This week, the nation blew past pedantic concerns about the dog-whistle racism of President Donald Trump and his obsequious toadies.
Blaring into the public sphere like an air-horn in the back seat of the car, the president had a major trumper-tantrum Tuesday and repeatedly called Somali refugees, immigrants and Americans “garbage,” and threatened to deport them.
“We don’t want ‘em in our country,” Trump spewed and spittled no less than five times in about a minute at the finish of a Cabinet meeting where for two hours he publicly dozed and drifted.
As shocking and appalling as Trump’s naked display of racism was, equally alarming and repugnant is what happened when Trump finally quit stammering.
Trump said that Somalis “contribute nothing.”
Rather than duck and run for the door, Trump’s servile cabinet applauded the president’s racist spasm.
Oh yes they did.
Vice President JD Vance pumped his fist in the air, the Associated Press reported. War Secretary Pete Hegseth turned to Trump with a, “Well said.”
When pressed about what in any other time would have been an immediate political career-ending gaffe, Trump’s minions not only didn’t back off the racist rant, they lauded him for it.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later said Trump’s tirade was “amazing” and “epic moment,” Reuters reported.
It immediately begged the question: What is the nation going to do about it?
Trump referred to the more than a quarter-million people of Somali descent that call the United States home, some for years and even generations. Several thousand of those people live in or near Aurora and have for many years, some even decades.
Dr. P.J. Parmar knows the local Somali community well.
Parmar created and runs Mango House in Aurora. The center not only houses his Ardas Family Medicine clinic, providing medical and dental care for all kinds of immigrants and people in the community just trying to get by, but the United Nations like center bustles with shops, restaurants and even a Boy Scout program just for immigrants and children of immigrants.
Parmar said Trump’s fulmination on Tuesday was wrong and dangerous on several levels.
He said it was meant to appeal to people who want to “other someone else” as a way to justify their xenophobia or racism.
The pitch creates a “we” versus “them,” making it easy to justify abusing them. Human history is rife with how deadly dangerous that is.
Besides the sheer cruelty of attacking an entire community of people, and especially a community made up of a race, a religion and a nation, Trump completely mischaracterized the group.
While it’s never accurate to create stereotypes of communities, Parmar said that of the hundreds of Somalis he’s treated and befriended, a common thread among them is their seemingly endless drive to work.
He said many of the men he knows live frugally and work constantly so they can send whatever money they can back to families still in Somalia or harboring in Nairobi.
Parmar said almost every aspect of Denver’s airport is linked to the Somali and Nairobi communities right now. They drive ride-shares, work all over the airport, pilot all kinds of shuttles, clean and operate DIA and endless surrounding businesses.
He and others in Aurora also are perplexed about Trump targeting Somali immigrants, since many if not most are relatively conservative. Most are deeply religious, spending time away from work in prayers. Like Aurora’s Ethiopian community, many gravitate to conservative causes and politics, Parmar and others agreed.
Aurora Democratic state Rep. Naquetta Ricks sided with Parmar that Trump’s read of Somali Americans and immigrants was way off base.
But she said the racist eruption on Tuesday poses a real and dangerous threat to all Black immigrants, and especially those from Somalia and the Horn of East Africa.
“I’m very, very appalled and just saddened at what I’m seeing,” Ricks said. “The negative rhetoric coming from the very top is putting people in danger and making immigrants to be villains for no reason,”
It’s become standard operating procedure for Trump.
Asian American Pacific Islanders and their supporters in Aurora had to push back against the wave of anti-immigrant loathing caused by Trump’s labeling COVID-19 as the “China Flu” in 2020. Asian Americans who’ve been here for generations were confronted in Aurora grocery stores by strangers telling them to “go home,” the Sentinel reported then.
Venezuelan and other Central and South American immigrants and refugees were equally frightened last year after Trump told the world that Aurora had been taken over and destroyed by hordes of Venezuelan gangs.
Ricks said the pattern is unmistakable and was clear early on in Trump’s first presidency, when he referred to Africa as a continent rife with “shit-hole nations,” and promoted dangerous lies just last year about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating the cats and dogs of white people.
