Brett, are you following the news? Did you see the one about the city lawyer loosing it in public because he heard people speaking Spanish? Who do you think he’s modeling, Brett? Who emboldened him to speak that way to fellow humans in public?
When the president dehumanizes people, be they gang members, nazis, or immigrants, he gives license to bigots to express their bigotry. And it’s happening. Every day, right in front of us. A president simply cannot speak that way about anyone. Again, imagine if Obama...well, you get the picture.
Our president is a vile, foul little man who encourages the vileness of others. But he is a man. You insult our intelligence by calling out those who criticize the president. He’s wrong, they’re right. We cannot let up on this man. He can never be excused for his offensive boorishness. We are tired of his offenses against our fellow humans.
44
In summary.....we are held to a much higher standard than Dear Leader. He gets to lie, trash and bully to his heart's content. We have to carefully listen, digest, and decipher every ridiculous uttering to make sure we NEVER,EVER, get anything wrong.
Game, set, match....Dear leader just shot a 17 on the front nine.
21
Compared to the white European immigrants who settled America MS-13 is a minor mayhem maker. Fake history to the contrary ignores the macho malign misogynist white supremacist roots of America that spawned Trump nation.
White European immigrants invaded and occupied America whIle killing, wounding, displacing and making refugees of the brown natives. White European immigrants bought their enslaved black African property to America to exploit their life, liberty and happiness for their sole white benefit.
Compared to the ethnic sectarian evil inflicted by the Egyptian, Israeli and Saudi military, MS-13 is a minor malefactor. And these three roots of evil pale in contrast to their American empire ally master.
15
Bret, Animals is a dog whistle word to his supporters and you know it. Why didn’t he use the same word to describe American Nazis (btw, why “neo”? A Nazi is a Nazi is a Nazi.)
And, let’s say it’s as you describe, it’s still his fault (I can’t even utter his name anymore), he’s such a divisive, poisonous individual that none of his utterances can be taken innocently.
20
When Pelosi defends the MS13 killer gangs by saying they have “divinity” we have reached an all time low for the Democrats! These criminals must be stopped at all cost from murdering innocents.
14
Good column Bret. I agree.
Chuck Schumer is a useless idiot . With leaders like this we Democrats have an uphill battle projecting wisdom and veracity.
12
Trump started his presidential campaign by railing against Mexican immigrants as rapists and thugs. He wants to build a stupid wall to keep them out of the country. He wanted to exclude all Muslim immigrants from the country. He uses MS-13 as an example of illegals in general. We all know about Trump's attitude against immigrants other than Norwegians and there is nothing there to defend.
18
Kicked off his campaign by calling Mexicans drug-runners and rapists, lied about Muslim Americans celebrating in the streets on 9/11, and countless other hateful, sneering, and demeaning statements about immigrants. He lies, deflects, and dissembles constantly. He gets no benefit of the doubt, certainly not when clearly conflating all immigrants with grotesque imagery of gang violence. It's deliberate, widespread, and effective tactic to spread hate, literally out of the Nazi playbook. How dare you defend the indefensible.
16
1) MS-13 are animals. That's the only thing about this idiotic rant that is correct.
2) Illegals are not immigrants.
3) MS-13 started in Los Angeles. So what? Christianity started in now-Israel. What does that have to do with Christians today? Nothing. Regardless of when MS-13 started, most of the current infestation of MS-13 came as fake children under Obama. This is Obama's only enduring legacy.
4) Returning illegals to their homes is what is needed. They solve their own problems.
13
This is as good a place as any:
Mr. Trump, just shut up.
Close your fat yap for one second and listen.
Stop your paranoid whining. Stop trying to sound like you know everything. Stop telling us how much you care, how smart you are, how you're going to fix...anything.
We're tired of children dying in school and you and your drooling goons proposing better metal detection, guns in the hands of teachers, police in kindergarten.
We're tired of headlines about "The latest mass shooting at school..."
We're tired of your psychotic friends pretending none of happened and some mail order actor's college sends people around the country to play victims or fake grieving parents.
We're really tired of your blaming MS-13 for everything while Real Americans shoot our kids like fish in a barrel.
We are sick to death of what you have done to this country. Mostly we're sick of what you continue to do our children.
You say you're a dealer. I don't believe it, but here's your chance. Do a deal, sir. Get guns off our streets, out of our schools.
You have a choice here, and its unavoidable. You can save our children or you can continue with the idiot dance among opposing convictions about guns everywhere.
You can favor life and peace or you can remain where you have always been, cowering behind loudmouth fools like Senator Cruz while you back the NRA and the profits of gun makers.
