Category: Racist: Hispanic

Trump Laments Troops at Border Can’t Get ‘Rough’ Because People Would ‘Go Crazy’

During a roundtable in Texas on Wednesday, President Donald Trumplamented that troops on the United States border can’t can’t get a little “rough.”

“You don’t need drones…but if you don’t have a wall it is never going to happen” Trump began.

He then said border people are “fantastic” before insisting he was going to have to call up more military.

Then the president said this: “Our military, don’t forget, can’t act like a military would act because if they got a little rough everybody would go crazy. So our military can’t act like they would normally act — or like, let’s say, another military from another country would act.”

The roundtable was held in San Antonio. Trump was joined by local officials and ranchers. Trump is also set to attend a second fundraiser in Houston on Texas. According to Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel the two fundraisers are expected to raise $6 million.

[Mediaite]

Trump tells Legal Hispanic immigrants seeking asylum: ‘Our country is full’

Donald Trump had a unwelcoming message to those seeking political asylum in the United States: Don’t bother.

“Our country is full,” Trump said at an event in Calexico, Calif., to promote construction of a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico. “Our area is full. The sector is full. Can’t take you anymore, I’m sorry. Can’t happen. So turn around, that’s the way it is.”

Trump described his remarks as “our new statement,” and said it applied to asylum seekers as well as immigrants crossing the border illegally.

“If you look at our southern border, the number of people and the amount of drugs, human trafficking — the human trafficking is something that nobody used to talk about, I talk about it. It’s a terrible thing. It’s ancient and it’s never been bigger than it is modern, right now, today. All over the world, by the way, not just here. All over the world, human trafficking, a terrible thing.”

According to figures provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials the number of people arrested for illegally crossing the border rose from 47,986 in January to 66,450 in February. Families, many traveling from Central American countries, made up more than half of those numbers, CBP said.

While arrests of criminal aliens have continued to fall the past two years, Trump assured his audience that “there is indeed an emergency on our southern border.”

“It’s a colossal surge,” Trump said of the migrant caravans from Central America, “and it’s overwhelming our immigration system. We can’t take you anymore.”

Specifically, Trump singled out those seeking asylum, saying that a large number of them were gang members.

“It’s a scam. It’s a hoax,” Trump said. “I know about hoaxes. I just went through a hoax,” which is how he refers to special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of his campaign’s ties to the Russian government.

At the same time, Trump proclaimed that Mexico “has been absolutely terrific for the last four days,” arresting “thousands” of Central American migrants before they could reach the U.S. border. But then the president issued another warning.

“If for any reason Mexico stops apprehending and bringing the illegals back to where they came from, the U.S. will be forced to tariff at 25 percent all cars made in Mexico and shipped over the border to us. If that doesn’t work, I will close the border,” Trump vowed.

Trump had backed off from that threat earlier in the week after lawmakers from both parties threw cold water on the idea.

“Closing down the border would have potentially catastrophic economic impact on our country, and I would hope we would not be doing that,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warned.

As for the country being “full,” the United States, with a population density of 35 people per square kilometer, ranks 175th of 240 countries, between Venezuela and Kyrgyzstan.

Trump’s rolling up the welcome mat for immigrants stands in opposition to the long-standing American tradition of welcoming immigrants summed up by the lines in Emma Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus,” inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

In February, Trump painted a very different picture regarding the country’s need for new immigrants.

“I need people coming in because we need people to run the factories and plants and companies that are moving back in,” Trump told reporters in February. “We need people.”

[AOL]

President Trump Ranted About ‘Getting Rid of Judges’

Apparently, we had something of an “episode” in the Oval Office Tuesday afternoon.

“Sure, it’s going to have a negative impact on the economy,” the president jovially admitted of his proposed shutdown. “It is one of the biggest trade deals in the world that we’ve just done with the USMCA. It is a very big trading partner. Trading is very important, the borders are very important, but security is what most important. I have to have security. And we’re going to have security in this country. That is more important than trade. Let me just give you a little secret, security is more important to me than trade, so we’re going to have a strong border, or we’re going to have a closed border. I’m totally prepared to do it.”

“Well I haven’t made that intention known and I’m ready to close it if I have to close it. Mexico has the strongest immigration laws in the world. Nobody has stronger. I guess some have the same but you can’t get any stronger than what Mexico has and we don’t want people coming up on this dangerous journey and coming in. And what we have to do is Congress has to meet quickly and make a deal. I could do it in 45 minutes. We need to get rid of chain migration, we need to get rid of catch and release and visa lottery and we have to do something about asylum and to be honest with you, I have to get rid of judges.”

