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Let the show begin, Donald Trump!

Published : Monday, 22 July, 2019 at 12:00 AM  Count : 509

Nazarul Islam

Nazarul Islam

All this did not start with a bang! Just with a rhetoric...and a few terse words: 'go back to where you came from'. And now this has morphed into: 'if you don't like it, leave'. "They're very unhappy. All they do is 'complain,'" US President Donald Trump said at an America First business event.

'All I'm saying is if they're not happy here, they can leave.'
'They are the four progressives' The President of the most powerful country on the planet had spoken his mind! Democratic women are also known as 'the squad'. They have angered Mr Trump to the extent that he has exploded. Having already been accused of racist tweets, he has doubled down, accusing them of hating America.
'A lot of people love it': Trump had dug in, on a controversial tweet:
'If you hate our country, if you're not happy here, you can leave. And that's what I say all the time. That's what I said in a tweet, which I guess some people think is controversial. A lot of people love it by the way. A lot of people love it. But if you're not happy in the US, if you are complaining all the time, very simply, you can leave, you can leave right now', he has retorted.

Over the weekend, the President had tweeted that the elected American women should 'go back' to the 'crime-infested places from which they came'.
All of the women are US citizens. Three were born in America. The other exception is a Somalian who came to the US via a Kenyan refugee camp at age 12. Reporters questioned the President about his language and noted white nationalists found common cause on his point.

"That doesn't concern me, because many people agree with me," he said.
However, there is another reason why the President is doubling down here. It's a blatant campaign strategy. He's looking to capitalise on the Democratic Party's move to the left--led in part by the women he's targeting. 'If the Democrats want to gear their wagons around these four people, I think they're going to have a very tough election,' Mr Trump said to growing applause.
'don't think the people of the United States will stand for it.
'Our squad is big': congresswomen had hit back at Trump tweets. Trump hesitated to weigh in as the squad gained influence
The "squad" has been a force in the daily news cycle since they were elected in the 2018 midterms. Their popularity, in part, stems from their frequent criticisms of Mr Trump.

Mr Trump has spoken out about Ilhan Omar, who's been accused of making light of the threat of Al Qaeda and suggesting Jews buy influence in the US. He's made passing references to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's climate change policy, the Green New Deal. But mostly, Mr Trump has resisted speaking out about the women. Some say it's because he's worried attacks could backfire, amplifying their voices rather than muting them.

Last week he flipped that strategy, turning to another page from the Trump playbook: Use conflict to keep the media's gaze on you at all times. As the squad took up a beef with the highest-ranking Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, (in which Ms Ocasio-Cortez was accused of suggesting the House Speaker was a racist, no less) the cable news networks turned their heads from the President--until he tweeted.

If anything, Mr Trump's inflammatory tweets could serve to unify the schisming Democratic Party. Ms Pelosi wasted no time in proposing a House resolution to condemn the President's attacks, calling them 'disgraceful' and 'xenophobic'.
What's most surprising though, is that the stoush may also unify the Republicans.

Republicans were slow to respond. This is hardly the first time Mr Trump has made racist comments. His political profile was built in part by telling Americans that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. In his 2015 campaign announcement, Mr Trump referred to Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers.

As President, he made a point of saying there were some 'very fine people' in a crowd of white nationalists after the actions of one left a woman dead and dozens injured. But on all those occasions, Mr Trump was criticised by his own party for going too far. This time, Republicans were very slow to respond-- or even encouraging. Republican senator Lindsey Graham backed the substance of the President's comments, but suggested tackling policy issues would be a better approach.

"We all know that AOC and this crowd are a bunch of communists," he said in an interview with Fox News. 'They're anti-America. Don't get them. Aim higher. We don't need to know anything about them personally. Aim higher,'--the comments cap a week of immigration debate.

The tweet that started it all came on the same day advertised by the Trump administration as the start of mass deportation raids across the country.
Mr Trump said last month that the raids would lead to "millions" of deportations. Last week he revised that number to 'thousands.'
In the end, there is little evidence to suggest that anything more than routine arrests took place. However, as long as the President's supporters think he's doing it, maybe that's enough?

The President has also suddenly moved to dramatically tighten asylum laws, barring migrants who've travelled through a third country like Mexico.
This comes on the heels of a court decision that determined the Trump administration could not add a question about citizenship status to the US Census.

The pattern is undeniable, especially with an election ahead.
Mr Trump routinely denies that any of his actions or comments are racially motivated, saying on more than one occasion that he is "the least racist person you have ever met".

If that's the case, then what's the motivation for the immigration raids? Why fight so hard over the census question? Why oppose the four congresswomen so vigorously?

Congresswoman's push to impeach:
Just hours after Rashida Tlaib became one of the first Muslim women to be sworn into the US House of Representatives, she called for US President Donald Trump to be impeached. He's making the election an us-vs-them, black-or-white, all-or-nothing scenario, writes Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times.

"He appears to be drawing a deep line between the white, native-born America of his memory and the ethnically diverse, increasingly foreign-born country he is presiding over, challenging voters in 2020 to declare which side of that line they are on," Baker writes.

Speaking of the "America of his memory," let's not forget that nearly a quarter of the American electorate belongs in the same age demographic as Mr Trump. Two-thirds of eligible voters are white.
Do have faith, in the mixture of colours--white, or do we repose confidence, in the absence of colours--black. Or, we want to pretend we are colouring blind! God bless America!

The author is a former educator based in Chicago








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