There's no subtlety: live kids vs. gun profits.
We'll be watching. Sir.
17
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Feigned indignity goes at least as far to rally his base, as the absolute filth he utters the remaining 1438 minutes each and every day.
7
This isn't Guatemala or Honduras. You know who is more dangerous than MS-13 in the US? White men with guns. Another one just killed 10 at a school yesterday.
25
This post is also out of contest since it ignores the fact that Trump either ignores or support the actions of white supremacy, Neo Nazis, the KKK, the Russian mob, and other extreme Caucasian groups, while constantly attacking evil in selected non white groups.
7
That's why it's called "race baiting." It's the intentional, knowing smirk of ethnic hatred, window-dressed in plausible deniability, and it's the smirk that's the offense, not the reaction. You defend the smirk. You even say so. Choose a side, would you? It's past time.
16
It's simplistic, but if there were no hispanic immigrants in the U.S. there would be no MS-13. Hispanic immigrants have to own the fact that they are not all hard working and family orientated. But, this is what fascists seize on when they denigrate their target group, (whom ever it is), it could be a single person. True is the ultimate school yard bully.
1
So seems like the bulk of the NYT readers are still outraged at the President referring to anyone as animals, even if they’re a small group of sadistic gang members, because its unpresidential. Don’t recall any liberal outrage when HRC called a wide swath of normal American citizens deplorables. Oh wait, right...she’s not the president.
14
It's not ok to call ANY human beings "animals."
4
Trump never called the shooters of Orlando, Las Vegas, Parkland, and now Texas animals.
Why is that?
On the other hand, in 1989 Trump called for the death penalty for the Central Park Five who were framed for the rape of a jogger that they were later exonerated for with DNA evidence and the real rapist found.
12
A truly vile column defending a truly vile President who constantly engages in “plausible deniability” for all of his comments and actions. His intent to tie immigrants with violent crime and dehumanize them has been clear from the start.
9
Mr. Stephens, defending the statements of this abominable President says more about you than it does about this vile man.
You write an entire column to explain one single statement possibly taken out of context, while ignoring thousands of other clearly atrocious statements confirmed by Access Hollywood and his own pathetic tweets?
Don't you have anything more substantial and significant to offer NYT readers?
10
Presidents' words matter. But not this president. That's the message of this article. I read the comment in context. It was typical Trumpian incoherent rambling, veering wildly from one unfinished self aggrandizing thought to the next, with absolutely no mention of MS-13 whatsoever. Is it too much to ask that our president take one moment to think before he speaks?
8
When gang members are brown or black they are animals. When they are Italian they are glorified in movies. When they attend a Nazi / Klan march in Charlottesville they are very fine people and if they are Russian they are business associates.
Mr Trumps racism towards all people of color was evident in his comments about MS-13, he was trying to tie all Central Americans to that gang( born in the USA).
So far like with his combating the Opiod crisis there is no sensible gang prevention initiative coming from this White House, nor any thoughts on how to help El Salvador combat them in their country.
10
In both what he says ("blood for out of his whatever") and what he does (hush money to cover up a relationship with a sex worker just after his third wife gave birth to a child), Trump is a terrible President and a terrible man. An "animal." How lopsided are his supporters' sensibilities, they tsk tsk over the term "deplorables" and look for any reason why the filth that leaves this man's mouth isn't quite as bad as it sounds. Fake News. Please. His supporters can hide behind the skirts of "Fake News" all they like and they can laugh at how "liberals" criticize. They cannot undo the damage being done to America. We clearly aren't so great by the rest of the world's standards. This hurts them as much -- more (as they are seen as ignorant and/or racist, misogynistic, etc for supporting him) -- than it does us (those who resist). If what they wanted was respect, well. Ha ha. The joke's completely on them.
4
This man is a shame, or should I already say a menace, to mankind. The last thing I am expecting from him is that he starts to have New York City or Washington DC to be burned down like in the good old Roman days.
5
Sorry Bret -- this is a fail. Trump did indeed call illegal immigrants "animals." In black and white. Clear as day.
Pundits-- whether the Trump progandists, the liberal commentariat, or the Never Trumpists (or the sometimes Trumpists such as yourself after praising his Iran deal diaster) -- have been falling over themselves to show fairness to Tump -- no matter how vile, racist and offensive he is.
Here are the facts. The California police chief spoke of MS-13. Trump then riffed on illegal immigrants, claiming that we were "taking people out of the country" at a rate that's "never happened before.' That clearly was not a reference to MS-13. It was a reference to illegal immigrants. Please, please stop bending over backwards to make Mr. Trump look like he is a palatable and fair minded member of society. He is not. Here is the relevant exchange; it can't be read any other way:
Mims: "Thank you. 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."
