Donald Trump is getting desperate to win back Arizona, so he’s falling back on the ugly, demonizing border tactics he used eight years ago.
JD Vance in Arizona: VP nominee attacks Harris on border record
Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance attacked Kamala Harris’ border record during a rally at Arizona Christian University in Glendale.
Donald Trump is losing ground in Arizona to Vice President Kamala Harris, so he’s contemplating a trip to the border, hoping it’s a warzone. But … it’s not.
He’ll drop into the state for a few hours, step out of the air conditioning for a couple of minutes to claim there’s a illegal migrant “invasion.” But … there’s not.
He’ll repeat the tired old campaign rant he’s used for eight years to demonize an entire ethnic community, hoping you’ll think it’s new. But … it’s not.
Trump wanted a border disaster. It doesn’t exist
When the former president visits Arizona’s southern border in Cochise County, he’ll no doubt refer at some point to migrants as “animals” and “not human,” as he has done many times in speeches.
He’ll repeat, as he has again and again, the notion that there is a migrant crime wave in the United States. But … there’s not.
There have been multiple studies of crime statistics proving that migrants in the United States commit crimes at lower rates than the native-born Americans.
Trump will talk, as he so often does, of a migrant invasion, through the number of migrants unlawfully crossing the U.S. southern border has continued to drop for months.
And the number of migrants apprehended at the southwest border is down by 50%.
Trump is losing ground with Arizona voters
Chuck Coughlin, president and CEO of HighGround, a longtime Republican strategist who left the party during Trump’s rise, says Republicans are “on their back foot.”
Adding, “Arizona clearly is an emerging problem for (Trump).”
We knew that the border was a problem for Trump months ago, when he urged Republicans in Congress to kill the bipartisan border security bill introduced by Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.
Court agrees: To send racist border bill to voters
Trump wants — needs — there to be a border crisis to stir up his MAGA base, and he was hoping that preventing Sinema’s bill from passing would exacerbate it.
In other words, it was (and is) more important for Trump to solve his political problem than for the country to solve our border security and immigration problem.
His message about migrants is getting old
But in spite of his best efforts, the border crisis hasn’t risen to the level of disaster that Trump had been planning on. It’s nothing close to what he must have hoped.
Of course, that hasn’t stopped Trump from spreading fear and misinformation. He simply fell back on his old playbook, which apparently has never been revised.
In 2015, at the very beginning of his first campaign for president, Trump ranted about undocumented immigrants “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.”
It worked for him then, and it’s been working for him, in one way or another, ever since.
But, like Trump, the message is getting old … because it is.
Reach Montini at [email protected].
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Publish date : 2024-08-15 05:05:00
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