Trump Aide Karoline Leavitt's Creepy Flattery of Him Takes a Dark Turn
Trump Aide Karoline Leavitt’s Creepy Flattery of Him Takes a Dark Turn
Social media posts by Trump’s new press secretary reveal the irresolvable paradox—and the massive scam—at the heart of his immigration policies.
https://newrepublic.com/article/190696/karoline-leavitt-trump-secretary-creepy-flattery-dark-turn
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With President Trump’s crackdown on immigration beginning in earnest, it’s now clear that the White House has two major goals to accomplish with its anti-immigrant propaganda. They are in tension with each other. One is to depict Trump fearsomely vanquishing all those dark hordes marauding northward who no longer dare breach our border now that he’s in charge. The other is to portray a nation that—despite Trump’s unassailable strength and power—remains forever under unrelenting invasion, thus legally justifying sweeping new powers to crush the remaining invaders and other assorted enemies within.
You can see this tension playing out in the strange tweets that Karoline Leavitt, the 27-year-old White House press secretary, unleashed as she announced that Trump is now raining down thunder on migrants. “The largest massive deportation operation in history is well underway,” Leavitt gushed, enthusing about the use of “military aircraft” to remove “illegal immigrant criminals.”
The triumphant announcement also came complete with martial imagery. “President Trump is sending a strong and clear message to the entire world,” Leavitt announced in a tweet showing dejected and defeated migrants getting frog-marched onto military planes, declaring: “Deportation flights have begun.” Fox News dutifully blared forth the stunning news. Liberation is at hand!
It is only under Trump, you see, that we have begun deporting migrants on big, powerful-looking planes, and the entire world had better pay attention. Except this is all nonsense. As Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Counsel pointed out, the United States has been removing migrants on planes for many years, and the Biden administration, to its discredit, also drew attention to such flights. What makes the Trumpian version so galling is the suggestion that this is his innovation, and that carrying it out on military planes is something that only Trump is tough enough to undertake.
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