of Hitler’s menacing Stormtroopers, often holding signs that read: “DON’T BUY FROM JEWS.”
Between 1933, when the Nazi regime came to power, and the start of World War II in 1939. approximately 282,000 Jews emigrated from Germany. Those who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—leave faced increasing brutalities and deprivations—ultimately culminating in the Holocaust.
Like Adolf Hitler, President Donald Trump is sending a message to Hispanics—both illegal aliens and legal citizens: “Get out! There is no place for you in the sort of America I am creating.”
And many are no doubt leaving before they can be abused and arrested.
Another similarity between the Hitler and Trump regimes: Both are marked by their attempts to maintain secrecy over their secret police operations.
Donald Trump
For example: On December 7, 1941, Hitler issued the “Nacht und Nebel” (“Night and Fog”) decree. It allowed German authorities to abduct individuals in occupied territories who were accused of “endangering German security.”
Thus, they effectively vanished without a trace.
The same motive lies behind the mania of ICE officers to confiscate cellphones and erase any footage taken of the tactics they use in making arrests.
Their agents are almost universally masked, heavily-armed, wearing military-style clothing, and descend on their unarmed targets in overwhelming numbers.
If their targets hesitate, attempt to leave, or do not answer the questions to the satisfaction of the agents, they are detained, sometimes tackled, handcuffed, and/or taken into custody.
The 1991 police beating of motorist Rodney King and the 2020 police murder of George Floyd aroused national fury and led to widespread rioting. Thus, ICE seeks to hide its often brutal, even unlawful tactics from public scrutiny.
ICE officers
Eight years ago, Trump invoked an obscure authority, Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, to “suspend the entry” of nationals of multiple Muslim-majority nations. Two versions of the ban were initially struck down in court, but the Supreme Court upheld a third version.
This stayed in effect until President Joseph Biden terminated it in 2021.
Upon taking office again on January 20, Trump reinstated his Court-authorized travel ban, targeting 19 countries and potentially blocking more than 125,000 people each year from entering the United States—either temporarily or permanently.
Tellingly, those are countries whose populations are Islamic, African, Hispanic or Asian—not white, English-speaking ones:
- Afghanistan
- Burma
- Chad
- Republic of the Congo
- Equatorial Guinea
- Eritrea
- Haiti
- Iran
- Libya
- Somalia
- Sudan
- Yemen
- Burundi
- Cuba
- Laos
- Sierra Leone
- Togo
- Turkmenistan
- Venezuela
Additionally, Trump has fired more than 50 immigration judges—from senior leaders to new appointees.
Republicans officially claim immigrants are welcome “if they come in legally.” But in reality they seek to expel illegal immigrants and block those who wish to enter legally.
Demographers estimate that around 2045, white people will become a minority in the United States. This is being driven by two factors: a declining white population and increasing minority populations.
During the 2016 Presidential campaign, many of Trump’s supporters held up signs or wore T-shirts reading: ‘MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN.”
That, ultimately, is the goal that Trump is now vigorously pursuing.
ADOLF HITLER, ALEX PADILLA, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BC NEWS, BLOOMBERG, BLUESKY, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CELLPHONES, CNN, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, DONALD TRUMP, FBI, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FRANKIE LOCASCIO, GEORGE FLOYD, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HISPANICS, HOLOCAUST, HUFFINGTON POST, immigration, IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT, IMMIGRATION AND NEUTRALITY ACT, JEWS, JOHN GOTTI, JOSEPH BIDEN, KRISTI NOEM, MAFIA, MEDIA MATTERS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, MUSLIM TRAVEL BAN, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NIGHT AND FOG ORDER, NPR, NUREMBERG LAWS, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, RODNEY KING, SALON, SAMMY GRAVANO, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, THOMAS HOMAN, TIME, TRAVEL BAN, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, UPI, USA TODAY, WHITES, WORLD WAR 11, X
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 29, 2025 at 12:42 am
On July 2, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its sub-agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE):
The Trump administration claims this is a crackdown on “the worst of the worst.” But according to the ACLU lawsuit the majority of those “stopped and arrested in the raids have not been targeted in any meaningful sense of the word at all, except on the basis of their skin color and occupation.
“Those who have borne the brunt of Defendants’ heavy-handed pattern of unlawful conduct include day laborers, car wash workers, farm workers, street vendors, service workers, caregivers and others who form the lifeblood of communities across Southern California.
“Over a thousand residents in [Los Angeles] have already been impacted, including a shocking (though hardly surprising) number of U.S. citizens and individuals lawfully present in the country.”
