Trump: Mexican-Americans Not Really Americans
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-mexican-americans-not-really-americans
We've seen Trump building this argument for a while now. But in an interview yesterday with The Wall Street Journal he made it yet more explicit. Trump says that Judge Gonzalo Curiel has an "absolute conflict" in presiding over the Trump University case because of his "Mexican heritage." The fact that Curiel was born to immigrant parents in Indiana in 1953 is relevant, according to Trump, because Trump's been so vocal against illegal immigration. “I’m building a wall. It’s an inherent conflict of interest."...
Trump literally started his campaign by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers. Then there was the wall he plans the build along the US-Mexico border, a building project he insists Mexico will pay for. As recently as last night he led a boisterous call-and-response with his audience insisting that Mexico and Mexico alone will pay for the wall.
That's not just ridiculous. It's something that would normally happen after a country loses a war and the victorious country imposes a humiliating indemnity on the defeated power. It's not and has never been about money but humiliation, which is why it is such a driving part of Trump's presentation. Then there's the pledge to round up and deport roughly 3% of the current US population in 18 months, an effort that would inevitably lead to the questioning and at least temporary confinement of millions of American citizens and legal residents.
Now against that backdrop comes Trump's claim that Judge Curiel cannot carry out his duties as judge simply based on the fact that his parents were born in Mexico. (It is irrelevant to the issues at hand but nonetheless ironic that Judge Curiel's father arrived in the United States before Trump's mother.) It's a fascinating claim since it both suggests that Mexican-Americans have inherently divided loyalties and that it is obvious on its face that any Hispanic in the United States would be implacably hostile to Donald Trump.
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