I cannot be the only person struck by the irony that Donald J. Trump has a momentary reprieve in his stolen document case courtesy of an immigrant from Columbia (Judge Aileen Cannon) and a Black man (Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas). On July 15, Judge Cannon dismissed the Department of Justice case charging Trump with […]
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I cannot be the only person struck by the irony that Donald J. Trump has a momentary reprieve in his stolen document case courtesy of an immigrant from Columbia (Judge Aileen Cannon) and a Black man (Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas).
On July 15, Judge Cannon dismissed the Department of Justice case charging Trump with theft of classified documents. Not on the merits — in other words, she did not exonerate Trump. No, she followed a discredited (in court) argument that the “Attorney General cannot appoint and fund a special counsel absent authorization from Congress.”
Although “contravened by decades of special counsel investigations under the current statute,” Cannon leaned on this theory. Given she quoted Thomas throughout, suspicious minds could be forgiven for any raised eyebrows at the timing of the Thomas solo statement two weeks ago.
“[Thomas] raise[d] questions about whether Garland violated the Constitution when he appointed Smith as special counsel, an argument that wasn’t made by Trump’s attorneys before the trial-level judge overseeing that criminal case (emphasis added).
Thomas alone argued that Congress needed to set up the office Special Counsel, writing in a case granting Trump partial immunity from prosecution for crimes committed while in office. After leaving office, Trump retained stolen documents after declaring all had been returned. The evidence of willful retention is broad and compelling.
Update:
This is a great ?! The bipartisan group that hammered out the current special counsel regs & agreed it was the correct way to do it included….the Chief Justice, John Roberts. https://t.co/b9X6KPOXfR
— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) July 15, 2024
Trump is notorious for prejudicial speech attacking immigrants. It’s been a theme in each of his three campaigns for president, and it’s not based in reality.
In his speeches and online posts, Trump has ramped up anti-immigrant rhetoric as he seeks the White House a third time, casting migrants as dangerous criminals “poisoning the blood” of America. Hitting the nation’s deepest fault lines of race and national identity, his messaging often relies on falsehoods about migration.
From December, FALSE: At a New Hampshire rally, Trump “claimed immigrants were ‘pouring into’ the United States and ‘poisoning the blood of our country’.”
From January, FALSE: Paul Moses, author and emeritus professor at Brooklyn College: “in stoking support for his anti-immigration agenda, [Trump] has brought … now thoroughly discredited racist thinking to play in the 21st century.”
New 2 min. video on how propaganda is being used by Trump and Republicans to increase hatred towards immigrants and also indifference to their fates. Please share. pic.twitter.com/DQX2NK0qNZ
— Ruth Ben-Ghiat (@ruthbenghiat) January 19, 2024
From February, FALSE:
Trump stoked fears of a migrant-fueled crime wave at the Conservative Political Action Conference… The first problem with Trump’s narrative is the timeline. The spike in violent crime happened on Trump’s watch, not Biden’s…Since Biden took office, violent crime appears to be on a downward trend… New York City, for example, has absorbed more than 150,000 migrants since the spring of 2022. Violent crime did not increase during that time.
From March, FALSE:
Trump described “some” asylum-seekers as “animals” and “not people”… Trump plans to expand the immigration detention system and conduct a program of mass deportation targeting all 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country… In the most recent year for which data is available, hate crimes against Hispanic Americans surged to record highs, rising 21% in two years.
From April, FALSE: “Every town is now a border town because Joe Biden has brought the carnage and chaos and killing from all over world and dumped it straight into our backyards.”
From May, FALSE: “They come from all over the world… I think they’re building an army … they want to get us from within.”
Tweet deleted by JD Vance when he ran for Senate:
“Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us.” pic.twitter.com/FlMGy4fMRd
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 15, 2024
@TheEconomist Republican Party nominee Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance is married to Usha Chilukuri, the daughter of Indian immigrants. So either way there’s going to be some Indianness in the White House. Not for nothing is every fifth human an Indian. Ha ha
— Ravi Sharma (@ravishant) July 15, 2024
More irony: Trump’s candidacy is supported by a German immigrant (Peter Thiel), a South African immigrant (Elon Musk) and an Australian immigrant (Rupert Murdoch).
And his VP is married to a women whose parents immigrated from India.
Trump has demonstrated racist behavior for at least 35 years, beginning with the New York Central Park Five in 1989. Five minors were wrongfully convicted of rape. Trump ran and “signed full-page newspaper advertisements implicitly calling for the boys to die.” TWO WEEKS LATER. LONG BEFORE THE TRIAL.
The ads yielded death threats for the boys and their families.
All five boys pleaded not guilty at trial the following year. The prosecution’s case rested almost entirely on the confessions they had given shortly after the incident. As would become crucial later on, there was no DNA evidence linking any of them to the crime scene and Meili, who made a miraculous recovery and testified in court, could not remember any details of the attack.
Only later would we learn of the police misconduct at the center of the teen’s “confessions” as the now young men were exoneerated.
Trump had toyed with running for president in 1987. In February 2000, he was once again teasing the press about running. But more pressing matters — a rival casino in New Jersey funded by Native Americans — he once again ran racially charged adverts.
Beneath a picture of needles and drug paraphernalia, the ad stated: “Are these the new neighbors we want?” It added: “The St. Regis Mohawk Indian record of criminal activity is well documented.”
And here we sit with what should be mind-shattering cognitive dissonance: from J.D. Vance and Donald Trump to their MAGA supporters.
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Image Credit: Shutterstock (Rena Schild)
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