Trump: "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."
6
"Stephens"—
A Trump apologist, and in the pocket of madman Netanyahu.
And a known contrarian and nearly a reactionary.
Not the best résumé, especially for the NYTimes and its readers.
4
Who is that in the photo, behind Trump, whispering in his ear? The latest National Security Advisor?
1
Alright then, tell me what he meant when he said ‘ Mexico is not sending us their best, they are sending rapist’ ? Mexico is sending us their rapist?
If Mr Trump doesn’t how to use the language properly he should learn.
3
Stop it Bret, what a bunch of huey.
Trump is more afraid of mothers "smuggling" their own children across the border, than of Putin.
Trump has never responsibly been in abidance by his oath of office.
The real question is...when does it become treason?. Or maybe its...when did it become treason?
3
Oh, give me a break.
We weren't born yesterday. Trump announced his presidential candidacy by accusing ALL Mexican immigrants of being drug dealers and rapists. He has made racist rants about immigrants incessantly for two years now. Don't lecture me that we need to parse his statements and carefully determine that he was not, in fact, as racist as he could have been, this one time. EVERYONE, especially his fans, know EXACTLY what he means.
The only crime here is the AP's utter cowardice in walking back its obviously correct reporting after being yelled at by right wing fanatics.
5
Here are two comments by Trump in recent days that are contradictory until you consider bigotry.
1)
TRUMP: "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."
2)
"@realDonaldTrump
America is a Nation that believes in the power of redemption. America is a Nation that believes in second chances - and America is a Nation that believes that the best is always yet to come! #PrisonReform"
In the first, to sell his wall, "these people" who enter the US are "animals."
In the second, he is stumping for the Evangelical recruiting tool of leading criminals to Jesus.
Brown people who speak Spanish crossing the border?
Animals. Get em outta here.
Americans (let's be honest, white Americans) who are actually criminals?
Very fine people.
3
It would have been much better if had referred to MS-13 as "savages" orb "barbarians." But by now, it doesn't matter much to most of the MSM what POTUS says. Everything he says and does is wrong or evil or fascist, and in his eyes everything MSM does is false or springs from hostility to him. His opponent's characterization of a large segment of our population as a "basket of deplorables" was made in the same spirit both sides now speak of each other. This "deplorable" situation is beyond repair; its roots run too deep and wide .
1
Animals would do this kind of thing.
Are these the same "sane Republicans" who did nothing in response to the Parkland massacre and will probably do nothing after Santa Fe?
2
Mr Stephans would have a significantly stronger argument if he practiced objective and comprehensive journalism himself. He certainly didn't in his recent column about the Palestinian deaths.
2
Perhaps a science lesson would help. We are all part of the Kingdom Animalia. If you can read this you are part of the human species. People that commit vicious, ruthless murders are monsters. My point is a perhaps we would all benefit if we were careful with linguistics. This incedinarty rhetoric is only hurting each other.
1
_Illegal_ immigration, Mr. Stephens. The issue is not "immigration" per se.
Please stop spinning this.
Cease this repulsive NYT habit of deliberately conflating illegal and legal immigration. Cease hurling insults ("know-nothing," "nativist", "racist") at that those who argue for simple immigration sanity: normal law enforcement + skills-based legal immigration. Cease pretending that the opposition to our political class's idiocy comes only or mainly from native-born whites. It is primarily legal immigrants and their spouses, of all races, who correctly oppose this madness. Note: 30% of Latino voters pulled the lever for Trump in 2016.
Stop ignoring the massive damage to our nation caused by the refusal to enforce our immigration laws.
Start educating yourself on the impact of this foolish refusal - on our public schools, on our public services, on low-end laborers' wages and working conditions, and on broad support for a generous social policy.
All of these have been devastated in the border states where this foolish and self-destructive policy has been given free reign.
California public schools have gone from best in the nation to 49th, right alongside Mississippi's schools, thanks to this idiotic policy. Outside a few coastal boom towns, California has a poverty rate close to 40 percent. Half the state's public schoolchildren live in poverty, and they remain in poverty, generation after generation.
Please stop spinning. Educate yourself.
6
Bret, Bret, Bret, your creeping support for your president is showing, and we're on to it. You gave a two-thumbs up "like" to his actions on the Iran deal and now you are siding with Kelly Ann and Sarah Huck surfacing from their swarm of lies to condemn highly ambiguous remarks by the president (he never used MS-13 and "animal" in the same sentence).
