Conservative Bulwark Editor Jonathan Last argued there are two groups of President Donald Trump's voters: Those who signed on to deport 20 million immigrants regardless of whether they had committed any crime, and those who signed on with Trump’s plan to remove only immigrants who were criminals.
“Because people are stupid, that first group of voters believed that there were 20 million undocumented immigrants who have committed felonies. This is not possible,” said Last. “The total number of people in jail in America today — this includes federal, state, local, and tribal land prisons — is just under 2 million. The number of undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes cannot be 10x the entire prison population of the United States. If it were, then daily life in America would look like Escape from New York.”
“So, some Trump voters were duped owing to their general ignorance and/or innumeracy. But others were not,” added Last. “Others signed up for Trump because of his second promise (the 20 million deportations) and viewed the first promise (about deporting only criminals) as the pap necessary to get the suckers onboard.”
The question Last wants to answer is how many “dupes” voted for Trump vs the avowed racists who simply want Brown people gone. To get his answer, Last reviewed an AP/NORC poll showing consistent 80 percent support for Trump’s immigration policies among Republicans. Then he compared that to a more recent YouGov poll showing 80 percent of Republicans still "approved" of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement even after they shot and killed 37 year-old U.S. citizen Renee Good in footage that reveals no threat to agents.
“It seems pretty clear that, at best, one in five Trump voters were duped. The majority of them are getting exactly what they wanted,” Last said. "Now if Trump were to lose the support of 20 percent of Republican voters — or even 14 percent — it would be meaningful for Republican electoral prospects. Which is nice. The problem is that having 80 percent of Republican voters actively supporting a fascist race war is meaningful for our societal prospects.”
That’s a lot of racists in one party, said Last, but what’s worse is the tally of avowed racists occupying high federal positions, including “Vice President JD Vance, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem," as indicated by a recent Homeland Security post claiming to seek the deportation of "100 million" deportations.
“There are 43 million foreign-born Americans. Most of them are legal immigrants. In order to perform 100 million deportations, DHS would have to round up every immigrant of any status —even naturalized citizens — and then also snatch 57 million American who are citizens by birth and deport them, too,” said Last.
“Want to guess who those other 57 million Americans might be?” Last asked, before sharing a recent U.S. Department of Labor X post ordering Americans “To remember who you are.” Last said this slogan is a dead ringer from Adolf Hitler’s own iconic “One People, One Country, One Leader” post from the 1940s. Couple that with a volley of blonde, blue-eyed propaganda posts from Trump’s Department of Labor, and you’ve got even more insight.
“On the one hand, it feels weird to say that the U.S. government is attempting some low-key ethnic cleansing,” said Last. “On the other hand, the reality is that we have a masked secret police force going door-to-door attempting to kidnap brown people; one government agency publicly daydreaming about deporting 100 million people; and another government agency saying that the ideal worker is a 20-year-old white guy.”
Last said this information mingles horribly with the White House’s obsession with white Americans’ falling fertility rate and it’s constant citation of “Stuff white people like” including false claims that white men who “did extremely well” in high school are not getting invited to college despite white men having a “significant advantage” during the application process.
Read the Bulwark report at this link.