Words & Phrases to Throw Out

Garbage Abounds

Even for Donald Trump, his outburst against an entire community of immigrants (including U.S. citizens) and a sitting U.S. congresswoman, a naturalized citizen, was, well, “garbage.” The New York Times on this incident avoided any hint of sane washing:

President Trump unleashed a xenophobic tirade against Somali immigrants on Tuesday, calling them “garbage” he does not want in the United States in an outburst that captured the raw nativism that has animated his approach to immigration.

Even for Mr. Trump—who has a long history of insulting Black people, particularly those from African countries—his outburst was shocking in its unapologetic bigotry. And it comes as he started a new ICE operation targeting Somalis in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region. . . . He described Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, who came to the United States from Somalia as a refugee and became a citizen 25 years ago, as “garbage.”

Anyone who refers to a human being as “garbage,” or smears an entire community of immigrants (the vast majority of whom are legal immigrants), has no place in public life. No president has ever spoken of Americans in this fashion; and such vile rhetoric should be verboten in any democratic government.

Photo by Carl Tronders

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) writing in the New York Times, recalled: “This comment was only the latest in a series of remarks and Truth Social posts in which the president has demonized and spread conspiracy theories about the Somali community and about me personally. For years, the president has spewed hate speech in an effort to gin up contempt against me.” She continued, with remarkable integrity and understatement:

Mr. Trump denigrates not only Somalis but so many other immigrants, too, particularly those who are Black and Muslim. While he has consistently tried to vilify newcomers, we will not let him silence us. He fails to realize how deeply Somali Americans love this country. We are doctors, teachers, police officers and elected leaders working to make our country better. Over 90 percent of Somalis living in my home state, Minnesota, are American citizens by birth or naturalization.

It’s not hard to figure out why Trump is going bananas. Trump’s outburst comes as he has sunk in the polls, painted himself in a no-win situation on healthcare subsidies, saddled himself with a scandal-plagued secretary of defense who cannot keep his story straight on the worst military debacle since Abu Ghraib, and failed (again) to obtain an indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James. (Never have so many grand juries refused to indict so many targets of a vindictive regime.) The centerpieces of Trump’s domestic agenda—tariffs and anti-immigrant vengeance—are in tatters.

As to his anti-immigration onslaught, a report from the New York Times confirms that a tiny percentage of those arrested in recent urban crackdowns have a violent criminal conviction; large majorities have no conviction whatsoever. If you want “garbage” (for which one definition is “a thing that is considered worthless or meaningless”), look at an operation that produces such pathetic results entirely at odds with its stated goal (i.e. deporting violent criminals):

The operations have upended life for many residents and prompted protests and backlash. Local leaders say they have done little to make their cities safer.

Less than 30 percent of the people arrested in any of these operations had been convicted of a crime, an analysis of the data shows, and a very small share had been convicted of a violent crime. The most common non-violent convictions were for driving under the influence and other traffic offenses.

There is no shortage of rubbish that should be disposed of promptly: The tacky gold bric-a-brac littering the Oval Office; a made-up peace prize that draws guffaws; the excuses, lies, and inanities that come out of Trump’s mouth on everything from the releasing the Epstein files to the affordability issue (another “hoax”!); the seemingly Russian-inspired wish list of demands for Ukraine; the frivolous and vindictive lawsuits against James Comey and Letitia James; the sketchy self-reporting on his “perfect” health; the North Korean-style flattery sessions at Cabinet meetings; and the nonsense that flows freely from the press secretary’s podium.

Indeed, the primary qualification for any top job in this regime seem to be the willingness to spew garbage with a straight face—whether it is Kevin Hassett on economic data or RFK, Jr. on dangerous, anti-science vaccine guidelines, or Kristi Noem’s pronouncements on immigration. The only thing out of bounds in this regime are cold hard facts that threaten to accurately show Trump in an unfavorable light.

Garbage abounds in this regime. Trump has always trafficked in tacky/cheap merchandise (from Trump steaks to sneakers to Trump cologne) and scams (e.g., Trump University or $Trump crypto). We got a mere sample of his “wares” in the first term; now the refuse is piling up like old newspapers in a hoarder’s house. Alas, we cannot pull up a dumpster to cart it all away (at least before the next president is sworn in). In the meantime, Trump would be well advised to stop throwing around terms like “garbage” in connection with decent, hard-working, loyal Americans—about whom he knows nothing.