Trump-- Poisoning America With His Venom
Trump has made it clear that if he manages to get back into the White House, he has revenge in mind. Something tells me RINOs will be among his first victims. Although his performative authoritarian moves will start with deportations of immigrants. Yesterday, Judd Legum called it a A Poisonous Campaign and noted that Nazi sociopath Steven Miller is likely to lead it. “Should Trump prevail in 2024,” wrote Legum, “Miller is expected to be installed in an even more powerful position, perhaps Attorney General. (Miller is not a lawyer, but that is not technically a requirement for the job.) After Trump was defeated in 2020, Miller started a non-profit dedicated to advancing Trump's priorities, America First Legal. Through America First Legal, Miller has initiated dozens of legal actions, accusing various entities of discriminating against white people. For example, Miller filed a complaint against NASCAR— a sport with just a handful of non-white competitors— for ‘ongoing, deliberate, and illegal discrimination against white, male Americans.’”
He wrote that “Miller has a history of promoting explicitly white nationalist texts. In a 2015 email to an editor at Breitbart, a far-right website, Miller recommended promoting the racist French novel The Camp of the Saints. The book, published in 1973, depicts the destruction of Western civilization due to an influx of dark-skinned migrants. The migrants ‘are portrayed as diseased people who eat human feces.’ The title is a Biblical reference ‘to the army gathered by Satan who overrun the earth, including the camp of the saints.’ The Camp of the Saints helped popularize the racist ‘Great Replacement’ theory, which posits that there is an intentional effort to ‘replace’ white populations with non-white migrants. It has been ‘a must-read within white supremacist circles for decades.’ In recent weeks, Trump has featured these racist concepts into his campaign rallies, claiming immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country.’ Trump featured this rhetoric during a December 16 rally in New Hampshire: ‘They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done… They’re coming into our country, from Africa, from Asia, all over the world. They’re pouring into our country. Nobody’s even looking at them. They just come in. The crime is going to be tremendous.’”
Hitler made very similar arguments to justify genocide in his autobiography, Mein Kampf. "All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning," Hitler wrote. Hitler also argued that Germanic people were successful because they [kept their] "racial stock pure and did not mix it with any other racial stock." The dominance of Germanic people would continue, Hitler argued, "as long as that element does not fall a victim to the habit of adulterating its blood." Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor at NYU and an expert in fascism, noted that "Nazis made the fear of blood pollution of their master race and their civilization a foundation of their state."
Trump has been speaking about the dangers of "blood poisoning" since September. People quickly noted the parallels to Hitler, but Trump has continued to use the phrase. In a December 22 radio interview with Hugh Hewitt, Trump maintained that he "never knew that Hitler said it" and "never read Mein Kampf." Trump went on to say that he knows "nothing about Hitler" and is "not a student of Hilter."
Despite his stated ignorance of Hitler, Trump maintained that Hitler "didn’t say [blood poisoning] the way I said it." Trump says his use of the phrase "blood poisoning" is "very different" because Trump is talking about "people coming into our country [and]... destroying our country." This is, of course, exactly how Hitler and other racists have used the phrase.
In November, Trump also promised to "root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country." Mein Kampf also describes Jews as "vermin."
Trump has repeatedly claimed ignorance to excuse ties to racists. For example, when former KKK grand wizard David Duke endorsed his candidacy in 2016, Trump said he didn't "know anything about David Duke" and didn't "know anything" about "white supremacy or white supremacists." In a 2020 debate with Joe Biden, Trump claimed to be unfamiliar with the Proud Boys, a violent hate group.
Ben-Ghiat warns that Trump's rhetoric is not just idle chatter. Rather, Trump is "dehumanizing" immigrants and others now "to get Americans used to the idea that they should be persecuted."
Miller, on behalf of Trump's campaign, pledged that "Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown." Miller described plans to "deport people by the millions per year" with a "blitz” intended "to overwhelm immigrant-rights lawyers."
New tactics will include "workplace raids and other sweeps in public places aimed at arresting scores of unauthorized immigrants at once." The scope of these raids would exceed the current capacity of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, so the effort would enlist personnel from the National Guard and other law enforcement agencies. Arrested migrants would be shuttled to "vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers." These tent cities would be built by the military “on open land in Texas near the border,” according to Miller.
Meanwhile, Steve Bannon is talking about a very different target: Nikki Haley. On Monday, he warned that there would be a “big fight” if Trump names her his running mate. “We’re gonna have a big fight that will take place in the Spring. They’re gonna try to force Nikki on the ticket. They’ll say Trump needs a woman, Nikki on the ticket, she balances things and she can bring together that 15% of Never Trumpers in the Republican party. We’re going to have to have that fight. If Nikki Haley is in this administration in any capacity, it will fail. She’s a viper. She’s a viper and once she gets in there, she’ll try to run it as prime minister. She’ll try to be Dick Cheney. Her to Trump will be just like Dick Cheney to Bush. That’s what she’ll try to do.”
Trump has asked his advisors what think about Haley as a running mate. “Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson warned last month that he would fight Trump’s reelection campaign if Haley was on the ticket, while Donald Trump Jr. told Newsmax he would ‘go to great lengths to make sure’ that such a pairing would not happen.”