The Trump GOP and The Crutch of Divisive Immigration Tactics

[0:00] Music.

[0:05] Reminding me of the old Gipper in the 1980s, the GOP is trying to make the old white people scared of outsiders, to distract from having no real reason to vote for them. Don’t fall for the fake politics of hatred. I’m Doug Berger and this is Secular Left.

[0:29] Music.

[0:45] I recently just did an episode, in fact it was the last episode before this one, where I talked about the propensity of Republicans to drag out the unclean, criminal, criminal illegal immigrant hordes that are going to kill your children and take over your town and take your jobs and vote for Democrats. And I no sooner got done talking about that gimmick that it comes out in the debate on September the 10th when the convicted felon Trump, debated Vice President Harris. And at one point, he talks about that a group of immigrants, illegal immigrants, he called them, in Springfield, Ohio, are eating dogs and cats.

[1:44] And rightly so, Vice President Harris was laughing about it. She was just incredulous about it. And here, like the day before, a day or two before the debate, candidate, Vice President candidate C.F. Vance was talking about it in some talk that he was giving to some group, talking about these illegal immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, these Haitian immigrants that were eating pets. Pets were coming up missing and they were eating them. And so basically what it’s done is it sucked the oxygen out of the political, reporting, at least for the past week. And the reason why it keeps going is because Vance and Trump won’t let it go. It’s been debunked. It’s false. There weren’t illegal immigrants in Springfield eating pets.

[2:41] You know, the Republican mayor said there wasn’t anything. Law enforcement in Springfield said they didn’t have any reports. And, in fact, the woman on Facebook that started the rumor that was amplified by Vance on Twitter, she even said that it wasn’t true. And that it was just a rumor she had heard. and so like I said this is the big gimmick because Republicans do not have anything else to run on Trump does not have anything to run on as we saw on the debate when they were asking him point blank what his plan was to replace the Affordable Care Act which he has been talking about since he was president, and he said that he didn’t have any details but he had a concept of a plan So they don’t have any policy plans. They’re running on fear. They’re running on fascism, authoritarianism. They’re threatening to do mass deportations.

[3:48] And it’s this kind of otherness, you know, taking these marginalized groups and making them the others to be feared is trickling down into state races.

[4:01] And I’ll talk about that in my next segment. But I wanted to talk about this Haitian immigrant issue in Springfield, Ohio. And it has been debunked. There is no Haitians going around eating pets. It’s just a damn lie, is what it is. And the fact that C.F. Vance keeps doubling down on it makes me want to even call him C.F. Vance even more. And C.F. stands for couch fucker. So if he’s going to mislabel a whole race of people, then I’m going to mislabel him. And J.D. Vance isn’t even his, isn’t even the name that he was born with, but that’s a whole other issue. So anyway, so C.F. Vance isn’t backing down. They claim to have a police report that a cat was missing.

[5:03] And the person that reported the cat was missing said, oh, we found the cat. It was in the basement the whole time of their house. You know, so they just grasp at these straws to make their racism and their bigotry stick.

[5:23] So, we get this thing, and Trump is threatening to come to Springfield, and Mike DeWine, the governor of Ohio, who won’t call Donald and Vance on their lies, but he’s saying that it’s not true, but he won’t call them liars. He’ll just say that what they’re saying is not true. And so basically what it is, is it’s not 20,000 migrants. They weren’t just dumped one day. And they are all legal, according to the U.S. government. They are legal and the government knows where they’re at. And I’ll explain. They are Haitian immigrants that came to the United States as refugees because of the civil strife and the gang warfare going on in Haiti right now, or has been going on in Haiti. So they went to the United States and the Biden administration gave them temporary green cards to allow them to work, which means technically now they are legal, legal immigrants.

[6:43] Not necessarily going to stay for the long term, but they’re allowed to stay in this country and they’re allowed to work and get a paycheck and pay taxes just like everybody else.

[6:55] So a group of Haitians ended up in Springfield, Ohio, which is east of Dayton. It’s between Dayton and Columbus in central Ohio, because they found out that there was jobs available. So they go and they go and take these and start working. Well, they liked living there. There’s plentiful jobs. People, there was a lot of openings for job openings. And so they let their friends and family in the Haitian community in Florida know about it. And so then they started coming to Springfield. So it is at least 10, 11, 12,000 Haitian migrants have come to the Springfield, Ohio area over the last couple of years.