Oh. And there were some pronunciation issues.

Meanwhile, those “rural voters” who, evidently, are the only voters that truly matter, are getting hammered all over the midwest. From NBC News:

Farmers will have to destroy any grains that were contaminated by floodwater, which could also prevent some growers from planting oversaturated fields. Near Crescent, Iowa, farmer Don Rief said the flood damaged more than 60,000 bushels of his grain, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. He tried to move the crops before the flood, but dirt roads were too soft from the storm to support trucks. “We were just hurrying like hell,” Rief said. “Hopefully USDA will come in and minimize some of the damage.” The USDA does not have a program that covers flood-damaged grain because farmers have typically received more advance notice of rising waters, allowing them to move crops and limit losses, said Tom Vilsack, who ran the agency under former President Barack Obama.

That’s going to have to change, it seems. We don’t get many warnings about sudden calamities anymore and, the ones we get, we don’t listen to anyway.

[Esquire]

Trump cuts all direct assistance to Northern Triangle countries Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala

In a stunning about-face, State Department officials said that President Donald Trump is cutting off all direct assistance to the so-called Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

“At the Secretary’s instruction, we are carrying out the President’s direction and ending FY [fiscal year] 2017 and FY 2018 foreign assistance programs for the Northern Triangle,” a State Department spokesperson told ABC News, referring to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. “We will be engaging Congress as part of this process.”

These three countries are the primary source of migrants to the U.S., but for years the U.S. has worked with them to stabilize their political environments and economies and end violence and corruption so that migrants wouldn’t leave in the first place.

Trump hinted at the cuts earlier on Friday, telling reporters,”I’ve ended payments to Guatemala, to Honduras, and to El Salvador. No money goes there anymore.”

While the president has threatened these cuts before, this time the administration is actually following through.

Trump said the funds totaled $500 million, but it wasn’t clear Friday if that figure was accurate. The State Department announced in December that the U.S. would mobilize $5.8 billion in public and private american investment to these three countries.

“We’re not paying them anymore because they haven’t done a thing for us,” he added.

[ABC]

Trump: I’ve Taken Better Care of Puerto Rico Than ‘Any Living Human Being’

President Donald Trump is dismissed criticisms from Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló on of how his administration has handled the island’s recovery from Hurricane Maria.

Trump took questions from reporters on his way out of the White House on Thursday, during which, he was asked about those who’ve said his administration hasn’t done enough to help the Puerto Rico. The question comes amid reports from a recent luncheon where supposedly Trump grumbled that Puerto Rico is getting too much aid while they continue to recover from the devastation caused by Maria in 2017.

“I have taken better care of Puerto Rico than any man ever,” Trump proclaimed. “Puerto Rico has been taken care of better by Donald Trump than by any living human being.”

Trump continued by taking shots at Rosselló and San Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz,, saying “they don’t know how to spend the money. They are not spending it wisely, but I’m giving them more money than they have ever gotten.”

While Trump’s dislike of Cruz is well-established by now, it was believed for some time that he and Rosselló were on decent terms with each other. However, Rosselló recently gave an interview to CNN where he said Trump has not provided the disaster relief he promised the island, with his administration blowing off repeated requests.

[Mediaite]

Trump administration doubles down on opposition to Puerto Rico funding

The White House doubled down Wednesday on President Donald Trump’s comments opposing disaster funding for Puerto Rico, drawing outrage from Democratic members of Congress and raising questions about the administration’s rationale.

On Tuesday, Trump told Republican legislators at a closed-door Capitol Hill meeting that Puerto Rico had gotten too much money to rebuild after Hurricane Maria. The amount “is way out of proportion to what Texas and Florida and others have gotten,” Trump said, according to Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who was in the room.

On Wednesday, White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere told NBC News that while Puerto Rico is on track to receive tens of billions of dollars in unprecedented aid, “the Trump administration will not put taxpayers on the hook to correct a decades-old spending crisis that has left the island with deep-rooted economic problems.”

Rep. Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y., who is Puerto Rican, blasted the administration’s comments in a statement.

“The President’s remarks as reported in the media have at long last laid bare the central reason for his Administration’s callous response to Maria’s devastation in Puerto Rico,” said Velázquez, “namely that he does not value the lives of millions of American citizens who reside there.”

“For the President to vocally oppose and target aid to the most vulnerable in Puerto Rico is shameful, heartless and inexcusable,” the congresswoman added.

In September of 2017, Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico; its aftermath led to the deaths of at least 2,975 people and made it the deadliest U.S. natural disaster in a century. Trump has not yet publicly acknowledged or mourned the victims of the catastrophe following the revised figures.

On Wednesday, a White House official told NBC News on background some of the reasons why the administration was opposed to more spending.

But in doing so, the administration got some facts wrong.

The official said that the Puerto Rican government had not yet submitted a plan to fix the island’s power grid. However, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló announced on Tuesday that he’s ready to sign into law a bill approved by the Puerto Rican legislature that would determine how the island plans to privatize its public power authority, known as PREPA, and expand renewable energy.

The bill has been in the works for over a year, when the island’s government first announced its plans to privatize at least part of its power authority.

An official also said that Puerto Rican officials have mismanaged disaster funds that have been received.

The claim is not new; since last year, Trump has repeatedly asked Congress to stop providing relief and reconstruction money to Puerto Rico.

[NBC News]

Trump again swipes at Puerto Rico in closed door lunch with Republicans

President Donald Trump, in a closed door meeting Tuesday with Senate Republicans, again took a swipe at Puerto Rico’s fiscal management and the size of its disaster relief in the wake of damaging storms last week — and he brought a visual aid to try and back up his point, according to senators in the room.

Trump, as part of broader remarks that touched on everything from special counsel Robert Mueller’s report and health care to trade and North Korea, went out of his way to point out the totals of disaster relief aid that has been distributed in the wake of a series of storms and hurricanes in 2017. It is an issue Trump has had for months — mentioning Puerto Rico’s finances and total disaster relief in negative terms repeatedly in meetings with lawmakers and staff as they’ve worked through iterations of the next disaster relief bill.

“The point was — are we spending the money wisely?” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican asked. “I have nothing against helping the people of Puerto Rico, but we have got to spend the money wisely.”

Trump, senators said, then utilized a chart to showed the difference between what Puerto Rico has received compared to other states like Texas and Florida. At one point, Trump noted that Puerto Rico has received more than $90 billion in aid. Congressional officials asked about the total mentioned by Trump that didn’t track with what Congress has provided in aid up to this point.

“He just talked about the sum total of it,” Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, told reporters of Trump’s Puerto Rico riff.

“I agree that you should always be accounting for how money is spent, but Puerto Rico certainly has needs that were different than some of these other places,” Rubio added, noting the island had been hit by multiple storms and was already in dire financial straits before that damage occurred.

Asked for comment on the senators’ description of Trump’s remarks, the White House responded in a statement.

“The Trump Administration is committed to the complete recovery of Puerto Rico. The island has received unprecedented support and is on pace to receive tens of billions of dollars from taxpayers. However, the Trump Administration will not put taxpayers on the hook to correct a decades old spending crisis that has left the island with deep-rooted economic problems.”

Sen. Richard Shelby, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said Trump was “making the point that Puerto Rico has gotten a lot of money before and a lot of it hadn’t been spent wisely, and I think that’s a given.”

Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló blasted Trump’s reported comments in a lengthy statement, saying they “are below the dignity of a sitting President of the United States. They continue to lack empathy, are irresponsible, regrettable and, above all, unjustified.”

He said Puerto Rico has spent disaster aid responsibly and suggested that “Trump is receiving misleading information from his own staff.”

“I invite the President to stop listening to ignorant and completely wrong advice,” Rosselló said. “Instead he should come to Puerto Rico to hear firsthand from the people on the ground. I invite him to put all of the resources at his disposal to help Americans in Puerto Rico, like he did for Texas and Alabama. No more, no less.”

The issue of Puerto Rico — and the President’s stated frustration with what the island has received up to this point — is coming to a head now as lawmakers work to reach a deal on a disaster relief package. Senate Republicans, who unveiled their own $13.4 billion version Tuesday, include $600 million for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, for the island. The Senate voted Tuesday to begin consideration of the bill.

But the GOP effort falls short of what House Democrats are pushing for regarding aid to Puerto Rico.

“House Democrats oppose this bill because it does not adequately address disaster relief and recovery in Puerto Rico and the territories,” Evan Hollander, spokesman for House Appropriations Committee, said of the Senate bill. “If the Senate passes this bill, we will insist on going to conference to ensure that we meet the needs of all Americans.”

A spokesperson for Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said that the topic of funding for Puerto Rico is an “ongoing conversation” between Trump and Scott.

“His view is that we need to get this bill done now since both Florida and Puerto Rico need this funding now,” spokesman Chris Hartline said. “The senator is committed to fighting for the people of Puerto Rico in the US Senate. It’s why his first floor speech and his first amendment filed was on nutrition assistance funding for Puerto Rico.”

[CNN]

Trump Warns of ‘Invasion’ on U.S. Border After Condemning New Zealand Mosque Shooting

President Donald Trump railed against illegal immigration on the southern border on Friday, after condemning the mass shooting at a New Zealand Mosque.

Speaking to reporters at the signing for his first veto, which struck down an attempt to reject his national emergency declaration, Trump spoke about the shooting carried out at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The gunman, who killed 49 worshipers in his attack, decried Muslims as “invaders” in a manifesto posted online.

Trump called the shooting a “horrible, horrible thing,” and said he offered support to New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, before pivoting to his immigration veto.

“We’re on track for a million illegal aliens to rush our borders,” Trump said. “People hate the word invasion, but that’s what it is. It’s an invasion of drugs and criminals and people. We have no idea who they are.”

Trump has frequently compared illegal immigration into the United States to an “invasion.” He ramped up use of the term before the midterm elections in November 2018, when he warned of a migrant caravan approaching the southern border from Central America.

The Australian gunman, who killed 49 and wounded dozens more at two mosques in Christchurch, posted on fringe message board 8chan before launching his attack. He wrote that he planned to carry out “an attack against the invaders.”

[Mediaite]

Trump begs GOP to ‘stay united’ in support of border wall measure

President Trump on Wednesday implored Senate Republicans to “STAY UNITED!” and vote for his wall on the southern border, dismissing arguments raised to support blocking his national emergency declaration.

“Senate Republicans are not voting on constitutionality or precedent, they are voting on desperately needed Border Security & the Wall,” Trump posted on his Twitter page. “Our Country is being invaded with Drugs, Human Traffickers, & Criminals of all shapes and sizes. That’s what this vote is all about. STAY UNITED!”

The Democrat-controlled House voted last month to block Trump’s emergency declaration, a move the White House says would allow the president to divert money from the Pentagon construction fund for barrier construction.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said his chamber will vote on the resolution before lawmakers go on recess on March 15, but he said there aren’t enough votes to pass it.

Four Republicans have announced that they will vote against it – Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

Republicans hold a 53-47 majority.

[New York Post]

Trump Falsely Claims Violent Crime Plummeted After Border Wall Went Up In El Paso

President Donald Trump on Monday presented the border wall as a work in progress, hailing the start of a “big, big portion” with much more coming soon. That’s a hefty exaggeration from a president who has yet to see an extra mile of barrier completed since he took office.

With another possible government shutdown looming, and illegal immigration still at the heart of the budget dispute, Trump is pulling out the stops to portray his proposed wall as essential to public safety, including stemming crime. As he’s done repeatedly, Trump also defied the record in claiming that the wall that Congress has refused to pay for is rapidly coming together anyway.

Trump addressed the subjects at an El Paso, Texas, rally Monday night and an earlier White House meeting with sheriffs. A look at some of his comments:

TRUMP, on the effect of a border wall on crime in El Paso: “When that wall went up, it’s a whole different ball game. … I don’t care whether a mayor is a Republican or a Democrat. They’re full of crap when they say it hasn’t made a big difference. I heard the same thing from the fake news. They said, ‘Oh crime, it actually stayed the same.’ It didn’t stay the same. It went way down. … Thanks to a powerful border wall in El Paso, Texas, it’s one of America’s safest cities now.” — rally remarks.

Reality

Trump falsely suggests a dramatic drop in crime in El Paso due to a border wall. In fact, the city’s murder rate was less than half the national average in 2005, the year before the start of its border fence. It’s true that the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report shows that El Paso’s annual number of reported violent crimes dropped from nearly 5,000 in 1995 to around 2,700 in 2016. But that corresponded with similar declines in violent crime nationwide and included periods when the city’s crime rates increased year over year, despite new fencing and walls.

Before the wall project started, El Paso had been rated one of the three safest major U.S. cities going back to 1997.

1 … 6 7 8 9 10 … 23