1/In a week of crazy lying and horribles, this Trumpian tweet below stood out to me. It speaks directly to the core of Trumpism, and why Trumpism is failing as a governing approach. A thread.
2/A few yrs back immigration restrictionists changed their strategy from direct deportation of all 11m undoc immigrants in the US (yes this passed the GOP House in 2005) to "self-deportation." Theory was make life of undoc/undesirables so miserable they would leave on their own.
3/Self deportation had many advantages to direct deportation. It was far cheaper, didn't involve US govt rounding up and removing entire families, and I am sure polled much better. Became natl position of GOP in 2011/2012. cbsnews.com/news/romney-on…
4/Key to "self-deportation" is creating a climate of fear. Immigrants have to become essentially terrorized into leaving. Their daily experience has to be so awful, so challenging, they would leave their US lives, jobs, families, and go. americanprogress.org/issues/immigra…
5/So creating this climate of fear is critical to Trump's strategy. Immigrants have to be scared - workplace raids, scary ICE/CBP, vile language (animals) and now abuse of children, taking them from their parents. people.com/politics/migra…
6/And we know how central this whole immigration approach is to Trump domestically, and globally. Just this week he even went after Germany's Merkel for being weak on immigration, using similar language to how he attacks Democrats here.
7/Fear, deterrence, strength is essentially Trump's immigration policy. Let's review his own words -
8/Of course this meme that US didn't get the border under control over the past decade is completely false, a Trumpian delusion. Undoc pop dropped, flow way way down, deportations remained at Bush era levels, criminals were prioritized for deportation. money.cnn.com/2017/04/25/new…
9/And to Trump this noisy, fear inducing strategy was working. He was beating up Mexico. DHS was doing its thing. Muslim ban not totally dead. Tourism down, foreign student applications down and through end of 2017 flow into US appeared to be down. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
10/But then migrants fleeing Central American violence started coming in much bigger numbers over the winter and continuing into this year. latimes.com/nation/la-na-i…
11/And this rise of migrants on the border became a political crisis for the President, for it suggests that his entire approach - scaring people into leaving, not coming - was failing. Enormous implications for his domestic audience, but also for his global illberal agenda.
12/So the Trump WH started throwing everything at the border. National Guard was mobilized. Zero tolerance adopted. Kids thrown into a gulag archipelago. Puerile demands for Congress to step in. Daily tantrums on Twitter. vox.com/2018/4/4/17199…
13/So what was a political crisis for WH became an actual crisis for the nation. His DHS was been shown to be incompetent, and untrustworthy. The cruelty behind his approach, previously hidden, became clear to all. House efforts failed. He retreated. nytimes.com/2018/06/20/us/…
14/Hard to overstate how significant Trump's immigration retreat is. The foundational policy of Trumpism is proving to be a failure, both on the ground & politically. He is likely to lose his Flores appeal, throwing all this into further chaos, chaos which could last for years.
15/Signs of panic not just about the moment but the messy aftermath - which again could go on for years - are breaking out in the GOP. This from a GOP House Member from Colorado: These border issues could end up being Trump's Vietnam.
16/But, on a grander level, understand that the illiberal internationale took a big hit this week. giphy.com/gifs/wizard-of…. Curtain got pulled on the Wizard. His "strength" & cruelty was defeated by decency and rule of law, on the issue that drives this global movement.
17/Trumpism is failing. Wages falling, Dow is flat, people are losing insurance, deficit skyrocketing. Gas prices/interest rates rising. Tariffs an economic bomb about to explode. Immigration chaos, cruelty. US has lost its standing in the world.
18/And that is what matters now. We have to go on offense abt why this brief experiment w/a radical politics and an unsteady man is wrong for the US and our people. It is failing. We can do better, we are better. But we must make this case, loudly, without fear, persuasively.
19/On immigration specifically, as we press forward, we cannot end up defending a broken system. We've been trying to reform, improve the system for 13 years, been blocked by Rs at every turn. We should offer our own version of reform again, and press.
20/Finally you can catch me and the great Ali Noorani talking about the issues discussed in this thread in a new podcast with my friend @AmandiOnAir