[7:50] As they’ve gotten word of mouth that there’s jobs. So not only are they legal, but they all have jobs. Now, of course, the downside of that is that Springfield isn’t much bigger than the town that I grew up in, and they don’t have a lot of resources to handle an influx of people like that. That’s understandable. You know, if you have a large number of people showing up, within a short period of time, you’re not going to have enough resources to take care of them. The other thing, too, is that a lot of these Haitians do not speak English as their first language. Some of them don’t speak English at all. They speak French Creole, which is an entirely different kind of dialect than French Creole.

[8:42] And so now they need translators for some of the government stuff in order to enroll their kids in school and to get medical treatment. They need translators. So that’s also a difficulty. So I’m not going to say that it’s all been unicorns and roses in Springfield.

[9:06] They are having struggles with their infrastructure and the government trying to provide for these new people. But again, they are legal and they are working. They’re not on welfare. They’re not on drugs. They’re not drug dealers. They are working in these factories and other places that needed workers. And even the owners, the business owners are saying, yes, we need these people. We needed these people. They work hard. They come in every day. And here you have a candidate for president of the United States and a candidate for vice president of the United States.

[9:51] Basically slandering a whole group of people saying that they’re criminals and that they’re illegal immigrants. Calling for mass deportations, knowing that what they were talking about with eating cats and dogs was false. And they knew it was false before they even said it. But as I said in my last episode, they used this gimmick to strike fear in white people, their base, trying to gin up enthusiasm for their base to come vote for them by, quote, protecting the community, unquote.

[10:35] And it’s just ridiculous.

[10:38] So then yesterday, I saw on the news that the failed presidential candidate, Vic Ramadamadamanan, whatever his name is, that lives in the Cincinnati area, decided to have a town hall. He’s going to get to the bottom of this. He’s going to figure this out for everybody. And so, Channel 6 in Columbus had a sizable story about it on their news. Bob Kendrick, one of the anchors down there, attended this town hall. And so, what I want to do is I want to play the story from the town hall, and then I’m going to comment on it after it plays. Now, he had promised a diverse set of voices coming to the table tonight, but it turns out Haitian voices were not among them. I don’t actually blame any of the 70,000 people in Springfield for the mess in Springfield. Springfield, a city under siege, trying to assimilate thousands of Haitian immigrants, a local example of a nationwide issue. After meeting with a bunch of them today, I don’t even blame the 12,000 to 20,000, most of them, certainly, I don’t blame most of them, the Haitian migrants who were brought here by unconscionable means.

[12:08] I blame the federal policies. Vivek Ramaswamy says he wants diverse voices in the conversation to hear the problems they see. You try to get into a hospital that’s 100% capacity. We now have an influx of people coming into these schools that the focus is on them because they do not, they have not assimilated, they do not know the culture, they do not know the language. What is happening to our kids is not fair. One thing we should be united on, there simply are too many mass migrants here. Year. So we need less migrants in this town. We can’t absorb them. We need to take some of that money that’s been given to them and give that to people in the community who’ve been harmed by this.

[12:48] Attendees complain the diverse voices do not include city leaders. They don’t really know if they’re not living on that side of town what really goes on. Ramaswamy claims he invited them. I sat there for an hour with them after we met with the Haitian group. I think they actually really do care at least the subset i met with i think the reason they’re not here tonight is not because they don’t care about this this because they’re scared as for solutions most came from ramaswamy including if we’ve had the largest influx of illegal immigrants in american history, that it stands to reason we should have the largest mass deportation of immigrants in american history if you’re going to pick the limited number you may as well pick the ones that are most likely to be able to assimilate, most likely to be able to be participants in economic action, and those who are able to actually integrate their kids into the schools. Tempers staying mostly in check.

[13:42] Just one? This is my minute. This exchange over faith-based groups bringing in immigrants. We’re not unwelcoming to that effect. But 20,000, when does it stop? I hope that Springfield’s best days are ahead. Any actionable items? Yeah, I do. I think we need to make sure that people actually are able to pass not only written light driver’s license tests, but driving actual tests. I think there’s a strong consensus that immigrants who enter the country who are going to have dependence on the welfare state should not be permitted to actually enter the country. But I think there’s actually consensus among that and even in the Haitian community too. Good seeing you, man. Appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. So I think that there’s a lot of common ground and agreement that it’d be a lost opportunity if we believe that everybody’s divided. We’re not nearly as divided as we actually have to be. Now, I was a little bit surprised by that story in how relatively objective Bob Kendricks is, because WSYX in Columbus, Channel 6, is a Sinclair station. And for those that are knowledgeable about politics in this country and follow it, know that the Sinclair stations normally support Trump and the Republicans.

[15:02] So, yes, it was a favorable report for Vic in his town hall, but they did stick with some of the facts. The facts being that they chose to air some clips of him talking, where he talks about that it’s not the fault of the Haitians, it’s not the fault of the people in Springfield, it’s the fault of federal policies. And that he claimed that it was, that they were sent, that they were shipped to, well, he didn’t say shipped, but they ended up in Springfield due to unconscionable federal policy, which is not correct.

[15:43] You know, he’s spinning it. He’s politically spinning it, you know. And then you see at the end where they ask him that some people were wondering if he was going to run for governor. And, oh my gosh, that’s just going to be terrible. If he runs for governor, Oh, man, that’s just awful. He’s an awful person anyway.

[16:02] But then, of course, Hendricks points out that there were no Haitians speaking at this town hall. And they also noted that the people from the city government didn’t show up. So basically, you had, well, there was one black person. There was one black person that said something. I’m sure there’s a couple black people in that audience. But the majority of them were white, older people, a lot of them with MAGA hats.

[16:31] And then I also liked the little tidbit where they were talking about how it was getting a little bit spicy with the anger when somebody was complaining about faith-based groups bringing migrants into town. And and i think that that has some validity to it and this woman got mad and said you know you know we’re not it’s not that we’re not welcoming it’s just it’s 20 000 people which is not true it’s 20 000 migrants when’s it going to end and you do have some churches and some religious groups that do sponsor and bring in migrants, people that moved into the country. We see that a lot here in the Toledo area where they had a lot of people come in from the Ukraine when the dust up in the Ukraine was happening or still happening. We had people from Ukraine that came in. We’ve had people in history, in the historic, you know, over the years from the Middle East.

[17:46] Dearborn, Michigan is a very sizable Muslim population, which is not too far from Toledo. And Toledo also has had a lot of immigrants from the Middle East. So that’s not.

[18:03] That’s not saying anything new, and a lot of times, churches and religious groups are the ones that help them get established, help these people get established. And like I said, these Haitian migrants were legal. They were given special temporary status. They got a green card. When they applied for a job and they started working, they should have filled out an I-9. An I-9 is what they determine is their citizenship, whether or not they’re legal to work. So the government knows where these people are. They’re not just freewheeling it, showing up any old place that they want to go. When they got their temporary green card, they had to let the government know where they were at. And then when they got the job, they let the government know where they were at.

[18:55] And so, like I said, this is just a gimmick that the Republicans use because they’ve got nothing to run on. They have no policy other than cut taxes for the billionaires. That’s the only policy you ever hear them talk about besides deporting immigrants, securing the border. And yes, the border is important. But I also looked up what is most voters that are getting polled, what is their most important issues. And right at the top is the economy, of course. And then after that is climate change.

[19:37] Immigration shows up further down the list, either third or fourth, depending on what poll you take a look. Look, barely 50% of people that are polled think that immigration is an important issue for this election.

[19:54] Most people really don’t care about illegal immigration, which means they’re not saying it’s a crisis. They’re not agreeing with some of these commercials and ads that some of these Republicans are using about, about millions of people are coming in to kill your children and take your job. Those kind of horrific political ads. Or the political ads where they cherry pick some illegal immigrant that killed somebody in a traffic accident and should have been deported a long time ago, and they’re saying, Biden and Harris, let them in. Well, the data is that a majority of even undocumented immigrants, the people that aren’t legal, they don’t get into trouble. They are less likely to commit crimes than citizens, according to the data. And they’re not drug gangs. They’re not drug dealers. There’s some. There’s some.

[21:03] But it’s not a crisis. The border is not a crisis.

[21:09] And the other thing to note, too, is that when Trump was running in 2020, he claimed that he was going to, well, when he was running in 2016, he was going to build a wall. Remember, he was going to build a wall to seal off the southern border, and he was going to make Mexico pay for it. And he went through his four years as president, And that wall did not get built. Then there was the bipartisan border bill that had been negotiated between the Democrats and the Republicans. And in fact, people like me, progressive people like me, hated the bill because the Democrats in the Congress gave the Republicans everything that they wanted in a border bill because they wanted to get something passed. And an old orange turd blossom Trumpy calls up Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House and calls up his other sycophants in the Congress and tell them to dump the bill, because he didn’t want to give Biden a win and that’s the thing is Trump doesn’t want it solved while he’s running for office because he wants to campaign on it because, again, the Republicans have nothing else. Because, like I said, the Republicans use this as a gimmick. They use immigration as a gimmick.

[22:37] Just like they used to talk about, you know, it used to be they used to talk about Mexicans, migrants that came to pick vegetables and other things. They used to complain about that. And now they’re complaining about any kind of immigrant, legal or otherwise. And the fact that C.F. Vance and Trump are doubling down on this false notion about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, should disgust everybody. And it should make sure that they don’t get elected in November. But, you know, we’re in the era of Trump, where somebody can do that and say those things and be a bigot, outwardly be a bigot, and people love him.

[23:31] And according to the election polling in some of the states he’s almost him and Vice President Harris are tied, so either there are a lot of stupid people that support him or there’s a lot of bigotry out there that’s getting stroked from his rhetoric trying to other people, and it just really disappoints me it really does.

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[24:29] Another Republican politician that is using the gimmick of being disgusting and a bigot towards immigration is Derek Merrin. He’s running for the 9th Congressional District here in Ohio, which includes Toledo, which has a strong, long history of immigration and being open to immigrants. But he’s the one that his ads pretty much, most of his ads talk about securing the southern border and getting rid of, ending illegal immigration. I have a mailer that I just got today. It says, Derek Marin will lead the fight to end illegal immigration. And it says, Derek’s proven plan to secure our borders. It says, enforce tough immigration laws, build the wall, strengthen border security, blah, blah, blah. And what you won’t find on Derek’s website and in his ads is that he’s against abortion.

[25:37] When the 57% of Ohioans voted to protect abortion rights in this state, Derek signed on to a letter by several, at least more than a dozen pro-life members of the legislature who called themselves the Pro-Life Caucus which also included Josh Williams, where they said that they were going to undermine the vote they were going to do everything in their power to stop abortion in the state regardless if there was a constitutional amendment to protect it. And he’s never backed down from that. Now, Josh Williams is the same way. He’s a local politician here in the Toledo area. He scrubbed all his anti-abortion rhetoric from his website. Of course, in the Internet, you can’t do that. It’s being archived somewhere. Somewhere, and the rooster, I think it was the rooster, the blogger that I like, he had the receipts. And of course, I had, you know, I sent him a letter when he signed on to that letter, and his legislative aide said that Josh is pro-life and he’s against abortion.

[27:00] But in that letter, she said that he would abide by the voter’s decision. Now, Derek, he has never said that.

[27:10] So instead, you know, again, he doesn’t have anything to run on. He doesn’t have any actual policies except for tax cuts. Again, that’s all Republicans have are tax cuts for the wealthy because they’re under the naive assumption of the trickle-down theory that we know doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked since when Reagan started doing it. It hasn’t worked because they don’t have any policy to run on. They can’t say, this is what we’re going to do, and this is how we’re going to do it. Then he says, oh, those dirty immigrants, we’ve got to get rid of them. So he’s trying to scare white people again. And so what I want to do is, I got several, I think two or three Derek Merrin ads that have been run on TV. I’ve seen them on TV. I want to play them, and then I’m going to make a comment about them.

[28:04] So here’s Derek’s ads. Northwest Ohio should be on the rise. We should be the home of industry, business, and union jobs. With our strong communities and excellent workforce, we have the potential to be great. But we’re being left behind. I’m Derek Merritt. Our comeback starts with more high-paying jobs. And I’m going to fight to bring them back home. Because we need American jobs to bolster Northwest Ohio’s economy. Join with me and let’s rebuild Northwest Ohio together. I’m Derek Merritt. I approve this message. Marcy Captor and the D.C. swamp have failed us. Because of Democrat policies, jobs have left. The cost of living is sky high, and residents are struggling to pay rent and mortgages. Had enough of the Democrats’ disaster? There’s a better choice. If you want business as usual, I’m not your guy. But if you want a fighter, someone who will join with President Trump to take on the establishment, to fix our borders and fight for our families, then join me, and together, we’ll take the fight to D.C. I’m Derek Mirren. I approve this message.

[29:07] I was brought up a Democrat. Party has failed. The border is wide open with drugs and gangs ruining our communities right here in Northwest Ohio. So I’m making a change. I’m voting for Derek Marin. He brings the fresh leadership and common sense that we really need. I’m done electing the same people who let us down. Derek will secure our southern border and protect our communities. I’m Derek Eric Mirren, I approve this message. Well, first of all, at the time that this program, this episode is being recorded, inflation is not out of control. It’s about 2 or 3 percent. Unemployment is back to pre-pandemic levels. The Federal Reserve just cut interest rates a half a percentage point. And so the economy stuff is not as bad as what is being portrayed in those ads. There was nothing in there policy-wise. No suggestions. The one ad, I think it might have been the first one I played, he’s talking about high-paying jobs, bringing high-paying jobs back to northwest Ohio. How’s he going to do that? He doesn’t say.

[30:27] He’s claiming that democratic policy has driven jobs away from northwest Ohio. Well, the problem is the Republicans have had a supermajority in the state of Ohio. They’ve controlled state government since 2010. They’ve had supermajorities in the statehouse. They’ve controlled the governorship, the attorney general, the secretary of state, everything. They even have a super-secret development office called Ohio Jobs that nobody knows how they’re spending their money, and the only thing that they have to show for it in that 10 years is the Intel plant down in Columbus that is kind of on the ropes. It might not even get finished because Intel is changing some of their stuff. And they’re spending these billions of dollars building this plant and the state’s putting in for it, too. But that’s in Columbus. What about Northwest Ohio? But he’s been a state rep for this area for a long time. What has he done? I can’t think of anything that he’s done. He hasn’t brought any money to his district at all.

[31:51] He lives in, he covers Monclova Township, which is one of the influent townships in Lucas County.

[32:02] And I can’t think of anything that he’s done for them. Nothing. He’s been sulking and complaining because he was cut out of being Speaker of the House with the last election because the Democrats decided to work with some of the not-so-zealot Republicans to put Stevens in as the Speaker. And so he’s been running for the house since then, the U.S. house. But yeah, so in his ad he says, you know, we’re going to bring back high-paying jobs to Northwest Ohio.

[32:44] How? He’s had plenty of chance. He’s not an outsider. You know, he plays this thing like, I’m an outsider. You know, he didn’t care that Larry Householder was bribed for $6 million. He supported Householder. You know, he’s been in the legislature for a while. And so he’s expecting people, low-information people, to buy his act. And the fact that he’s going to protect our communities by getting rid of the illegal immigrants. Well, that’s horse crap, too. He doesn’t have a plan for that. He’s just latching on because his buddy Trump, the one that supports him, wants to do that. Now, Marcy Kaptur is the current representative in the 9th District. She’s a Democrat. She’s been in the House since the 1980s. She’s not my favorite person. She’s a bit conservative. Her current ads for now, she’s running away from Biden and the Biden administration.

[34:02] She has been tough on crime, trying to be tough on crime. One of the things, it’s not Marin himself, but one of the PACs that’s supporting him, has taught about how captors only pass one law, since she’s been in the House in the 80s, and it was for a commemorative coin or something like that. That’s not true. She may not have been the primary sponsor of many bills, but she’s voted on many, many, many different bills in her career that brought money to the district.

[34:43] See, that’s the thing. She’s brought money to the district. That’s what a congressperson is supposed to do. And then, because if you want to talk about not passing any laws or not being a primary sponsor of any laws, Jim Jordan in the 4th District, who is basically Trump’s boy toy, he hasn’t sponsored any legislation that has passed. In his whole career, he’s been in the House for 15 years. You know, he’s good at he’s good at ignoring subpoenas, but he’s terrible at sponsoring any bills because that’s not that’s not the job that he wants to do. He wants to get the press. He wants to he wants to serve on that committee and and yell at people and and investigate stuff that doesn’t need to be investigated. mitigated. So anyway, I just wanted to point that out about Derrick Marin. He’s got that, we’re going to bring back high-paying jobs to Northwest Ohio. But he doesn’t have a plan to do that. Not at all. And of course, I’m sure if you cornered him, he’d say, well, we’re going to cut taxes and regulation. Well, that’s not going to bring high-paying jobs to Northwest Ohio. I’m sorry to say, Derek Marin.

[36:06] You know, because the same people that want tax cuts, want their taxes cut, and want the regulations to be done away with, they don’t want to pay labor high wages. They are low-wage labor supporters. So the only way that you’re going to bring back high-paying jobs to Northwest Ohio, which really haven’t left, that was the other thing about his ads. He’s talking about how all these jobs have left.

[36:35] And since I’ve been in the Toledo area, there hasn’t been a lot of jobs that have left. Not like back in the 80s during the recessions and stuff. You know, Toledo is doing okay. Lucas County is doing okay. And so is the rest of the 9th District. They’re doing fine. But again, that’s the gimmick is, you know, it’s doom and gloom. Immigrants are going to kill your children. vote for me.

[37:07] But I don’t have any other reason for you to vote for me. That’s Derek Merrin in a nutshell. Thank you for listening to this episode. You can check out more information, including links to sources used, in our show notes on our website at secularleft.us. Secular Left is hosted, written, and produced by Doug Berger, and he is solely responsible for the content. Send us your comments, either using the contact form on the website, or by sending us a note at comments at secularleft.us. Our theme music is Dank and Nasty composed using Amplify Studio.

[38:01] Music.