The white nationalist party

I.e., The Republican Party.  Love this from Alex Wagner.

There have been many indications that this—a white nationalist takeover of Republicanism—was coming. In Puerto Rico, when a natural disaster ripped through homes and destroyed the lives of countless families—Hispanic ones—Trump’s response was, effectively, You brought this on yourselves:…

Racial animus has been at the heart of policy prescriptions including mass incarceration and partisan gerrymandering and voter-ID laws, all of which disadvantage Americans of color. It informs the White House responses to Muslim hate crimes and police brutality, or a lack thereof. It remains, consistently, at the core of the worst moments of this presidency—from Charlottesville to Colin Kaepernick—which, coincidentally, are also some of its most defining moments, for detractors and supporters alike.

The migrant crisis signals an official end to one chapter of conservatism and the beginning of a terrifying new one. After all, a party cannot applaud the wailing screams of innocents as a matter of course and hope to ever reclaim the moral high ground. Trump seemed to know that, perhaps, sitting in the Cabinet Room this week, surrounded by a table of white officials. The compassion that he spoke of wasn’t really for the children torn from their parents—it was for his own party and its struggle to contain them.

Where you focus matters

I think it can sometimes be a bad faith argument to claim, “how can you care about X, when Y and Z are bigger problems?”  That doesn’t mean that X is not a problem worthy of addressing.  That said, where you focus your attention and efforts, obviously, gives insight into your values and priorities.  And for Donald Trump, that is undoubtedly the fact that he is a bigot looking to drum up ill-will towards illegal immigrants.  Apparently, he had an event today with “angel families” (Mike Pesca on this absurdity is awesome) who had family members killed by illegal immigrants.  This inspired a tweet from a former student who is now a journalist:

Personal thought- I'm glad the President is shining more light about family members killed by migrants who've entered illegally. @POTUS is right–this issue hasn't been covered enough by journalists. I want to know more.

— Carla Babb (@CarlaBabbVOA) June 22, 2018

Ummm, no, not uncovered. And when you consider that illegal immigrants murder at a lower rate than the native born, hard to argue that this is anything other than xenophobic demagogery– especially given the source.

Personal response… when you consider the the fact that native-born Americans are far more likely to be a murderer, this is sheer xenophobic demagoguery. https://t.co/hVzLOYK3K8

— Stable Genius (@HankGreene) June 22, 2018

For some reason Poniewozik deleted his nice comment that, by this logic we should worry about murders by native born, but here’s the Wonkblog post he linked with the key charts:

So, right, protect us from all these damn native-born criminals.  And, yes, to focus on immigrants given this reality is nothing but xenophobic demagoguery.  Especially when you consider the source.