I have a lot of words TK between now and the speech but in the meantime, I'd like to point something out:
Donald Trump's very favorite rhetorical mode is that immigrants are coming across the border to kill you.
Heretofore IACATBTKY.
A thread.
Donald Trump's very favorite rhetorical mode is that immigrants are coming across the border to kill you.
Heretofore IACATBTKY.
A thread.
Summer 2015: Donald Trump surges unexpectedly to the top of the polls, in large part because he has successfully tapped into a hunger among some older whites for a politician who will talk about how immigrants are threats to the country who ACATBTKY. vox.com/2015/7/29/9060…
June 13, 2016: Trump's response to the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando is to give a speech about how IACATBTKY. vox.com/2016/6/13/1192…
July 2016: Donald Trump accepts the Republican nomination for the presidency with a fully scripted speech about how IACATBTKY. vox.com/2016/7/22/1225…
August 31, 2016: Trump delivers major immigration address that is somehow hyped as a softening, but is actually about how America needs a president who knows that IACATBTKY. vox.com/2016/8/31/1273…
January 2017: Trump's inauguration speech is so obviously about how IACATBTKY that it's known by shorthand immediately as the "'American carnage'" speech. vox.com/a/president-tr…
July 2017: in a speech to law enforcement officers on Long Island, Trump explicitly endorses police brutality because IACATBTKY. vox.com/policy-and-pol…
January 2018: Trump riffs during his State of the Union on the horrors of MS-13, and how tough his administration is being on them, because there isn't enough content in the scripted speech about how IACATBTKY. vox.com/2018/1/30/1695…
February 2018: Trump caps off a ramble at CPAC about how IACATBTKY with a reprise of campaign favorite "The Snake," a poem Trump says is about immigrants coming into your house to kill you. vox.com/policy-and-pol…
November 2, 2018: In the midst of his midterm "The caravan is coming across the border to kill you" closing argument, Trump gets CNN to air 27-minute speech about how immigrants are coming across the border to kill you. vox.com/2018/11/1/1805…
The point of all of this is that "immigrants are coming across the border to kill you" is Trump's very favorite rhetorical theme. It's the one he comes back to when the chips are down, time and time again. He has found various ways to get attention for saying the same stuff.
I think it's less important to judge his rhetoric tonight by whether it's extreme even for him, or what novel lies he invents, than to note that this is who he is and what he does. It's the message he has, as a politician, to offer the American people. That's it.
I don't have a SoundCloud but I do have an article on the realities of the US/Mexico border that I promise is better than any breathless scattered factcheck you'll read tonight vox.com/2019/1/8/18173…
Immigrants Are Coming Across The Border To Kill You:
The Article.
(Now with blockquotes from the text of the actual speeches.)
vox.com/2019/1/8/18174…
The Article.
(Now with blockquotes from the text of the actual speeches.)
vox.com/2019/1/8/18174…
HMU if there are some I'm missing — scripted speeches only, please.