On May 2, Florida Highway Patrol officers and Border Patrol agents stopped 18-year-old landscaper Kenny Laynez and three coworkers—one of them his mother—as they drove past luxury buildings to a job in Palm Beach County.
An officer rolled down a tinted window and signaled to his mother—who was driving—to pull over. The officer asked where they were headed. Laynez said they were going to work and the officer took his mother’s license and the truck’s registration and insurance.
The officer returned and said his mother’s license was suspended.
The officer asked if they were “illegal.”
Laynez said they were not, although two of his co-workers—Esdras and Marroquin—were, and asked what that had to do with the license.
A van pulled up and more armed agents swarmed the truck. A female officer approached his window and ordered them in Spanish to shut off their phones.
Instead, Laynez—assuming that something ominous was going to happen—started recording with his phone:
OFFICER (in Spanish): Who in here is illegal? Whoever takes longer to answer will get more charges and spend more time in jail.
One of the co-workers—Esdras—raised his hand.
A male officer ordered them to open the door.
LAYNEZ: Wait, hold up. You don’t have the right to do that.
OFFICER (laughing): I don’t have a right?
He reached inside the car and opened the door. An agent grabbed Esdras by the hair and placed his neck in the crook of his arm.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents
Another agent pulled Marroquin out by the leg and tightened his hands around his neck.
Laynez stepped out of the car, but an officer who had ordered him to get on the ground pushed him from behind, twisted his arms and forced him to kneel on the pavement.
Esdras stood rigidly as three officers tried to force him to the ground. They told him in English to lie down, while Laynez urged him in Spanish not to resist.
An officer pulled out a yellow Taser and fired twice into Esdras’ stomach, slamming him to the pavement.
An agent forced Laynez to lie on the pavement. An officer later ordered Laynez to stand up
LAYNEZ: I am not going to get up because you are going to do to me whatever you were doing to Esdras. That is not how you arrest people.
OFFICER: Be quiet.
LAYNEZ: I’ve got the right to talk. I was born and raised here.
OFFICER: You have no rights here. You are a “Migo,” brother.
An officer said that Laynez’s coworker was resisting arrest, so he should be charged: “He was being a dick right now. That is why we tased.”
The agents confirmed Laynez’s mother had legal status and issued her a ticket for driving with a suspended license. Before leaving, an officer held her driver’s license to her face and tore it in half.
Although the officers were shown a picture of Laynez’ Social Security card, they arrested him.
He was taken to the Riviera Beach facility. About four hours later, he was taken to another room. A female officer asked for his birthdate three times, although he had written it down to another officer. Then she produced a ziplocked bag with his phone, wallet and headphones.
She asked him to unlock it, adding that she needed to see if he had filmed videos of the arrest.
Laynez refused to open it and set it down on the table. The officer said they would wait until he opened it, and threatened to press charges if he didn’t unlock his phone.
But then a supervisor appeared and said that Laynez wasn’t supposed to be in that room because he is a U.S. citizen. The supervisor took Laynez’s fingerprints and said it was only to leave a record that he had been in the facility.
Then he told Laynez he must sign some paperwork and appear in court.
The arrest report stated that Laynez was being charged with nonviolent police obstruction. But the police report doesn’t mention that Laynez resisted.
Laynez pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of obstruction without violence simply to get the incident over with. He entered a pretrial diversion program on June 4. The state will drop the charges on July 30 if he completes the program by then.
ADOLF HITLER, ALEX PADILLA, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BC NEWS, BLOOMBERG, BLUESKY, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CELLPHONES, CNN, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, DONALD TRUMP, FBI, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FRANKIE LOCASCIO, GEORGE FLOYD, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HISPANICS, HOLOCAUST, HUFFINGTON POST, immigration, IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT, IMMIGRATION AND NEUTRALITY ACT, JEWS, JOHN GOTTI, JOSEPH BIDEN, KRISTI NOEM, MAFIA, MEDIA MATTERS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, MUSLIM TRAVEL BAN, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NIGHT AND FOG ORDER, NPR, NUREMBERG LAWS, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, RODNEY KING, SALON, SAMMY GRAVANO, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, THOMAS HOMAN, TIME, TRAVEL BAN, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, UPI, USA TODAY, WHITES, WORLD WAR 11, X
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 28, 2025 at 12:17 am
On July 2, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its sub-agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE):
“Since early June, this District [Los Angeles] has been under siege.
