American Mythology: The Presidency of Donald Trump (Part Two: Administration of Xenophobia)

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The Intercept

Politics, Unknown, Daily News, History, News

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2020

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the nearly four years that Trump has been in office, his administration has transformed U.S. immigration at a breakneck pace and governed with an overtly xenophobic posture toward immigrants. In episode two of our audio documentary series “American Mythology,” we chronicle the Trump administration’s war against immigrants from the southern border to the Muslim ban and beyond. Trump has already implemented more than 400 changes to immigration rules and regulations, changes that will impact millions of people. But to portray the extremism of this administration on immigration as an entirely radical departure from decades of policy under Democrats and Republicans is inaccurate. While Trump has wielded his signature cruelty in implementing new policy and has made some far-reaching changes, significant aspects of his policy are rooted in the agendas of his predecessors, from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Trump inherited an already punitive and authoritarian deportation machine constructed by both his Democratic and Republican predecessors and has taken it to new extremes. This episode offers an overview of what has changed and what has remained the same, featuring the voices of lawyers, immigrants, activists, journalists, and others who are on the front lines of the battle over immigrant rights.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is intercepted.
0:30.0	I'm Jeremy Scayhill coming to you from New York City and this is part two of an
0:37.4	intercepted special American mythology the presidency of Donald Trump.
0:45.0	When Mexico sends its people they're not sending their best they're not sending
0:51.4	you they're not sending you they're sending people that have lots of
0:56.7	problems and they're bringing those problems with us they're bringing drugs
1:02.3	they're bringing crime they're rapists and some I assume are good people.
1:08.4	Donald Trump ran for president on an often ad-libbed and reactionary campaign of
1:13.3	hate, greed, xenophobia, misogyny and racism.
1:18.4	And when I said temporary ban on Muslims I thought that was the end of my
1:23.1	campaign I didn't care I said we have to do something we have to do something
1:26.4	and my numbers went through the roof I didn't know that.
1:30.4	Trump was the most famous so-called birther staging publicity stunts
1:35.3	purporting to prove that Barack Obama was not actually born in Hawaii wasn't a
1:40.2	real American and was possibly some sort of Muslim-manchurian candidate.
1:45.4	I said it may be something on it and they asked me like what I said well
1:49.5	perhaps because he's a Muslim perhaps something I mean who knows what's on it
1:53.0	I don't know.
1:53.8	Trump clearly viewed the fact that a black man had ascended to the presidency
1:59.9	as an abomination and rightly assessed that there were a lot of racists who
2:04.4	saw the eight years the Obama spent living in the White House as a crime
2:08.5	against the real White America.
	...

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