monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

In 1885, a poor, uneducated 16-year-old boy arrived in our country from Germany at a time when immigrants were often looked down on by affluent Americans.

This boy was ambitious and entrepreneurial, and, despite language problems, he earned some money and then traveled up to the Klondike during the gold rush to operate a hotel that became notorious for prostitution. He prospered, and today his grandson is President Trump.

After Germany became an enemy in World War I, the Trump family was embarrassed enough about its heritage that it claimed to be from Sweden instead. President Trump himself repeated this false claim to being Swedish in his 1987 book, “The Art of the Deal.”

Yet Trump hypocritically joined the modern Know-Nothings by reportedly railing against immigrants from “shithole countries” like Haiti and those in Africa. He favored admitting white people over black people — which is just the latest incident in a four-decade record of racial epithets and discrimination.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, I carefully reviewed Trump’s race-related history, including the 1,021 pages of legal documents from racial discrimination suits against him, and the evidence is devastating. We should be careful about tossing around the word “racist,” and any one incident can be misconstrued. But in Trump’s case, we have a consistent 40-year pattern of insults and discrimination, and I don’t see what else we can call him but a racist.

It’s true, of course, that some African countries are in wretched shape and that some immigrants from poor countries arrive uneducated and end up, along with homegrown Americans, in dubious trades. But careful, Mr. President, given your own grandfather’s history.

More important, the toxic disparagement of immigrants tarnishes heroes like Emmanuel Mensah, 28, a New Yorker who came from the West African country of Ghana and joined the U.S. Army National Guard.

Then a couple of weeks ago, when he was back from training, a fire broke out in Mensah’s Bronx building. Mensah easily saved himself, but then rushed back into the burning building to rescue others. Three times he rushed in and out, bringing out four people.

Then Mensah dashed toward the flames again and reached the fourth floor in a desperate effort to save a fifth person. This brave soul from what Trump would describe as a s-hole country, the kind of person Trump was insulting, never made it out. Mensah’s body was found high in the building’s wreckage.

A few days ago, the Army posthumously awarded Mensah the Soldier’s Medal, its highest award for heroism outside of combat, and New York State awarded him its Medal for Valor. The citation on the state medal reads: “His courageous and selfless act in the face of unimaginable conditions are consistent with the highest traditions of uniformed service.”

Who better embodies our nation’s values? A politician with a history of racist comments who took five deferments to escape military duty in the Vietnam War, including one for heel spurs? Or a heroic Ghanaian immigrant and soldier who dies in a fire while rescuing others?

So I apologize to the people of Haiti and Africa for our president’s comments. Most of us recognize that immigration is complex and that we cannot throw open our borders, but also that newcomers enrich us. That is true not only of Norwegians but also of penniless refugees from impoverished, war-torn countries, such as my father — a Polish-Armenian fleeing Eastern Europe, whose first purchase in the U.S. was a Sunday New York Times to teach himself English.

rump once showed a willingness to be big-hearted to immigrants who break the rules: He married Melania, a Slovenian who came to the U.S. on a visitor visa and then earned money as a model before she was authorized to work, according to an investigation by The A.P.

If only Trump could show a similar compassion to unauthorized immigrants who don’t look like Melania. In particular, his decision to send Salvadorans back, in the face of murderous gang violence in that country, and his rejection of a bipartisan deal to protect DACA “dreamers,” simply seem cruel.

So what can we do?

Obviously, we need to stand up to racist xenophobia even when it emanates from the White House — particularly when it emanates from the White House — and in addition, if Americans are looking for a constructive way to respond, here’s a suggestion: How about donating to an immigrant rights organization like the National Immigration Law Center, or to an aid group that works with people whom our president just insulted?

I’ve seen firsthand and admired the work of two American aid organizations that save lives in Haiti from tuberculosis, cervical cancer and more. They are Partners in Health and Innovating Health International. Both are working heroically on the front lines to save the lives of ordinary Haitians, particularly women.

It seems to me that a fine, practical response to racism is to help save a life.

Count me ask 1st member. I absolutely love her, she be great!

Donald Trump married one American (his second wife) and two women from what used to be Soviet Yugoslavia: Ivana-Slovakia, Melania-Slovenia.

Right- correction. Ivana is from Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic.) [...] Melania is from Slovenia (which plus Slovakia used to be Yugoslavia).

Stop sending people to kill me! We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle... If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send a very fast working one to Moscow and I certainly won't have to send another.

It just occurred to me that I'm kinda like the Donald Trump of this thread, eh?

Not because I'm President, or the Boss, or nuthin like that. But for reasons like this:

<snipped>

MSNBC host Joy Reid apologizes for 'homophobic' blog posts

'From 2007 to 2009 @joyannreid authored a dozen homophobic posts not only attempting to out Charlie Crist as gay, she attacked & mocked him for being so. She repeatedly referred to him as 'Miss Charlie' and tagged posts about him under 'gay politicians.''

'My goal, in my ham-handed way, was to call out potential hypocrisy.'

Reid continued by saying that she regretted the way she addressed the issue and felt the "mocking tone and sarcasm' used were 'insensitive, tone deaf and dumb."

Shitholeghazi

Why should we be deported? This is very, very hard for a family. What will our fellow citizens think if honest subjects are faced with such a decree — not to mention the great material losses it would incur. I would like to become a Bavarian citizen again.

In this urgent situation I have no other recourse than to turn to our adored, noble, wise, and just sovereign lord, our exalted ruler His Royal Highness, highest of all, who has already dried so many tears, who has ruled so beneficially and justly and wisely and softly and is warmly and deeply loved, with the most humble request that the highest of all will himself in mercy deign to allow the applicant to stay in the most gracious Kingdom of Bavaria.

Your most humble and obedient,

Friedrich Trump

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account
@realDonaldTrump
The Wall Street Journal stated falsely that I said to them “I have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un” (of N. Korea). Obviously I didn’t say that. I said “I’d have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un,” a big difference. Fortunately we now record conversations with reporters...
4:58 AM - 14 Jan 2018

Greg Sargent‏Verified account
@ThePlumLineGS
Greg Sargent Retweeted Donald J. Trump
A recording has already confirmed Trump said "I have a good relationship..."

The context that follows also confirms it.

The audacity and shamelessness of this kind of lying is the *whole point* of it. This is an assertion of *power* to rewrite reality:
http://wapo.st/2FzJUqO

The phrase [reality-based community] was attributed by journalist Ron Suskind to an unnamed official in the George W. Bush Administration who used it to denigrate a critic of the administration's policies as someone who based their judgements on facts.[2] In a 2004 article appearing in the New York Times Magazine, Suskind wrote:

Quote:

The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [...] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'.[3]

The source of the quotation was later identified as Bush's senior advisor Karl Rove,[4] although Rove has denied saying it.[5]

Getting out of that shithole was the best thing that ever happened to Fred and his descendants, eh?