I get it. Transactional Don is getting to you the way he has gotten to so many in his base: I'll give you what you want NRA, Israel, anti-abortionists, Christian haters, and in return you need only donate to me, ignore my crimes, and name a town square after me. Oh, and yes, call anyone who criticizes me fake news.
He's giving you a lot of what you want, and it's starting to look not so bad, right, Bret? Now you are beginning to understand the loyalty of his base. Donald Trump really does deliver. Just don't cross him.
2
M13 are less than animals. Get em jailed then out. What they did in the East Coast was being hideous. They have no status but dangerous felons.
4
Ahhh, if we take the time and "interpret" his words it all becomes clear - that says it all. We should not have to "interpret" anything, The President when speaking to the world should say exactly what he means and mean exactly what he says. It should be crystal clear and not need "interpretation" afterwards. Also, to dehumanize any group plays into a specific playbook - why not call white supremacists that drag African American men to their death animals? Why not call white supremacists that have lynched, burned, bombed and raped African American citizens of this great country animals? C'mon, stop apologizing...the man is unfit for office.
2
Columns like this one by Bret Stevens do a disservice to all of us. He argues that it is indisputably clear that Trump was referring only to MS-13 gang members, and he criticizes the media for suggesting otherwise. For a much more accurate and thoughtful analysis of what Trump said and the context in which he said it, see this: https://www.vox.com/2018/5/18/17368716/trump-animals-immigrants-illegal
2
It's incredibly frustrating to watch people on your own side of an issue engage in this kind of behavior.
Yes, we all know he's a racist, and he's said comparable things about immigrants before. But this isn't just semantics – it's a windfall of validation for his claim that the media is corrupt, and negative coverage about him can't be trusted. Based on the skeptical and dismissive tone of most comments here, it seems like a lot of people on the left don't realize that MS-13 has been a major talking point of Trump's for about a year now. That absolutely was the context for what he said in the transcript; the Sheriff mentioned the gang by name because they're one of Trump's favorite things to rail against. He brought parents of MS-13 victims to his State of the Union address in January; the DOJ has deployed MS-13 task forces; it's a pretty central issue.
When you're on the right side of this kind of divisive topic, you don't need to massage the truth or take quotes out of context. When the left overreaches, it's only bad for the left. Because next time he says something that actually is that horrible about an entire minority group, a lot of moderate Americans who don't have the time or energy to stay as informed about every new scandal are only going to see those headlines – and they'll have ever reason in the world to assume the quote in question is exaggerated and not that bad.
1
Rubbish.
The piece of raw sewage infesting our Oval Office has demonized immigrants -- NOT, pace Stephens, MS-13 or other criminals -- since before he descended his gilded escalator to announce his blight of a presidential candidacy. And to pretend that a thug bent on shrinking legal immigration wasn't sending yet another dog whistle is to insult readers' intelligence.
Put another way, when Eric Swalwell and Chuck Schumer condemn this aspect of Trump's relentless bigotry -- and Stephens's apologia -- and tens of millions of Americans agree, it’s not as if they don’t have examples in mind.
2
"It leads to sensible Democrats and sane Republicans" pray tell me Mr Stephens in what sensible ways can one be a Democrat and oppose an ignorant, corrupt and demented Trump. And where can a sane Republicans be found?
Not in this Congress, nor in the Republican candidates for Congress and not in the Reublican candidates for state offices all of whom grasp Trump to their breasts to appeal to the Republican primary voters who find no fault in Trump.
You have the US embassy in Jerusalem and the USA's approval of Israel's disporpotianate violence at the Gaza border so why are you now telling us that you do not like Trump? Hypocrisy does not become you.
1
So when he said Mexican immigrants were rapists and murderers and that the Mexican government sent it's worst people here, he was misquoted? And all the after he was the Birther in Chief. That wasn't about de-humanizing obama, right?
3
These United States, once their Native American population was placed 'safely' in Reservations, is made of immigrants, many as ignorant and prejudiced as the current demagogue in-chief, usually escaping religious persecutions in the 'old country', and willing to risk life and exodus for a new opportunity, the excitement of adventure and promised riches. Exception to that rule were the Africans, forced to come here as slaves and 'help' build it's infra-structure and pick cotton, among other 'niceties' imposed on them. Ever since, the newcomers, once comfortable in their skin and place, would try to prevent new waves of immigrants, calling them criminals, ignorant beasts, and worse. Bigotry is not new, we always exercised it with flair...but never with the eagerness, brutality and determination shown by the current vulgar bully in the Oval Office. I know that it is common to find scapegoats for all our problems, and it is easier to build walls rather than bridges...so to hide our own inconsistencies. And further, we have become experts in faulting undocumented workers (the so called 'illegals') for our own shortcomings, fully realizing that those people have been doing menial jobs, and dangerous tasks, urgently needed, but with no 'native' takers to speak of, another of our 'virtues', hypocrisy. Trump just happens to be our more than willing loudspeaker. But trying to lump together the vast majority of immigrants with a violent gang (MS-13) is just plain stupid.