“It’s all about painting this negative narrative of immigrants,” Ricks said. “You never hear him disparage any European groups. Why is it only the Black and brown immigrants? It’s a serious problem, and it just keeps coming.”
Ricks also said Trump creates real danger for local Somali and other northeast Africa immigrants. She said she sees speaking out and educating the community about reality as critical right now.
Ricks heads the Colorado African Chamber of Commerce and plans to meet regularly on how to push back against Trump’s vile and dangerous rhetoric.
“One of my close associates, Abdul Rashid, is a Somali National, and he is so much about the community and public health,” Ricks said. “He helped with trying to get the vaccine clinics established during COVID, and endless ways to try and make sure that the community was safe.”
She works with a variety of Somali groups, and the Somali women she works with are charged about public education and that all children in Aurora are cared for.
“So I don’t understand why he’s calling people ‘garbage,’” she said. “It’s obviously bigoted, and he seems to be obsessed.”
Like Parmar, she said she is surprised Trump and his Republican cabinet doesn’t see Somalians as model immigrants.
“They are entrepreneurs. They open restaurants. They have grocery stores and run small businesses. They work several jobs, often in transportation or even health and social services,” she said.”They’re big contributors, not only to the economy, but, you know, positive role models for what should be going on in our community.”
Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman said in a statement that the city will stand behind its Somali community, despite the push by Trump and his cabinet to “get rid of them.”
“Aurora’s many immigrant communities, including those from Somalia, are an indispensable part of the rich cultural fabric that makes up our diverse city and I am proud to serve as their mayor,” Coffman said.
Trump has continued to double down on his racist rant, saying he doesn’t care that after his dangerous slander, “I hear somebody say, ‘Oh, that’s not politically correct,’” He finished with where he stands. “I don’t care. I don’t want them.”
There’s no longer any question about Trump coyly trotting out old Ku Klux Klan narratives and nearly verbatim phraseology and propaganda rhetoric that led to the Holocaust.
The question now is what are all of the rest of us, and especially the so-called MAGA community, going to do about it?
History is watching, and it’s nervous.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com
The problem here is that a guy with no class but with an underlying bit of truth is going to drive us back into a woke philosophy. He is right about problems of open borders and cultural differences which create situations where immigrants abuse our system. We cannot allow that kind of abuse. It costs all of us. At the same time, we must realize that Trump is a man without any class or moral guidelines. We must resist his characterizations while still dealing with the underlying truths that we must control immigration. Trump is a “wanna be strongman”. If we understand that Trump is a bully at heart, then we can better deal with him. A bully is usually also a coward. If we all, including the Republican Party, begin to openly question and criticize his crude manner and statements, he will fold. While we must put a cap on him, we also must not lose sight of the fact that immigration must be controlled. We can do that in a more humane way while still dealing with the fact that people who come into our country come from different value systems. Like anyone else, they look for people from their own culture and ask how they can make living in America. That often involves an underground system that capitalizes upon the inefficiencies in our systems. In many of their cultures, getting by any way you can is accepted. Many of those cultures operate in distinctly illegal and immoral ways. Many of their cultures are like the one Donald Trump is creating for us. It is ironic that a man like Trump can complain about corruption and we don’t laugh.
Pretty well said Mr. Black. President Trump’s problem has always been “opening his mouth before engaging his brain.” Unlike many of us who utilize an “editing function” over our impulses, Trump simply blurts it out. I believe he is often correct in underlying principle, but “ham-handed” in presentation. He thus damages the underlying point he is trying to make and gives liberals fodder for criticism.
This reminds me of something….
Damn, I wish I could remember what.
Sometimes the truth hurts. No human is capable of analyzing each individual human in the world one by one and making their judgments that way, it is simply not something that is possible for any human being to do. So we all make judgments based on groups, one of which is race, one of which for immigrants is what country they came from. A BILLION dollars is a MASSIVE AMOUNT OF FRAUD. How did people new to the country become so adept at fraud so quickly? Did some racist whites teach them how to steal from the government? White Americans are horrible in every way, they must have caused the precious blacks from Somalia to do this. There is no other explanation!
