The media did immeasurable damage to the country through its false reports on Russian collusion. A YouGov poll showed that a majority of Democrats believed Russians tampered with their vote tallies to get Trump elected.46 Mission accomplished! With the exception of the conservative press, the media pushed the false allegations with shocking uniformity. One notable dissenter was left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald, who excoriated their reporting as “arrogant and willfully misleading.”
Columnist Matthew Continetti observes that as the mainstream media’s influence has declined, their efforts to control the narrative have intensified, and they have become more politicized and “less interested in the canons of professional journalism, such as presenting both sides of a story and refraining from baseless speculation.” He chronicles the numerous times within a few short months in 2019 that the “liberal media matrix” advanced false headlines, including the slanders against the Covington Catholic high school students, the Jussie Smollett hoax, the Trump-Russia hoax in all its many plots and subplots, and the media’s adoration of attorney Michael Avenatti, who represented Stormy Daniels until he didn’t and was eventually indicted by a federal grand jury on thirty-six counts, including fraud.47 No matter how many stories the media get wrong and how badly, they proceed undeterred—because their goal isn’t news reporting; it’s advancing the leftist agenda.
THE “TRUMP IS CRAZY” TROPE
Sometimes the left gets so carried away that it loses all sense of proportion, let alone respect for democratic norms. The Washington Times reported that a secret, five-person group was devising a plan to create a medical panel that would examine the health and fitness of presidential candidates, with the obvious intent of declaring Trump unfit for reelection. One member of the group is Dr. Bandy Lee, a Yale University psychiatrist and editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a book of essays arguing that Trump is dangerous to the country due to his mental unfitness. “Based on the experience with the current president, we are calling for regular fitness for duty exams on presidential and vice-presidential candidates, preferably as a requirement sometime before they take on the job, and even preferably before they run,” said Lee. Knowing that Congress would never go along, Lee’s group suggested that candidates voluntarily agree to be examined.48 With the left’s habit of politicizing everything it touches, any Republican candidate would be insane to voluntarily submit to such an examination.
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, a notorious Trump hater, mused about Trump’s mental state, even bringing on a psychiatrist to discuss several comments Trump had made. “The president struggled to pronounce a very simple word and he repeatedly could not do it. What does that mean?” asked O’Donnell. “We have grown accustomed to the vagaries and strangeness of Donald Trump’s public behavior, but this was a day where the strangeness dominated, both the strangeness of the policy positions and the strangeness of the president’s public behavior and public words.… Watching the president today, you had a right to wonder… whether there’s something wrong with the working of the president’s mind, especially if you watched him repeatedly struggle to say the word ‘origin.’ ”49
Joe Scarborough made similar observations a few months before when he suggested that “if we had a cabinet that was filled with people with more character,” or if “we had a House and a Senate that took their job seriously,” they would have already taken action to remove Trump from office. “There would be people going up to the White House this morning saying, ‘Mr. President, questions abound whether you were fit for this office. If this continues, we are going to ask your Cabinet to take a vote on whether you were fit for office and invoke the 25th Amendment.’… This is a man who obviously is not fit to hold the office, and we’ve known that for a very long time.”50
Leftists freely politicize non-news shows as well. Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi slammed Trump over his immigration policies, mentioning his mental state. “And if you look at all the contributions immigrants have made, you’re basically looking at what America is today, in whole, full stop—There’s no crisis,” said Lakshmi. “There’s no crisis. The only crisis is that we have a lunatic with a lot of power. That is the only crisis.”51
“MY DEEPEST WISH IS THAT YOUR BUSINESS FAILS”
The left’s contempt for President Trump applies with equal fervor to his supporters. This was particularly apparent in the rush to judgment against the Covington Catholic High School students. Comedian Sarah Beattie, for example, tweeted, “I will bl*w whoever manages to punch that MAGA kid in the face.” Reza Aslan tweeted, “Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?” And comedian Kathy Griffin called for the doxing of the Covington kids. “Name these kids,” she demanded. “I want names. Shame them. If you think these [****ers] wouldn’t dox you in a heartbeat, think again.”52 This is the same Kathy Griffin who falsely accused the Covington basketball players of displaying “the new Nazi sign”—which was the universally recognized “OK” hand gesture.53
Despite the constant media attacks on Trump supporters, The Nation’s Elie Mystal bemoaned the media’s alleged sympathy for them. He clarified that he was talking about
the poor, aggrieved white people who’ve allegedly been “left behind” by forces such as “globalization” and “Democrats.”… From the New York Times to CNN, we’re being treated to deep dives on the white people who voted for Trump, found it hasn’t paid off, and are now questioning their choices. I am here for none of it. If it took missing a check due to the government shutdown for you to realize that voting for a bigoted conman was unwise, I have no sympathy. If your business is being hurt by the tariffs ordered by the know-nothing “Tariff Man” you happily voted for, my deepest wish is that your business fails, thereby creating a market opportunity for a hardworking immigrant your president disparages.54
Translation: if you were stupid and self-interested enough to support the ogre Trump, you won’t be forgiven.
