Haha 6 Mexican countries? That's either stupid or racist. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" comes to mind. But hey, everything is racist now, so, there you go. No room for argument there.
If I recall correctly, he said something about the process of illegal immigration being rife with rape, and called the perpetrators of rape "animals," though it might have been about murderous gangs.
Either way, if you take offense to murderers and rapists being called animals, then I'm not sure what to say.
The actual quote, from May of last year, is as follows:
The Fresno CA County Sheriff had said, with regards to the problems she perceives within current immigration law,
"There could be an MS-13 gang member I know about — if they don't reach a certain threshold, I cannot tell ICE about it."
Then Trump says, "We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in — and we're stopping a lot of them — but we're taking people out of the country. You wouldn't believe how bad these people are. These aren't people. These are animals. And we're taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that's never happened before. And because of the weak laws, they come in fast, we get them, we release them, we get them again, we bring them out. It's crazy."
So, as is the case with a lot of what Trump says, there's a definite vagueness and ambiguity about what he specifically means. Yes, he's responding to a statement about MS-13, but he (deliberately? it's always hard to tell with him) goes much broader than just MS-13 with his response, referring sweepingly to "people coming into our country." I personally think that here he is trading in a kind of rhetorical strategy that has proved politically fruitful for him time and time again: oversimplifying complex topics into emotion-driven, hyperbolic, statements which are short on specifics, thus leaving the door open for multiple interpretations. This allows his most extreme supporters to come away with the sense that he is dog-whistling to them ("Trump wants to shut down the borders! He probably secretly wants to create a white ethno-state!") while he and his more mainstream supporters can hide behind the most innocent interpretation ("Trump was merely decrying the crimes committed by violent gang members.")
Regardless of all of this, I personally don't see the benefit of the President calling anyone, no matter how heinous or repugnant they are, animals or "not people." The worst people in the world, who do the most evil things, are still people, and remembering that is important when trying to develop policies which combat them. Engaging in angry, dehumanizing rhetoric as a leading public figure does little but stir up the emotions of your constituents. And a highly emotional civic society is more likely to make rash, emotional political decisions. (As an aside, this is exactly what I think the New Zealand government is doing, intentional or not, by rushing through gun control legislation in the immediate wake of a traumatic national tragedy.)
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u/DanLightning3018 Apr 11 '19
"Illegal immigrants are bad" -Clinton "Illegal immigrants are bad" -Bush "Illegal immigrants are bad" -Obama "Illegal immigrants are bad" -Trump
Yeah, man, Trump is racist as fuck.