Donald Trump's first official ad has been released, and emphasizes immigration. The thought of a candidate actually saying anything about immigration besides the idea that America should surrender to the illegal invasion is getting him a lot of free publicity. The news side of the Washington Post has a headline is relatively adult and and subdued: Donald Trump’s provocative first TV ad raises the temperature of GOP race, By Robert Costa and Philip Rucker, January 3, 2015.
But opinion sites and the Post's own bloggers are going crazy—and thereby promoting Trump's message.
Here's the ad:
And here's Gawker's reaction: Donald Trump’s First TV Ad: Brown People Are Scary as Sh*t
The first paid television spot from the Trump campaign does an excellent job of summarizing his platform of racism at the federal level: non-white people are bad and should be kept out of America at all costs.
The 31-second spot breaks no new ground on policy, but provides a useful visual aid to go along with his verbal bigotry. Muslims look like this:
And Mexicans look like ants scurrying across the dirt:
The standard aerial shot at is the top of this page. Anyone scurrying looks like an ant from 10, 000 feet, the point is that Mexicans are scurrying in great numbers and the authorities are doing nothing to stop them.
The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza is also upset by this—at right is the headline his piece carried when it first appeared in my iPhone [The dark, twisted, fantasy at the heart of Donald Trump's vison of America] but it's already been changed to the slightly less rabid The dystopian nightmare that defines Donald Trump’s campaign, By Chris Cillizza January 4, 2015.
Cillizza is not only triggered by the ad, and its possible solution to America's immigration problems, but he wants to deny that they have any solutions whatever.
Of course, it's hard to imagine that the "simple" solutions offered by Trump are feasible. Banning all Muslims from entering the country for a period of time seems both unenforceable and unconstitutional. Building a massive wall between the U.S. and Mexico might be more doable, although it would come with a huge price tag. And, as for Mexico paying that bill — as Trump insists they will do in the ad — well, that doesn't seem, um, very likely.
The first part is wrong—the First Amendment stops at the border, and while you might have a hard time stopping all Muslims, just ceasing to issue visas to people (a) from Muslim countries and (b) with Muslim names would be a start.
The second is even wronger—the US has huge—in fact, "yuge"—economic leverage over Mexico, in terms of trade, tourism, remittances, and even foreign aid.
Mexico is not a poor country, but large parts of its economy are totally dependent on the US, and the US Government never uses these levers to try and stop illegal immigration.
But the author of The Art Of Deal is the guy to do so. And one of the most obvious is the $25 billion per year Mexicans in the US send to Mexico. Did you know that Israel bans remittances from illegals?
President Trump could tax remittances to Mexico, and pay for the wall with no problem. See
And Mexicans look like ants scurrying across the dirt:
