If you’re just itching to see some serious cuts in services in Aurora, or see your favorite Aurora restaurant or store wither from the lack of customers, or maybe if you’re just hoping among hopes your house taxes skyrocket, or that maybe you can even pay more in sales taxes, has President Trump, a handful of local trolls and some of the Aurora city council got a deal for you.
You may already have heard from your out-of-town friends and relatives who reached out late last Tuesday after Trump told a joint session of Congress, and the entire freaking planet that you, me and everyone who lives and works in Aurora are possibly dead and cowering from the tidal wave of gun-toting Venezuelan gangsta terrorists who have turned this once flourishing city into a Colorado Port-au-Prince.
In making his case last week, and endlessly over the past year, Trump blew several minutes of anti-immigrant verbal explosive diarrhea all over the U.S. House, thrilling the throngs of fellow racists and xenophobes who prefer their immigrants white and speaking English like Elon Musk or being compliant like First Lady Melania Trump.
“Entire towns like Aurora, Colorado and Springfield, Ohio, buckled under the weight of the migrant occupation and corruption like nobody’s ever seen before,” Trump said during his address to Congress. “Beautiful towns destroyed.”
What?
You mean you made it to the grocery store and back this week without being car-jacked and held for ransom in the parking lot by the roving hordes of Venezuelans and El Salvadorans who now run this city?
If you live in or near Aurora, or in Colorado, or in the United States, or if you are even partially cogent and just wanted cheaper gas, affordable rent and groceries and foolishly believed Trump could make that happen, you know that Trump is full of crap. He’s a despicable, second-rate con man who has enough supporters to scare the living hell out of Republicans who dare to not smile, wave, applaud and agree with all his heinous hooey.
But what social psychologists say is that, even though just about everyone knows that Aurora is both as dangerous and safe as every other city in the metro area, the lies told by Trump and others, such as Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky, have a very real effect on people. The false narratives even those who know that no place in Aurora has ever been “overrun” by Venezuelan gangsters.
Political opportunists seeing the growing trepidation about immigrants last year leapt at a chance for right-wing political momentum in a town and state that is overwhelmingly populated by people who live their lives in the middle of the political spectrum and to the left.
Last summer, as Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro was poised to be ousted by his opposition, thousands of excited Venezuelan immigrants flash-mobbed the Gardens on Havana shopping center in a startling, one-off event, driven by social media. They were among the 40,000 or so Venezuelan immigrants trafficked to the metro area by sadistic political leaders in Texas.
At the front of the parade to turn the freaky, annoying parking-lot event into an opportunity for political spoils, Jurinsky posted on social media that it was horrific and dangerous.
“This is in the United States of America… this is in YOUR city. Please, please spread the word. This November’s election may, in fact, be the actual most important of your lives, your children’s lives, and your grandchildren’s lives.”
The post and more to come lifted Jurinsky out of obscurity as that woman on the city council who said on the radio the Aurora police chief was “trash,” and onto regular national appearances on Fox News.
It gave Jurinsky and others endless opportunities to tell the metro area, Colorado and the nation that Aurora apartments were overrun by violent Venezuelan gangsters. The political narrative has been that entire areas of the city were lost to armies of Tren de Aragua prison gangsters able to outsmart Aurora police and faithful apartment landlords.
Then Trump picked up the mantle, repeatedly telling thousands of his fans and millions of TV listeners that not just Aurora, “but the whole state” has been destroyed by herds of immigrants and gangsters.
And last week, Trump told the planet Aurora has now “buckled” under the catastrophe.
It isn’t like Aurora just has to shake off some dumb publicity. The media bombardment of lies about Aurora may already be taking its toll on local businesses, which is a chief source of the revenue that pays to pave streets, keep cops in cars and the street lights on at night.
While Jurinsky, Trump and others just couldn’t spread enough false fear about life in Aurora, sales tax revenues have been sliding, pretty much aligned with the crap-talk about Aurora that started last summer.
Last month, city bean counters said the warning lights were going off on the city’s financial dashboard.
It’s prompted an all-out effort by some city lawmakers to find ways to “support” Aurora businesses, boost local sales, and, ultimately, the city’s take on sales taxes.
January year-over-year sale tax revenues were nearly 3% lower compared to last year, officials said last week.
“Just to make sure, it’s very clear that is a bad result, we assumed in the budget that sales tax would grow this year by 4.5%, so we are starting behind the eight ball,” Aurora Senior Revenue Analyst Bill Levine told lawmakers in a committee meeting last week. “When you don’t achieve that 4.5% instead, have minus 2.7 purchase, we’re behind.”
Experts told the Sentinel in a story last week that it can, and probably will, get worse, especially if the city doesn’t counter the misinformation about hordes of Venezuelan gangs and a city “destroyed” by immigrants.
Aurora’s been down this road before. The city was unfairly tabbed as a haven for Crips and Bloods gang violence in the 1980s and 1990s.
Sales at the Aurora Mall slid because of an exaggerated and pervasive narrative driven mostly by racism, not reality. At one point, the mall closed on weekend evenings to any minor not accompanied by an adult.
Aurora has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the mall and endless citywide publicity campaigns working to counter its unfair and false image as a gritty, crime-ridden shanty town.
After years of effort and a ton of money, it’s made progress, creating a city with political clout and business capital.
Until recently, Aurora had gained fame as an exciting bastion of exotic foreign restaurants and shops, offering all kinds of things you don’t have to travel around the planet for.