1
How sad, pathetic and depressing that we're discussing whom Donald Trump meant when he described some people as "animals".
We're talking about the speech of the American President. Do you think such a term would have come from the mouth of Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, George W. Bush or Barack Obama?
Bret Stephens and his brethren have normalized the vulgarity and amorality that is Donald Trump....to Stephens' and our deep shame.
NOT my president
2
Spare us your sanctimonious blather, Stevens. Trump's track record of hostility toward immigrants betrays your desired image of him being a victim of media hypocrisy. Trump's use of the 'animals' term was a metaphor for his feelings about all immigrants; good, bad, or indifferent. I know this and you know this. Of course the shallow thinkers who make up his base, don't care. They just love the hyperbole.
1
There are good and bad among any group of people.
The President is a lying fraud who uses his control of the media to spew hate and discord.
If he were anyone else , he would already be in jail.
1
Mr. Stephens, you have just been played big-time by the Master Media Manipulator.
As the NYT's Maggie Haberman just posted on Twitter:
"This is the same thing Trump has done since fall 2015. Issue mushy-edged statement that is meant to leave an impression. Waits for media reaction. Then screams he was taken out of context. Then half the media self-flagellates. How many times does this cycle have to get repeated?"
The idea that Trump is ever precise enough in his statements to allow for a clear and unambiguous interpretation is laughable. As Haberman notes, he obfuscates on purpose. And of course, the media falls for it.
4
Here's the full quote. While the remarks were elicited in response to questions regarding MS-13, it is clear that the reference to MS-13 is mere window-dressing and Trump intended to tar all illegal immigrants with the MS-13 brush.
"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.
"The dumbest laws, as I said before, the dumbest laws on immigration in the world. So we're going to take care of it, Margaret. We'll get it done."
1
Was I mistaken or was it Trump who made a post statement clarifying his words?
It is not appropriate to criticize the press for being one step behind.
Trump's original comments were very disturbing and he certainly has a track record of awful generalizations when it comes to immigrants to put it mildly.
You us an apology Bret, but nice try.
2
Okay... there was some “context” when he used the word animal; BUT there is a very dangerous path taken when any leader/influencer dehumanizes people. Hitler and his absolutely evil minions were humans; by acknowledging they are sadly among our species and recognizing that they were, it forces humanity to take some responsibility for their abhorrent crimes; too many human people in the world were in ways large and small complicit. These truly evil people’s crimes were in part bolstered by dehumanizing of “other” people.
Dehumanizing any people crosses a line that once crossed permits all kinds of other evils... dehumanize one “deserving” group today... the next group might be just a vulnerable minority that has committed no crimes and is just different than the majority.
It astounds me how some white liberals in 2018 still do not know the concept of a dog whistle. So I guess Bush Number 1 was only speaking of Willie Horton and not black males back in 84.
1
MS-13 is a US-born gang started in Los Angeles in the 1980's. We exported it to Central America through our deportations. Gangs flourish when we treat young people as other than human, and the current Administration's policies toward immigrants simply make matters worse.
76
There is still a dog whistle at work when Trump refers to MS-13 members as animals and neo-nazis as having very fine people among them. The media is correct when it highlights this difference.
103
I have yet to hear a Democrat espouse “open borders” with no immigration policy, restrictions or security. However that is exactly what Democrats are allowing Trump to paint as their position.....you are either for a literal wall, ripping children from their parents and demeaning all “others” as a dangerous threat or you are for “open borders.” That’s nonsense. Speak up every day and in every way about what you are actually for with respect to rational and humane immigration policy or get ready for more Trump in 2020.
96
We are all part of what is defined by science as the animal kingdom. But when Trump refers to gang members as "animals" he certainly is not making a scientific assertion. His comments instead are intended and have the effect of depersonalizing human beings. We have seen other such acts of depersonalization justify the most atrocious crimes in history, from the enslavement of African Americans to the dispossession of lands and the murder of Native Americans, to the extermination of six million Jews called untermensch by the Nazis. So declaring certain humans are outside of humanity is a prelude to history's worst crimes. And thus it is wholly justifiable to object most strenuously to Trump's intemperate language, however horrible MS-13's crimes.
51
Trump-speak:
Did he say 'Yanny' or 'Laurel'.
Let's let his actions with undocumented immigrants do the real talking.
'Fair and balanced. You be the judge.'
'We'll see what happens.'
13
I understand that our President is inarticulate & often imprecise in how he communicates. And I can accept the notion that in this instance he was speaking about gang members when using the term "animals". But this is a guy who repeatedly has made offensive, ignorant & bigoted statements about people of color that his base eats up & agrees with. So Bret, stop scolding us about interpreting Trump's comments as a racist broadside.
11
Labeling MS-13 as "animals" is just as disgusting as calling young black males "super-predators" was in the 1990's. Don't fall for it. While it is true that there are individuals in MS 13 who are monsters, there are far more kids forced to join who are just trying to survive.
3
Immigration from 1607 (foundation of Jamestown in Virginia) also brought the following crimes: slavery and lynching of black people, genocide of some indigenous nations but those crimes were legal.
6
Trump's actual quote:
"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."
The problem with DJT is that the does not speak clearly. At all.
Then, he blames us for "misunderstanding" what he said poorly.
I don't care that before DJT made this statement, someone mentioned MS-13. The president could have made the statement clear by letting us now that he was speaking of MS-13 gang members, and not all people crossing the border. He "chose" not to.
He will have the same problem when he "negotiates" with North Korea. He will same something (that in his mind is related to something else) and the North Korea delegation will walk out.
And speaking of context? This is the same man that opened his campaign speaking of "murderers, rapists, and maybe some good ones too". There are too many examples to enumerate. Dog whistles to some, race-baiting to others, racist to to me.
Trying to understand the ramblings of this president is maddening, but in this case the media does NOT deserve the repercussions that came along with how it was reported. Words matter.
14
Do unto others.
Fight fire with fire.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
Trump is a horrible human being. To call him an animal suggests that he has an anima (soul).
Dear me, his words were taken out of context. What a travesty. And yet, those out-of-context words were believable in the context of Trump. It's bad journalism, but when you project fake news onto reality, fake reality becomes real news.
1
Not hard to believe that the liberals would find MS-13 a bunch of choir boys. Of course, the Democrats need them to build their constituency. It's a terrible shame that the Democrat Party has abandoned the American working class in favor of illegal immigrants, of which many are criminals. I am sure Franklin Delano Roosevelt is rolling over in his grave, ashamed of what his party has become. At any rate, I agree with President Trump; MS-13 are animals. Thank you.
4
That's all you got? The AP mis-reports a quote, Democratic partisans jump on it, the AP retracts it and we move on. That is your big example of "Fake News"? Put on the scales against what right wing media does *every* day, plus a few of your own doozies I can't quite see how it adds up. I get why you have to grab these examples when you can, Bret, but it is kind of pathetic.
1
When Trump brands Stephen Paddock, Adam Lanza, and the rest of the galaxy of mass shooters we have in this country as “animals” then I might, just might, buy this argument. But we know this is not going to happen. Since Trump r serves these epithets for immigrant criminals only, we know what his message is.
8
"The blunt truth is that immigrants have brought crime to our shores for a very long time..."
Misleading word choices in the first sentence of this paragraph, even if you seek to mitigate its speciousness with the rest of the paragraph. The blunt truth is, human beings cause crime. Period. The VAST majority of immigrants have NOT brought crime to our shores. You intend to appear neutral, but your rhetorical style, which depends on facile binarisms for strength, fails you. Be very careful of the hidden messages -- and perhaps even hidden biases -- in your work.
6
A real problem with President Trump calling El Salvadorian MS-13 gang members 'Animals'? They feel complimented.
Humans are worse than animals. We kill for the fun and sport while most animals kill out of necessity. To have a president call some people animals is an insult to my three dogs who are the most loving animals.
1
Which gender and ethnic group is consistently implicated in school shootings in this nation ? One in particular. Would love for Mr Trump and his cult to say it as it is.
5
Trump may have technically been referring to members of MS-13, but his characterization could easily be interpreted to extend to all Mexican and Central American immigrants, and that may have been his intent. Even if it was clear that he meant only MS-13 members, we don't know that every MS-13 member perpetrates these offenses. Also, there are white, native born Americans who kidnap, rape, traffic, and murder teenage girls. Calling people animals dehumanizes them, to rationalize cruelty perpetrated against them by so-called law enforcement. And how are the current ICE, CBP, and the Department of Justice so much better?
