Responding to nonsense from Mississippi Lieutenant Governor Tate Reeves, and GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.
Response #1: Tate Reeves
Tate Reeves said this:
Hi, Tate. I’d like to talk about two parts of your tweet: “enforce our laws,” and “safety of all Americans.”
Let’s start with the “safety” part. The 600+ arrested in Mississippi were taken from their place of employment where they were apparently working peacefully. 20 were juveniles, including a 14 year old.
Why do you think the companies hired them? And kept them working? Not because they pose a danger to Americans. These working people are not a threat to the safety of Americans:
You might not like them or want them, but they are not a risk to anyone’s safety.
On the other hand, people like this, including the guy who walked into that Missouri Walmart heavily armed, are a danger all Americans (not just Americans with dark skin):
You and your friends at Fox News, Breitbart, and other right wing media outlets are lying to your audiences. You’re telling them that an “invasion” of brown people is will harm “real” (meaning white) Americans.
This is from Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin:
When you say these workers are a danger to the safety of all Americans, we know what you mean. You are afraid whites will become a minority.
Now let’s talk about enforcing the laws.
Do you mean all the laws? Do you want to go after all lawbreakers, or do you want to exempt people who are rich, white and male?
Or just people whose last name is Trump?
This is not a complete list, but let’s start with obstruction of justice as outlined in the Mueller report.
How about campaign finance violations. Do you want to enforce those laws?
Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer, is serving a sentence for a crime which, Cohen testified under oath, Trump participated in.
How about bank fraud and insurance fraud? Cohen testified that Trump falsely inflated his net worth on financial documents.
Here is where Cohen testified that Trump also committed insurance fraud.
And what about all that evidence that Trump cheated on his taxes?
As long as we’re on the subject of Trump’s lawbreaking, should we take a quick look at the history of the Trump family, including their time as immigrants?
Had I but world enough and time, I could fill a 50-tweet thread with evidence of Trump lawbreaking, but I’ll just give just one more example.
How do you feel about people who steal from charity?
he NY Attorney General filed a lawsuit accusing the Trump Foundation (Trump, Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric) of “persistently illegal conduct” and “repeated and willful self-dealing transactions.”
You can read the petition here.
Shall I go on? Or did I make my point?
End.
Response #2: Ronna McDaniel
Ronna tweeted this:
[Here’s my response on Twitter]
Hi, Ronna, Do you consider Max Boot to be a person on the “left”?
Me, neither. In fact, he’s a life-long Republican who did some soul-searching. I’m sure you know his resume, so I won’t go on about his conservative credentials.
If you don’t have time to read his book, I can offer a few highlights.
Boot painstakingly traced how the GOP morphed from a conservative to an authoritarian party. He explains that by 1964, the GOP entirely ceased being the Party of Lincoln and became the Party of Southern Whites.
“With the clarity of hindsight” he saw that “whatever GOP candidates claimed to stand for” GOP voters understood that the GOP candidates were promising to keep minorities in their place and maintain power for white men. See these two passages:
This was a painful realization for him.
He came to understand that his gender and skin color gave him special opportunities—even as an immigrant fleeing persecution; the US was the land of equal opportunity—for people like him.
He’s still a conservative. But he’s a true conservative, not an authoritarian.
Quick question: What do you call people who are anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and call for a “final solution” to the problem?
OK, that was hard. I’ll give you an easier one: What do you call people who question he citizenship of a black president, call Mexicans rapists, and tell Americans with dark skin to go back where they came from?
The wrong answer: Patriotic American.
For 5 points, the correct answer anyone?