What billion dollars fraud are you talking about?
“The pitch creates a “we” versus “them,” making it easy to justify abusing them. Human history is rife with how deadly dangerous that is.”
Appeals to the Open Society mindhive when they think they’re vulnerable, peacocking and boasting of their “power” when they think they’re running the show.
“It’s all about painting this negative narrative of immigrants,” Ricks said. “You never hear him disparage any European groups. Why is it only the Black and brown immigrants? It’s a serious problem, and it just keeps coming.”
Yeah, but you hate White people, Naquetta, so it evens out.
I am a so-called liberal and I agree in part with Mr. Black and Kirk above in only one sense. Immigration MUST be made better and Democrats should put that AND only that at the top of their agenda. And here is why: At present, we have an avowed racist SOB ranting unabashed daily about some immigrant community. He uses single violent instances to smear thousands of peaceful, tax-paying, and eminently likeable immigrants. The general public in the US is enthralled and engulfed by the internet. We no longer use personal experience to form opinions. We have our sacred and isolated space in some blog or other source of reinforcing idealogical thought. We like what we hear and we are fed more ideas we nod along with, failing to use our heads for something besides a hat rack! We NEED immigrants because we need hard workers to do jobs that most Americans eshew. I lived in Houston in a newer neighborhood and walked daily by houses full of immigrants painting, putting up sheet rock, roofing, and laying bricks. This activity was fed by blaring radios playing Hispanic music. Taco trucks came at lunch time to deliver hot lunches. These workers were fevershly finishing whole neighborhoods, smiling and laughing in 98° temperatures with 80% humidity. We need a balanced approach to immigration. Vetting of incoming immigrants is important, but to think that is a catch-all for bad actors is folly. However, today our fat, lazy, and mouthy president opines on every group except those who support him under the guise of their secret societies of Christian Nationalists. Therein lies a source of violence and vile rhetoric that is being fed by our idiot in the Whitehouse. These people are neither Christian or patriotic and until we rid ourselves of accepting any shred of their caustic bile, we lock ourselves in self-fulfilling cycle!
You’re sure it was Trump?
And not over a decade and a half of increasingly unwanted race-baiting-as-Federal-policy, based on a moronic theory propagated by Noel Ignatiev that “whiteness” is the root of all evil?
The progressives started it, and they’re only crying “foul” now because they’re losing control of the discourse as people are not afraid to point out those things you aren’t supposed to notice, as one-time allies have realized there is no winning move that will ever be enough to shield them from being put through an ongoing struggle session.
Average Americans got tired of pretending not to notice the tidal wave of illegals and “refugees” treating the US like a paypiggy, and all the socio-economic problems that came with them.
“These people are neither Christian or patriotic”–Translation: “Let me try to appeal to the things I actually hate so that I can emotionally manipulate my enemies to do what I want.” That tactic can be seen a mile away now and no one buys it anymore.
Donald Trump’s long record of ignorance, vainglory and mendacity is well-known.
Your MAGA bona fides will serve you well once he’s forced from office because he’s term-limited. Should get you a good gardening job at Mar-a Lago.
And your side’s long record of the same is as well.
Extra LOL at you thinking that slagging working class jobs is a W while simping for marxism. Poser.
You misrepresent what I’ve said.
But that’s par for the course with you.
I’m not misrepresenting anything. You used working class employment as an insult, which is common for the post-Marcusian left who employ the sour grapes of “false consciousness” and social status peacocking when someone you think is lower on the ladder than you doesn’t follow your stupid political theology.
Don’t get prissy when your dialectic is shoved back down your throat.
we need our modern slaves to ride “share” at illegal 1971 cab rates we cant get americans to drive for because they can do math & it wont buy a mansion in 2 years in their homelands. It great they work for 2-5 times less than minimum wage and split rent 10 ways so they have enough to send home. how clueless is this article poor airport cant survive with its modern slave labor.