Donald J. Trump is doubling, tripling, maybe even quadrupling down on his anti-immigrant theme as he runs for president of the United States.
Holy cow, man!
He told a rally in Portland, Maine this week that “legal immigrants” pose a potential threat to national security.
The Republican presidential nominee wasn’t satisfied just in calling for a ban on Muslims entering the country. He expanded it to include those who come from countries where terrorists are lurking (which is just about everywhere on Earth). Now he says even those who are here legally can pose a threat and, by golly, he wants to stop them before they kill somebody.
OK. Where does he stop?
He might consider going after, oh, every single American. That’s more than 300 million of us. Sure, the immigrant population has grown significantly in this country; it’s up to about 13 million immigrants now compared to 5 million in 1970, according to the Washington Post article attached to this post.
Do they pose the so-called existential threat to our national security? Are they more likely to commit terrorist acts than, say, your run-of-the-mill home-grown, corn-fed, good ol’ red-blooded American-born terrorists, such as, say, Timothy McVeigh? Do you remember Eric Rudolph? Hey, the U.S. Army psychiatrist who killed all those folks at Fort Hood on Nov. 5, 2009? His name is Nidal Hasan, but he’s an American-born fellow, too.
Trump went bonkers about a year ago when his presidential campaign started. Now, though, he’s talking about folks like my own grandparents. They’re all gone now.
But you know, come to think of it, two of them — my mother’s parents — came here from Turkey, where most people are practicing Muslims. If they were alive today, they might be on Donald Trump’s watch list.