“All of the ‘economically aggrieved’ Trump voters made the same immoral bargain,” Mystal continued. “They calculated that allowing Trump to harass and terrorize ‘other’ people—nonwhites, women, gays, children, whatever—would result in more money in their pocket. Now they want me to be sad when the racist offset-check they were counting on doesn’t clear? You must not know about me.”
No, don’t you dare sympathize with Trump voters because in Mystal’s mind they are all evil, mercenary racists motivated solely to benefit themselves and gratify their own bigoted sentiments. Rather, Mystal instructs his readers to reserve their sympathy for those suffering people “who didn’t vote for Trump.… Where are the stories about the innocent victims of Trump’s policies, instead of stories about his enablers?”55 Again, we see the same theme: leftist compassion is reserved exclusively for progressives. Even if a suffering person is part of any of the protected categories the left habitually exploits—minorities, women, gay, transgender—if the person is conservative, the left has no use for them. In the final chapter we’ll look at the left’s egregious hypocrisy and race-baiting on immigration.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Open Borders and Abolishing ICE: The Left’s Immigration Agenda
Immigration is among the most controversial issues because progressives refuse to debate it in good faith and smear everyone who disagrees with them as racists. This tendency was noticed by columnist Damon Linker—no conservative—who observes that a surprisingly large number of liberals are “not claiming that cuts to legal immigration shouldn’t be made, but that the very act of proposing and defending them in the first place is morally illegitimate. These liberals appear to believe that immigration restrictionists should be excluded on principle from participating in public debate and discussion about immigration policy in the United States.”1
For example, liberals were outraged when New York Times columnist Ross Douthat argued they should negotiate immigration policy with White House policy adviser Stephen Miller.2 Salon columnist Jeremy Binckes reminded Douthat that Miller is
persona non grata. “President Donald Trump’s immigration policy is, increasingly, in the hands of his policy adviser, Stephen Miller,” he wrote. “To most, Miller’s history and views should disqualify him from handling the sensitive topic.”3
It’s amusing that Binckes presumes to speak for “most”—most of whom? Trump campaigned as a border hawk, was elected on that platform, and then chose Miller to implement that policy. And in fact, Miller was a prominent public voice for Trump during the campaign. So it’s clear Binckes does not mean “most” Americans object to Miller’s views—Americans knew both his views and Trump’s views when they elected Trump. No, it’s clear that what Binckes means is that Miller is anathema to “most” people who live in the same ideological bubble as Binckes does. To them—liberal writers and reporters, left-wing activists, Democratic Party members and big-money donors, big-labor foot soldiers, Hollywood glitterati, the zealots of academia, and open-border Republican squishes—Miller is a non-person who can’t be reasoned with or even talked to. Instead, he must be shunned and placed beyond the boundaries of respectable society because, as the left has made crystal clear, it believes the only moral position on immigration is open borders. As Linker further notes, “Increasingly, political argument is taking the same form, with liberals asserting that Trump Policy X is not just bad for reasons a, b, and c, but that it transgresses some unwritten standard of moral rightness that renders it prima facie unacceptable and illegitimate. Most often the rationale offered for this judgment amounts to the assertion that the policy, or the motive behind it, is racist (or nativist, xenophobic, or sexist, or homophobic, or transphobic).”4
We’ve seen that the left’s moral certitude is a recurring theme that applies to numerous issues. They’ve unilaterally declared a consensus on climate change, casting all dissenters as abominable science deniers. To them, conservatives are cruel, greedy capitalists and religious hypocrites with no concern for the environment and no heart for the downtrodden or for suffering refugees.
In December 2018 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “Joy to the World! Merry Christmas everyone—here’s to a holiday filled with happiness, family, and love for all people. (Including refugee babies in mangers + their parents.)”5 Putting aside her biblical illiteracy, AOC is implying conservatives are hypocritical Christians who fail to model Jesus’s love. Republicans are so heartless they would deny asylum to the persecuted and sadistically delight in separating children from their parents.
These are malicious lies. Republicans support granting asylum to people fleeing political persecution, which is what the laws are designed for, not for those escaping poverty. In supporting open borders, sanctuary cities, across-the-board amnesty, and a catch-and-release policy, Democrats are incentivizing border anarchy, human trafficking, and lawlessness. They are endangering American citizens and discriminating against immigrants who play by the rules. There is nothing compassionate about that.
THE NATIONAL CONSENSUS IS GONE
Throughout our history immigration has been legally controlled. We used to have a national consensus that immigration should be an orderly process, closely regulated to ensure that applicants demonstrate their genuine desire to become a part of America, embrace its ideals, and pledge their commitment to the Constitution. This is why the legal path to citizenship and its attendant naturalization process have involved training applicants in civics and inspiring patriotism for this nation. But this national consensus is gone. The Democratic Party now disclaims the nation’s sovereign right to control its borders. It is astounding that any self-styled patriotic American could endorse an open-borders policy, which would inevitably disintegrate our national compact.
