Robbins: Trump missed the memo

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On Jan. 19, 1989, Ronald Reagan devoted his last speech as president of the United States to reminding Americans that our country owes its success to immigrants. “It’s the great life force of each generation of new Americans that guarantees that America’s triumph shall continue unsurpassed into the next century and beyond,” Reagan said. “This, I believe, is one of the most important sources of America’s greatness. We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people – our strength – from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation.”

That the truth Reagan spoke is obvious makes it no less important to remember, especially these days, when Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are basing their attempt to return Trump to the White House on the hope that they can gin up hatred toward immigrants. Reagan wasn’t the first American president to emphasize that all of us, other than perhaps Native Americans, are the very people whom hate-peddlers hope to demonize. “Every American who ever lived, with the exception of one group, was either an immigrant himself or a descendant of immigrants,” wrote then-Senator John F. Kennedy in his 1958 essay “A Nation of Immigrants.”

Trump’s campaign speeches are blustery, falsehood-filled and increasingly indecipherable affairs, but what is clear is that he hopes to capitalize on xenophobia. Bigotry toward immigrants has persisted here for nearly 200 years, and the pitch of those hoping to exploit it has always remained the same: “Look at them, they’re different, please hate them.” It’s always been ugly, and it’s always been dumb, since virtually all of us or our forebears have been subjected to this stuff. You don’t have to look to your right and your left to see immigrants or their descendants, as both Reagan and Kennedy pointed out. You need only look in the mirror.

Trump’s intensified effort to get Americans to broadly hate the “other” comes, ironically enough, in the middle of Hispanic Heritage Month, but isn’t new for him. He has repeatedly referred to those coming here from elsewhere as “animals,” part of an “invasion” that “has spread misery, crime, poverty, disease and destruction to communities all across the land.”

This past weekend he accused those who enter the United States without proper documentation of wanting to “rape, pillage, thieve, plunder and kill the people of the United States.” Referring to immigrants generally, Trump repurposed the age-old demagoguery that those who came before us endured. “They can’t even speak English,” he ranted. “They don’t even know what country they’re in.”

He harbors a particular animus toward Haitians, evidently. “We have hundreds of thousands of people coming in from Haiti,” Trump railed in 2021. “Many of these people will probably have AIDS and they’re coming into the country.” At his recent debate with Kamala Harris, Trump’s anti-Haitian bigotry was obscured only by his historic propensity to recite hooey. Referencing a wholly debunked rumor out of Springfield, Ohio, he claimed that Haitian residents lawfully living there “are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating – they’re eating – they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country.”

Trump has quadrupled-down on this, not so much a dog whistle as a bullhorn meant to stoke irrational hatred. Springfield’s mayor and Ohio’s governor, both Republicans, pronounced Trump’s claim false. Vance admitted the same. Even Trump acolyte Vivek Ramaswamy conceded gingerly “Having gone to Springfield, I don’t see that evidence.”

But real damage is being done. Springfield has been hit with over 30 bomb threats. Colleges, elementary schools and government offices have been shut down, an entire community terrorized and terrified.

We are not talking about border security here. Trump has already seen to it that a bipartisan bill aimed at improving that went nowhere in Congress. We’re talking about basic human decency, and whether, going forward, America will try to honor it.

Jeff Robbins’ latest book, “Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad,” is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.

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