This is an adapted excerpt from the September 24 episode of “Deadline: White House.”
On Monday, Donald Trump held a rally in Pennsylvania, where he repeated lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Trump told the crowd that Ohio and Pennsylvania communities “will never be the same” after being “inundated” with immigrants.
“They’ll never be the same — do you think Springfield will never be the same? The fact is, and I’m saying it now, you’ve got to get them out as quickly as possible. You’ve got to get them out. I’m sorry. Get them out,” Trump said.
The crowd then burst into applause and spectators chanted, “Send them back!”
Such reactions from Trump’s rallygoers should come as no surprise. In July, the crowd at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee held up signs reading “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!”
This feels like a throwback to a much darker, more dangerous period in American history. Trump has a whole crowd chanting, “Send them back.” The racism is just so raw. But this is who Trump is — it’s not a blunder, it’s not a one-off. This kind of rhetoric is what he runs on, and with every passing day, he’s doubling down on it.
What would it say about American culture and the American people if they looked at this man and said, “Yes, let’s bring him back into power. Let’s make him president of the United States again. Let’s ratify these policies.”
Trump keeps talking about mass deportation, and yes, some polls suggest that a majority of Americans want that, but I’m not sure we really understand what that means: millions of people on trains and buses, rounded up and arrested by the military and the police. Children would be separated from their parents. It would be one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of our time. And yet it feels like a lot of Americans are shrugging their shoulders and saying, we’re all fine with this.
We are less than six weeks away from the election and this is the choice facing the American people. This is what it comes down to: It is not just who we want to be the president of the United States, it is what kind of country we want to be.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
