The Washington Post is out with a deep dive into Trump’s terrible relationship with his Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen. It’s emblematic of a bad manager who thinks dressing-down and degrading people in public will make them perform better and do what he wants.
But the exposé also paints a portrait of a president who is exactly the man the left has said he is: a heartless racist who hates immigrants.
“President Trump began berating Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in the Oval Office earlier this spring, according to administration officials, griping about her performance and blaming her for a surge in illegal border crossings,” The Post’s story begins. “The president has chastised her on several occasions this spring, including a much-publicized meeting earlier this month when he attacked her in front of the entire Cabinet.”
That’s how Trump treats his direct reports, his Cabinet Secretaries and staffers.
And here’s how he treats the people he doesn’t see: immigrants.
“The night before Trump delivered his first speech to Congress in February 2017, he huddled with Jared Kushner and [Stephen] Miller in the Oval Office to talk immigration. The president reluctantly agreed with suggestions he strike a gentler tone on immigration in the speech,” the report continues.
Here’s where it gets really ugly – and racist.
“Trump reminded them the crowds loved his rhetoric on immigrants along the campaign trail. Acting as if he was at a rally, he then read aloud a few made up Hispanic names and described potential crimes they could have committed, like rape or murder. Then, he said, the crowds would roar when the criminals were thrown out of the country — as they did when he highlighted crimes by illegal immigrants at his rallies, according to a person present for the exchange and another briefed on it later. Miller and Kushner laughed.”
The White House’s push back? They “disputed that Trump used Hispanic names.”
Remember, this is the President who just last week had journalists of all stripes bending over backwards to “correct” their reports when Trump called undocumented immigrants “animals.” After White House and conservative push-back, major publications agreed to claim the president was only speaking of MS-13 gang members.
He wasn’t.
“We have people coming into the country – or trying to come in, we’re stopping a lot of them,” Trump told attendees at that immigration roundtable discussion last week. “But we’re taking people out of the country – you wouldn’t believe how bad these people are.”
“These aren’t people. These are animals,” Trump said.
Also remember, this is the president who repeatedly has called immigrants “vicious snakes.”
Remember, this is the president who killed DACA.
Remember, this is the president who joined two anti-immigrant Senate Republicans to announce his support for their bill which would require all new immigrants to speak English.
Remember, this is the president who promised to ban new immigrants from welfare. (It’s been law since 1996.)
Remember, this is the president who complained that Haitian immigrants “all have AIDS,” and Nigerian immigrants “wouldn’t go back to their huts.”
Remember, this is the president who called African nations “shithole countries.” And then his White House called that just the president “fighting for the American people.”
When Trump last week called undocumented immigrants “animals,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders doubled-down by telling reporters she thought his comment didn’t “go far enough.”
Here’s President trump earlier this year:
Sure Mr. President. Sure.