The reality is, living and working among hundreds of thousands of immigrants so motivated for a better life that they come all the way to Aurora just for a chance at it isn’t scary or dangerous. It’s amazing.
In just a few months, however, Trump and his local lackeys have now threatened all that again.
There’s only one answer here. Make them stop. These are political creatures, driven by attention, public perception and a desperate need for approval. If Aurora just takes it, they’ll keep dishing it out, thinking there’s some net gain for them, even though it’s a net loss for Aurora.
But if the majority of elected community leaders and residents of Aurora tell them to quit lying and to shut the hell up about these provably false narratives, they will.
Better hurry.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com
Aurora is safe if you get home before dark and stay away from apartment complexes.
But at the same time Dave, for Commissioner Rhonda Fields to recently say that Aurora is “strong and vibrant” isn’t exactly truthful, now is it?
Retail activity per capita (retail + dining) is among the weakest in the state because no one comes to Aurora for fun or to celebrate — high school graduations for example. Instead, our neighbors just gladly soak up our business. Ditto attractions for leisure travelers visiting Colorado.
Just pull up Stubhub and find some fun in Aurora during Spring Break. We have frontage to DIA but little to offer the leisure traveler in the way of fun or entertainment.
Truth: Aurora has long suffered a regional trade imbalance when it comes to fun. We have so little of it. While I agree that the recent negative press doesn’t help matters, far more long-term damage is done by local officials continuing to ignore Aurora’s failed retail economy.
Where’s the courage to confront the truth here and seize the clear opportunity? Frankly, the Sentinel has been just as complacent as City Council.
I only disagree with you on one point. Trump is not a second rate con man, he is the top of the smelly heap of con men.
Rehashing Aurora’s injury from 2024 is irrelevant now considering the recent and rapid massive global chaos unleashed by the Russian-friendly billionaires in Washington. These rich individuals — unrestrained by morals, congress, courts, or tradition — are tossing aside American democratic norms, upending the world order, and needlessly wreaking havoc on the American economy… all of which will be felt by every hard-working family in every city in America.
“Unrestrained by…tradition?” “Tossing aside American democratic norms?”
The country is $ 36.6 trillion in debt. Where exactly does this fact fit within your logic? Or does this reality perhaps clash with your hyperbolic rant?
I didn’t vote for Trump but I do admire his keeping of campaign promises to drain the swamp. Its precisely what the majority of voters wanted.
Not a rant— just alarming and unprecedented facts with dire consequences. The debt was accelerated by Trump’s first term massive tax cuts to the wealthy. If you’re worried about the debt, then let billionaires pay their fair share in taxes and reinstate the IRS personnel that investigate fraud. “Draining the swamp” refers to unseemly or unnecessary employees that take a paycheck — not to proven regulatory agencies that protect Americans from financial fraud, polluted air and water, dangerous products, unsafe food, and/or unfair worker conditions — yet these are the majority of government employees being laid off—those that stand in the way of corporate profits.
I can’t count how many times I’ve heard Democrats claim that “the rich don’t pay their fair share”. How do you reconcile that belief with U.S. Dept. of Revenue data which show that the top 1% of earners pay 46% of income tax revenues! The top 10% of earners pay 76% of tax revenues! The bottom 50% pay nothing.
The debt was accelerated by massive tax cuts to everyone. The wealthy were included and benefitted more because they paid more ( 3% of $2 million is more than 3% of $10,000).
Proven regulatory agencies that protect Americans may have extra unnecessary staff as well. It remains to be seen if cutting those staff is harmful to their mission.
“If you’re worried about the debt, then let billionaires pay their fair share in taxes ”
You could confiscate every single penny from every billionaire and it wouldn’t make a dent in the debt.
The debt is being driven by a $1.75 trillion delta in spending by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the revenue for Medicare Part A via the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund. Medicaid itself is pure deficit spending.
With that said, I’m more than happy to go back to Eisenhower-era tax rates if you’re willing to go back to Eisenhower-era budgets.
This whole pile of crap was started by a lie from a council person. Yes, Trump, our despicable president, picked it up and amplified it, but we need to remove the rot at its core. Tell me what positive Jurinski offers. She uses foul language in emails to bully her colleagues to get her way to repeal a tax, while she offers no replacement strategy for the 6.1MM the tax brought in. Now we’re in trouble with the budget. She needs to be soundly defeated at the ballot box. She has proven that she craves attention more than she produces results by going on conservative radio and bashing the city. Who does that? Most local politicians just want to help their local government, but that’s not who she is…
If a serious problem exists, which is worse – denying that the problem exists, or exaggerating the problem. The Aurora Sentinel, and many of their followers, wholly denied the problem to protect illegal immigration and influence the election.
I wonder if Trump’s irresponsible hyperbole has done near the damage as has yours, Mr. Perry, over the years. We residents of Aurora would do well if both of you would fade into the past.
I agree with Melissa.
For the first time I’m scared. Of Venezuelan mobsters? NO! Of Salvadoran gangs? NO! Of what Trump is saying and doing? YES!
Of the power given to Musk, by not only Trump but Congress?? YES!
Unfortunately Trump has proven he’s above the law, so that even when convicted, he can be elected to the highest office in the United States. He’s a Pied Piper that has, somehow, been able to mesmerize supposedly intelligent people to be blind as to what kind of individual he really is..a fist-in-the-air, pathological lying dictator. Vance is no better, which is why Trump chose him.