A nation cannot exist without borders and border enforcement. This is especially true of America because its uniqueness is in its founding ideas, which are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Our patriotic ancestors knew that our freedom tradition depends on adherence to the Constitution and on a citizenry dedicated to ordered liberty. They understood that freedom is meaningless unless undergirded by the rule of law, and they believed the government’s first duty is to protect its citizens from domestic and foreign threats. They may have disagreed on whether and to what extent we should export our democratic principles, but never on whether we should preserve them for ourselves.
A nation cannot be sovereign without controlling its borders and preserving its culture and the cohesiveness of its national fabric. Indeed, national sovereignty is essential and perfectly biblical. “From one man (God) made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth,” declared the apostle Paul. “And he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.” But the left no longer embraces the American idea or America’s right and duty to enforce its immigration laws, as well as the orderly, controlled system of immigration they establish. This partly stems from leftists’ being more ashamed than proud of America’s heritage.
Conservatives fervently believe in ethnic diversity. America is undeniably—and gloriously—an amalgam of countless ethnicities. But we also believe in the assimilation of all ethnicities into a common culture committed to the Constitution and rule of law—as opposed to a balkanized society of suspicious and competing groups.
Leftists don’t particularly believe in American exceptionalism or the uniqueness of American culture except that it’s uniquely exploitative and bigoted. They discourage assimilation because it works against their practice of identity politics. They conflate culture and race, believing that to celebrate a unique American culture is inherently racist.
Democrats must be pressed to explain how eviscerating our immigration laws would be in the best interest of America and its citizens, how flooding our borders with people we can’t support or assimilate would help either those immigrants or current American citizens. If we care about preserving America as the freest and most prosperous and benevolent nation in the world, we cannot continue to ignore border security and thwart the rule of law. How compassionate would the world be without America?6
If leftists don’t believe in a unique American culture or that America’s ideas make it exceptional, then it follows that they wouldn’t be as concerned with controlling the legal flow of immigration. If there is nothing special to preserve—if all cultures are equal and if our system of government isn’t extraordinary—then what incentive exists to limit the number of people who enter the country? Additionally, the Democratic Party realizes that the more people who enter the nation illegally, the greater their electoral prospects, especially if they can engineer an amnesty.
“CONTINUED DEMAGOGUERY IGNORES THE TRUE REALITY”
Congressman Dan Crenshaw asked Beto O’Rourke on Twitter, “If you could snap your fingers and make El Paso’s border wall disappear, would you?” Crenshaw’s question prompted MSNBC’s Chris Hayes to ask O’Rourke the question. “Yes. Absolutely,” replied O’Rourke. “I would take the wall down.” He argued that the wall has not made Americans safer, has cost tens of billions of dollars to build and maintain, and has pushed migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees to the most inhospitable stretches of the border, “ensuring their suffering and death.”7 But Crenshaw noted that illegal crossings have dropped significantly since the wall was erected and that El Paso’s mayor has attested that the fence works.
O’Rourke postures about harm to illegal immigrants but says nothing about the children that traffickers bring into the United States or about Amnesty International’s estimates that 20,000 migrants are abducted each year in Mexico on their way to America’s southern border.8 He ignores the 15,482 heroin overdose deaths in this country in 2017 alone—some 288 deaths per week9—though 90 percent of U.S. heroin comes from Mexico, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration report.10 He doesn’t mention fentanyl, which was responsible for 29 percent of the 63,000 American overdose fatalities in the U.S. in 2016, though 80 percent of the drug’s supply enters the country through Mexico. In February 2019, Border
Patrol officials secured the largest-ever seizure of fentanyl at the border—more than 254 pounds, which is enough to kill 115 million people.11
Like many Democrats, O’Rourke thinks border walls are immoral. Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler offers this counterpoint: “This continued demagoguery ignores the true reality of the situation: illegal drugs are pouring over our border and fueling an opioid crisis that is killing thousands of Americans a year. The true immorality here is the reluctance to do anything about it.”12
“I WAS GOING TO BE IN A BAD MOOD THE WHOLE DAY”
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson offered a four-point summary of the political calculus underlying the Democrats’ open-borders policy:
One: some studies, as noted, show there are 22 million illegal immigrants living in the nation.
Two: Democrats favor granting citizenship to all of them.
Three: Studies show the overwhelming majority of first-time immigrant voters vote Democrat.
Four: The biggest landslide in American presidential history involved a victory margin of only 17 million votes.13
Some reporters suggest both sides want to limit illegal immigration, so there is no reason the parties can’t come together and reach a compromise solution. But that is pitiably naïve. Democrats support open borders and mass immigration. They have no interest in compromising, as evidenced by their continual shifting of the goalposts and refusal to agree to any Republican offers.
Guilty by Reason of Insanity Page 41