How about this, the President of the United States, the representative of the U.S. NEVER de-humanizes any person or group of persons, but speaks to the crimes or the issues. When he opens any sentence that charges a huge group of people as “murders, rapists...” then it doesn’t matter how he qualifies such a statement with “and I’m sure there are some good people” We are right to immediately condem any statement de-humanizing a group of people — or what does “never forget” mean?
thank you for a well-reasoned and very apt essay. let's hope the Democratic politicians, and their "would-be's" read it and take the message to heart. It is really really stupid to basically take a Trump comment out of context (aka lying) to make cheap political gain. Trump can hoist his own petard without handing he and his rabid followers a sword to cut us with.
1
Total Trump apologist. If Trump did not demean, scapegoat, and encourage violence against anyone who did not support him since day one of his candidacy, perhaps one could expect news outlets to think that the recent comment was untrue. In fact he did talk about other human beings as animals, and criminal or not, no human being should be labeled an animal by anyone, much less than the POTUS. Worst president ever.
2
We are not talking about informed voters here, Bret. We are talking about right wing Republicans. We liberals need to stop bringing knives to a gun fight. Because, you know, trump is such a subtle nuanced guy, as is his base.
Whatever it takes. Hopefully, we can all be decent civilized folk when trump is out of office and rupert Murdock has been stripped of citizenship and returned to the land down under.
3
Context will tell you everything about the President's comments and this writer's disingenuousness. A man who speaks only in the 'generic' voice (and loves to attack the 'they') comes down an escalator over a year ago, bemoaning Mexican 'rapists', but we're asked to blame ourselves for stupidly and unfairly misreading his most recent comment decrying 'animals' as if he doesn't know exactly what he's doing in painting his words with a broad enough brush to smear everyone in sight, in a code only too clear to his base? Oh, sorry. Right. He also once said "some of them" are good people didn't he. How foolish of us to misjudge him.
2
The question one has to ask is, "Is Trump able to fix anything related to violence?" I predict, No!
On the campaign trail that growling Trumpian vocal fry will still be attacking not only MS-13 but all immigrants. At the same time he will be defending the NRA, more guns, and ultimately more mass shootings.
This is merely a vote counting, dog whistle approach to politics.
2
The transcript of Trump's remarks show that you're wrong Bret. Trump, in a typical a rambling scree, deliberately made MS-13 indistinguishable from other immigrants. It's what he, like all racists, always does. Even if a factual mistake had been made, not immediately rectifying it would not make it Fake News. Fake News, which is what Trump constantly employs, is a deliberate lie. Trump's statements perfectly fulfill George Orwell's explanation of what constitutes Totalitarian Propaganda, they "do not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie." Further, Trump is forever doubling down on his lies. If you believe that making a factual mistake, (and one apparently was Not even made here), somehow is the reason Trump lies with impunity, it is absurd. Trump lies as he breathes. Trump and his sycophants don't need an excuse to lie, they just do it, and never apologize. Bret, you say that "the truth shouldn't be a cheap trick," but it is to Trump. As to you Brett, you'd be in a far better position to criticize Fake News if you had not spent your career denying hard science on climate change. When you keep saying things like that it is nothing but a "mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming," and that "temperatures will be about the same" in a 100 years as they are now, what are we to make of it? How is this "the truth" when everyone knows it isn't, and why do you refuse to correct your "mistakes"?
4
Bret is denying here the same thing that is ALWAYS denied with dog whistle performances. Why is the president focusing on MS-13 as school children get shot by white boys/men? Why doesn’t he EVER mention the largest and rising terrorist threats our country faces from white nationalists?
His talk of MS-13 is designed to paint ALL immigrants and black and brown people as being a threat to whites. This is a feature not a bug of Trump’s goading his base to chant “build the wall.”
While our healthcare costs are spiraling up, while women’s reproductive healthcare becomes harder to access, while our air and water become more befouled, while he refuses action on climate change, Trump keeps harping on something that is largely a nominal threat to most of us.
Please pay attention. ICE has substantially increased deporting people with enduring ties, US citizen spouses/children with no criminal records whom bring value to our country. People whom have been attempting to become citizens and following all the laws of our country but are summarily deported at great financial, emotional and community cost (do you think ICE raids are cheap, do you think that tearing apart communities doesn’t have other high costs?) Actions speak louder than words. It is the policies that are being executed by Trump that underscore who he really thinks are animals. And it’s not just MS-13. There is a larger pattern of behavior here that cannot be denied nor ignored.
