Trump campaign’s racist immigration meme proves he’s run out of ideas
OPINION: The former president's latest reliance on racist and sexist campaign messaging reveals the strength of Kamala Harris and the limits of prejudice.
Donald Trump is getting boring.
A candidate who once provoked shock and awe now generates eye rolling, head shaking and, even in some cases, pity as Americans see him struggling to navigate the new political reality of Kamala Harris.
After Trump’s rambling press conference at Mar-a-Lago and multiple unhinged tweets since Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, many within his own camp worry that Harris’ largely successful rollout had made Trump both anxious and desperate for attention.
In recent weeks, as Harris has quickly closed polling gaps that Biden couldn’t, we’ve watched Trump turned to familiar tactics we’ve seen before:
Calling women who’ve challenged him “nasty.”
Describing his female opponent as “low IQ.”
Telling a room full of Black journalists a lie to push conspiracy theories about race and ethnicity.
Trump’s moves are as predictable as the cha-cha slide and wobble at a Black wedding.
And yet when Trump’s war room account posted a meme this week showing flag-waving homes juxtaposed with a chaotic scene of Black and brown immigrants, the campaign laid bare just how bottomless his floor was.
“Import the third world. Become the third world,” read the caption.
It was the clearest example yet that Donald Trump isn’t hiding what’s at the core of his campaign message: fear, doom and the ethnic “threat.”
The unsubtle point is that we, Americans, are the “us” and the outside “third” world is the “them” threatening our way of life.
This ahistorical take ignores the reality that America is a nation of immigrants, living alongside Indigenous people whom the country originally belonged to and descendants of enslaved Africans who did not ask to be kidnapped and trafficked here and who have built, served and contributed to making it the country we have today.
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Memes like the immigration one appeal to fears of replacement and limited resources, while riling up the so-called liberal media and Democratic party into time-old debates about who deserves what. They oversimplify a complicated immigration system that was broken long before Biden, Harris, Trump and even Obama stepped into office.
Despite all of Trump’s so-called efforts to court Black and Hispanic voters during this campaign, memes like this are reminders that the candidate will still weaponize race and ethnicity when it’s convenient.
Highlighting brown-skinned immigrants of color was … a choice.
Trump’s team didn’t use a photo of white refugees from European countries who also immigrate to America or show immigrants paying taxes or working hard jobs for a reason.
But just because Trump’s campaign chose Black and brown immigrants doesn’t mean that the message isn’t an attempt to appeal to some Black Americans as well.
The longstanding fight over whether immigrants take away resources from Black Americans extends to Black and brown immigrants as well.
The meme plays to the deepest fears that immigrants of color stand in the way of Black Americans achieving their own American dreams, whether it be in the form of a job or a slot at an Ivy League school.
It tugs at the pain of promises of a full realization of American citizenship that many Black Americans still feel like they are being pushed to the back of the line to receive.
It’s a pain that Democrats must have a smart and clear message to explain how and why welcoming immigrants benefits the entire country economically beyond the moral case of doing the right thing.
Even the most empathetic Americans are weary as they struggle to find affordable housing, pay groceries, and have any money left over to save for the future.
But perhaps these Americans are also weary of Trump’s same old approach to their problems– rage and fearmongering that offer no hope outside of his election as a solution.
If Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, can remind Americans that Trump’s antics are a reflection of a man who hasn’t grown (or grown up) since the last election, even the most reluctant voters might be ready to turn the page to something new.
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