“Masked federal agents, sometimes dressed in military-style clothing, have conducted indiscriminate immigration operations, flooding street corners, bus stops, parking lots, agricultural sites, day laborer corners, and other places, setting up checkpoints, and entering businesses, interrogating residents as they are working, looking for work, or otherwise trying to go about their daily lives, and taking people away.
“The raids in this District follow a common, systematic pattern. Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force, and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from.
“If they hesitate, attempt to leave, or do not answer the questions to the satisfaction of the agents, they are detained, sometimes tackled, handcuffed, and/or taken into custody. In these interactions, agents typically have no prior information about the individual and no warrant of any kind.
“If agents make an arrest, contrary to federal law, they do not make any determination of whether a person poses a risk of flight before a warrant can be obtained. Also contrary to federal law, the agents do not identify themselves or explain why the individual is being arrested.
“Further, apparently to accommodate the sharp rise in arrests, the government has resorted to keeping individuals at what is supposed to be a short term processing center and ICE basement holding area in downtown Los Angeles, known as “B-18,” often for days.
“In these dungeon-like facilities, conditions are deplorable and unconstitutional. The government has also unlawfully deprived those arrested of access to counsel. Under such conditions, some of those arrested are pressured into accepting voluntary departure.”
Contrast this behavior with the way Mafia “Boss of all Bosses” John Gotti was arrested on December 11, 1990, when FBI agents and NYPD detectives raided the Ravenite Social Club in Manhattan.
They had arrest warrants for Gotti, boss of the Gambino Mafia Family, and his two lieutenants: Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, his underboss, or second-in-command, and Frankie Locascio, his Consigliere, or adviser.
Moreover, there was no mistaking that these were legitimate law enforcement agents: They wore jackets emblazoned with “FBI” or “NYPD,” showed their credentials, and didn’t hide their faces behind masks.
John Gotti
And when the three Mafiosi were taken to the Metropolitan Correctional Center, in Manhattan, New York City, they were allowed to call their attorneys.
Every nation has the right to control its borders and decide who has the right to enter—and under what conditions. But nations that pride themselves on adhering to the law should be held accountable with their law enforcement agencies flagrantly and routinely violate it.
On July 11, Thomas Homan, the designated “Border Czar” for Donald Trump’s second presidency, said during an interview on Fox News: “People need to understand ICE officers and Border Patrol don’t need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them.
“They just need the totality of the circumstances. They just got through our observation, you know, get articulable facts based on their location, their occupation, their physical appearance, their actions.”
Thomas Homan
This contradicted a statement made in court that week by Thomas Giles, the assistant director of ICE, that the standard for making arrests “is we need to determine probable cause and determine alienage.”
“And there you have it,” wrote Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who on June 12 was roughed up by security forces while trying to ask Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem questions at a press event.
“Under the Trump Administration, ICE and Border Patrol are being empowered to stop and question you based solely on how you look. No probable cause. No real reason. Just your ‘physical appearance.’ That’s not justice—it’s profiling.”
Even natural-born American citizens—such as Kenny Laynez—now risk arrest and detention by overzealous ICE agents.
According to the lawsuit filed by the ACLU, the reason for this is: “The government is aware that its actions are unconstitutional and contrary to officers’ training, but deliberately persists because this system allows it to coerce removals, avoid public accountability, and ultimately—given the limited bed space at longer-term detention facilities in the area—keep arrest numbers high.
“Federal immigration enforcement is constrained by law. But since the federal government began its mass immigration enforcement operations in [Los Angeles] on June 6, 2025, all of these legal requirements have given way to one overriding consideration: numbers, pure numbers. Quantity over quality.
”In late May, the White House and the Department of Homeland Security imposed a quota of 3,000 immigration-related arrests per day—with ‘consequences for not hitting arrest targets.’ In order to reach this target, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller directed high-level officials to change their approach to stops and arrests in the field.
“Agents and officers, according to him, should no longer conduct targeted operations based on investigations. Instead, they should ‘just go out there and arrest [unauthorized noncitizens] by rounding up people in public spaces like ‘Home Depot’ and ‘7-Eleven’ convenience stores.”
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
2008 PRESIDENTIAL RACE, 2012 PRESIDENTIAL RACE, 2016 PRESIDENTIAL RACE, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ABC NEWS, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, ANCHOR BABY, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BARACK OBAMA, BBC, BC NEWS, BILL CLINTON, BIRTHERS, BLOOMBERG, BLUESKY, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CITIZENSHIP, CNN, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DONALD TRUMP, FACEBOOK, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HUFFINGTON POST, ILLEGAL ALIENS, immigration, MEDIA MATTERS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, PEW RESEARCH CENTER, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAFAEL "TED" CRUZ, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE U.S. SUPREME COURT, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, X
THE EVIL THAT RIGHT-WING POLITICIANS DO
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on August 15, 2025 at 12:05 amDonald Trump’s all-out war on immigrants isn’t new. It’s been building for 10 years.
