Trump Wants to Militarize the Border; He's Telling Lies to Justify It

[Content Note: Nativism; Islamophobia.]

This morning, Donald Trump tweeted: "Sadly, it looks like Mexico's Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy [sic]. Must change laws!"

Of course his stupid typo ("Emergy") is trending, because everyone's got jokes, since we're two years in and still haven't learned that mocking Trump isn't an effective strategy to halt rampaging authoritarianism.

As I noted on Twitter, there's something rather more important in that tweet: "Yes, 'emergy.' Ridiculous. But also: The President of the United States just asserted without evidence that 'unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in' to a caravan of refugees, which is some extreme Islamophobic trash to justify 'antiterrorism' measures at the border."

And of course Trump heard this garbage on Fox & Friends — though I'll note the shitwheels on Fox & Friends explicitly referred to terrorists, while Trump just said "Middle Easterners" and assumes (rightly, no doubt) that the deplorables will fill in the rest.

Just last Thursday, he threatened to close down the southern border altogether, and has repeatedly threatened to militarize the border in response to undocumented immigration. Now, he's escalating — asserting that the military must be deployed to the border to stop terrorists.

This, like the rest of Trump's arguments employed in defense of his nativist agenda, is a damnable lie.

Again, I want to underline: There is no urgent crisis threatening the United States because of undocumented immigration — not an employment crisis, not a crime and violence crisis, not a health crisis.

Their vile nativism is for no reason other than malice, which lies at the center of Trump's entire agenda.