The Trump administration has been in full race baiting mode ever since the government shutdown on Friday night, and using their base's fear of black and brown people to whip them into a frenzy in an attempt to paint Democrats as the party that wants to allow “illegals” to swarm into the country to rape and pillage from all those hard working “real” 'Murkins that they pretend to represent.
As we already discussed here, they changed the White House comments line voicemail to a recording blaming Democrats for the government shutdown and accusing them of holding our troops and national security hostage over immigration policy.
The Trump campaign got in on the act with a new ad which calls Democrats “complicit” in murders by undocumented immigrants:
The Trump campaign on Saturday released a new campaign ad calling congressional Democrats “complicit” in all murders committed by undocumented immigrants. The spot seems unlikely to ease tensions on Capitol Hill as the Senate tries to negotiate a compromise on the fate of the 700,000 immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally as children in order to reopen the shuttered federal government.
“Democrats who stand in our way will be complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants,” a narrator says, as images of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) appear on the screen.
The 30-second ad blames Democrats for endorsing these acts of “pure evil” by refusing to allow President Donald Trump to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
MSNBC's Joy Reid opened her show with a discussion on these latest maneuvers from Trump and his allies, and The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin was asked to respond to their race baiting, along with Eric Trump's appearance on Fox, where he told Trump cheerleader Jeanine Pirro that the shutdown is “a good thing” for Republicans as a political strategy.
RUBIN: Let me just say that it should be self-evident why I and any other reasonable person can no longer identify with the Republican party. That parade of lies and racism tells you that the Republican party has now been reduced to a single issue, which is race, xenophobia.
Listen, I think it is in their interest to make this not about Dreamers, by the way, the messaging on Dreamers has been great if about 90 percent of Americans want them here and understand that these are not criminals by definition. You can't be a criminal and be a Dreamer. They want to make this about race.
Listen, this is in some sense playing into the Democrats' hands, because what was their issue? What was their argument? The president blew off a deal on Dreamers, which everyone likes, made a racist statement, and these people are using this to try to muscle through the wall and other things. So I don't think in the long run that helps them.
More importantly, I think it just shows the ugly face of the Republican party to the American people and I think it's gotten to the point where, frankly, if you are supporting these people, and you are enabling them, then you have to take ownership of their racism. You have to take ownership of that kind of rhetoric.
Every member of the Senate that doesn't denounce this, who goes along with the president, who says “Oh, this is just about security and the wall,” they need to own that kind of language.
It's not until they are help responsible for that virulent, disgusting racism that you're going to shake any of them loose. And right now, I think they're getting a free ride. They're getting a free ride from the press. They're getting a free ride from the voters, and that should stop.
White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short made an appearance on Meet the Press earlier that same morning, and tried to distance the Trump campaign running the ad personally approved by Donald Trump from the Trump administration, saying it was from an "outside group."
So now they're trying to gaslight us as well instead of taking ownership for their racism. Rubin is exactly right about the need for the media to hang this around all of their necks.