During his 2016 campaign for President, he gave Republican voters a taste of the terror to come if he reached the Oval Office.
It started when Rafael “Ted” Cruz, the United States Senator from Texas, accused his rival, Trump, then a billionaire businessman, of having “New York values”:
“Everyone understands that the values in New York City are socially liberal, pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage and focus on money and the media.”
Among Right-wingers, “liberal,” “pro-abortion” and “pro-gay” are the ultimate in insults.
But Donald Trump was quick to respond with an explosive charge of his own: Rafael Cruz was not an American citizen—-and therefore not eligible to be President.
What made this accusation so effective was Cruz’ having been born outside the United States—in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, to an American mother and a Cuban father.
Rafael “Ted” Cruz
The U.S. Constitution specifically states that “No person except a natural born citizen…shall be eligible to the office of President.”
Cruz has argued that because his mother was an American, he became an American citizen at birth. But courts have never ruled on the issue of what constitutes a “natural-born” citizen.
And, at a campaign event in Nashua, New Hampshire, Trump smacked Cruz with an even more incendiary attack:
“Ted Cruz may not be a US citizen, right? But he’s an anchor baby. No, Ted Cruz is an anchor baby in Canada. But Canada doesn’t accept anchor babies.”
“Anchor baby” is a Politically Incorrect term for usually poor, nonwhite aliens entering the United States to have a child born on American soil, which grants automatic citizenship.
And if the child is a citizen, its parents stand an excellent chance of being allowed to stay.
Trump asserts that children born in the United States to illegal aliens are not American citizens, as they are today considered under the law.
Donald Trump
At first, the issue of Cruz’ eligibility seemed confined to Republican politicians and those likely to vote for them. But then others outside the Right began weighing in.
Mary McManamon, a Constitutional law professor at Widener University’s Delaware Law School, concluded in an Op-Ed for The Washington Post:
“Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is not a natural-born citizen and therefore is not eligible to be president or vice president of the United States.”
How did this all start? With the ultimate target of Republican hatred—-Barack Obama.
Ever since Obama became a Presidential candidate in 2008, Republicans accused him of being ineligible to hold office.
Without a political scandal (such as Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky) to fasten on, the Republican party opted for slander: Obama was born in Kenya—not Honolulu, as his birth certificate clearly states—and thus was not an American citizen.
From this there could be only one conclusion: He would be an illegitimate President, and should be removed from office if elected.
And this smear campaign continued after he won the 2008 election. Right-wingers like Trump insisted that Obama “prove” his citizenship fitness to hold office.
During his first two years in office, Obama tried to ignore the charge.
But polls repeatedly showed that large segments of the country believed it. Thus was Adolf Hitler proved right: “The great masses of the people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.”
Finally, even Obama’s closest advisers warned him: You must address this and put it to rest.
So, on April 27, 2011, the President released the long-form version of his Hawaii birth certificate.
The long-form version of President Obama’s birth certificate
For the vast majority of Americans, this settled the issue. In 2012, to the fury of Republicans, Obama won a second, four-year term.
Fast forward to the 2016 Presidential race.
Donald Trump, seeking to destroy his foremost rival, lobbed the “anchor baby” charge against Rafael Cruz.
So long as Cruz stayed in the race, Trump continued to use the “birther” issue against him. And it continued to dog him, as it did Obama.
To most Americans, this conjures up the image of poor Mexicans flooding across the United States border to apply for welfare.
It’s a highly effective way to inflame the elderly, white voters who make up the base of the Republican party.
This has inflamed millions of Hispanic Americans—those who are here legally as well as those who are here illegally. And, in 2012, millions of Hispanics gave President Obama a second term.
Even so, the Pew Research Center shows that 48% of Latinos voted for Trump in 2024.
Majorities of Latino voters, regardless of age, said the economy was in bad shape. They wanted a bigger paycheck. And they were willing to re-elect a man who despised them in hopes of getting it.
The votes of elderly whites command the attention of Republican primary candidates. But Hispanics form one of the fastest-growing demographics, expected to increase from 19 percent to around 26 percent by 2060.
Trump’s slanders against the nationality of his political opponents and “mass deportations” campaign may come to haunt Republicans as they learn the truth of Shakespeare’s line: “The evil that men do lives after them.”
Share this: