It took less than a week for president to resort to “Latino card” for trash talk

The Latino segment of the electorate was always wary of the concept of “President Donald J. Trump,” remembering that the very first outlandish and irrational attack he made during his presidential campaign was against Mexico.

Parts of the U.S./Mexico border already have barricades. Not that it has done much good.

We realized that if the people truly gave in to their worst instincts and picked him to be the nation’s chief executive, we’d probably wind up being targeted by much of his trash talk.

SO PERHAPS THE only surprise in Trump’s initiatives this week concerning sanctuary cities and border barricades is that they didn’t come sooner.

As it was, Trump signed off on a pair of executive orders related to the two issues within the first week of his presidency. Perhaps we can take comfort these are merely executive orders that a future president will be able to erase with the sign of a pen.

It’s not like Congress did anything to grant approval that would have given the Trump trash talk some government muscle to back it up. It can easily be undone once we have a serious person back in the White House. There also are questions as to the practicality of enforcing either of Trump’s orders for the long-term.

But just as an attempt to revoke the Affordable Care Act because some people don’t want the nation to be involved in providing for the healthcare of its residents is going to harm some residents in the short term, there will be Latinos (regardless of whether or not they’re Mexican, because the ideologues can’t tell the difference and think we’re all Mexican) who will get hurt by this xenophobic focus created by the president.

FOR ALL I know, there are bound to be Latinos who lose their healthcare – taking a double blow because of the partisan nature of this particular president.

I’m not sure which of these two “issues” bothers me more?

Sanctuary cities truly are a worthy concept – it’s a wonder that more places don’t adopt the idea, which basically amounts to the notion that local cops do their own jobs and leave the responsibility of enforcing policy to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials who are trained in the nuances of immigration law.

Chicago won't be alone in granting sanctuary city status

The fact that Chicago is a sanctuary city does not, in any way, impede the authority of federal immigration officials to do their job. People can’t “hide out,” so to speak, in Chicago – or any other city with such status.

ALL IT REALLY means is that a traffic ticket can’t evolve into a deportation hearing. Nor should it be allowed to!

Unless you’re the type of individual who wants the police to be little more than the armed thugs of government. In which case, you are the real problem our society faces.

Honestly, though, it may be the border wall (which was the subject of Trump’s campaign-beginning rhetoric) that will make this nation look more ridiculous. If it gets built (and the cost would be stratospheric), it will fail to accomplish its goal of keeping “Mexicans” out of the United States.

In fact, all it may well wind up doing is becoming a graffiti-laden barricade that provides the world with an embarrassing entry point to the nation that likes to boast of the Statue of Liberty and turn her, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” into the ultimate proof that talk is cheap.

TRUMP SHOWS HOW absurd he is with this policy, which merely reminds me of the smart aleck wisecrack often made about how a 10-foot wall can be scaled by an 11-foot ladder. There’s no such thing as an impenetrable barrier – not even the uninhabitable deserts that comprise many of the border region’s 1,900-plus miles.

 

TRUMP: A failed wall can be his legacy

We may wind up creating the 21^st Century’s equivalent of the Berlin Wall, which was built by the Communist regime of the old East Germany to isolate their portion of Berlin from the rest of the world. Just as Trump-ites dream they can isolate the United States from the presence of Mexico.

It's particularly ridiculous that Trump talks of forcing Mexico’s government to pick up the construction tab. A 20 percent surcharge on Mexican imports is pure fantasy, no matter how many times Donald J. says it. If anything, Trump ought to devote his own personal fortune to paying for such construction. We’ll even allow him to put his name on the wall like he does all the other structures he has erected around the world.

A “Trump Border Wall” can be his lasting legacy – a structure that totally fails to achieve its intended purpose of keeping people out, visually illustrates the ignorance of his political talk and possibly bankrupts the man and his family financially in the process.

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