4
If Trump wants to be respected by the American public a small start would be his dropping the term “fake news.”
We Americans have the right to our news whether the President approves or not. The news is the news and that is especially true of the NYTimes, a source we count on—for “real news.”
2
We have 11 Million illegal immigrants.
There are at most 10,000 MS-13 in the US.
Assume half are US born and half are immigrants.
Constantly bringing up 5,000 is a purposeful distraction of the real problem of 11 Million.
I have an idea. Start locking up the people who hire he illegals.
1
So, "gotcha" writes Bret Stephens. The thing is Trump has spoken and tweeted his bile and prejudice on record and been quoted accurately many, many times. This time he did not. Shall we applaud him for this? Even a blind pig finds an acorn.
1
Humans are animals, a fact we ignore, and some animals are less vicious than other animals. Trump makes enough weird statements (covfefe) and tells enough lies that there is plenty of fodder for criticism. No need to use words out of context to prove how insensitive he is. As suggested, it just gives him more opportunity to talk about how unfair the fake news is.
2
Fair enough, Brent. As Michelle Obama put it, when they go low, we [should] go high.
2
All these long discourses miss the point: Let's not give Trump and his cronies ammunition. And let's not stop to their level by accepting "alternative facts."
1
Clearly, some in the media got Trump's remarks out of context and were wrong.
That said, where was the outrage when the right-wing noise machine took Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" remark out of context (she was referring specifically to white supremacists, etc.) and ran with it?
4
Just as racists define African Americans by the actions of a crime committing minority, they will define the nature of Hispanic/Latinx immigrants by the actions of violent gangs like MS-13.
Trump’s hyper-fixation on the actions of this gang is no more than a guise, a helpful illusion to disguise his racist, Nativist sentiments.
Yes, the gang poses an issue.
However, we must identify the source (Trump) of the information we are receiving, and understand the disturbing, antiquated biases he holds as a serious factor in the statements he makes.
6
Trump regularly conflates the worst elements in any population with the entirety of that population. That is what he did here again. He was doing doing what he always does using his bullhorn to condemn an entire population based on the behavior of a miniscule minority of that group. You make yourself part of the divisive hateful problem in the country by trying to spin Trump's intent in a more benign direction. We know what his intent was, and it wasn't benign in terms of the vast majority of immigrants who come to this country and make a positive contribution to our society. His intent was to play to the hateful racist fears of his base, and you are an enabler.
2
Fascinating!
An article that takes an egregious incorrect and inflammatory lie and pronouncement by a venal and provocative media which is then promulgated and amplified to create a platform for unlimited importation of illegal immigrants to support the elite and despotic leaders of the third world.
Well done Bret Stephens.
1
Remember how during the campaign the Trump-backing, Russian-owned, Mercer-designed fake news, trolls and bots portrayed Hillary as a bigger racist than Trump because she once referred to gang members as "super predators"?
Trump continues to prove he is a racist.
Hillary was talking specifically about gang members.
Trump never mentioned MS-13 or gang crime but used as his subject "people coming into our country," which sticks to his original, oft-repeated scaremongering that other countries send their worst people here, and that they're rapists, murderers, and thieves.
Pay attention. It is not far off the 2014 Lie of the Year that was used to bring President Obama's approval rating briefly down to 40% for the Midterms:
that our POTUS was leaving the border open for ebola and ISIS to come storming in to destroy America.
Look how that turned out. We instead let the GOP storm our Congress and destroy America to their liking.
2
This is a distraction. This president tweets hateful speech daily and is so incoherent how can anybody understand what he means?
3
I think you could have left out that part about Schumer's family tree. I don't think it fits in with what you're trying to say.
A patently dishonest column.
Stephens is making the underlying claim that Trump is precise in his tweets. And that, now, context is important.
Take Stephens neither literally, or seriously, at least on this issue.
2
I write this before reading the article. When Trump compared MS-13 to animals my thought was "Dogs, cats, dolphins, blue jays and thousands of species don't deserve to be compared with MS-13. MS-13 are rapists and murderers. Some humans are the worst animals in this world."
1
The transcript of Trump's remarks shows that you're wrong Bret. Trump, in a typical a rambling scree, deliberately made MS-13 indistinguishable from other immigrants. It's what he, like all racists, always does. Even if a factual mistake had been made, not immediately rectifying it would not make it Fake News. Fake News, which is what Trump constantly employs, is a deliberate lie. Trump's statements perfectly fulfill George Orwell's explanation of what constitutes Totalitarian Propaganda, they "do not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie." Further, Trump is forever doubling down on his lies. If you believe that making a factual mistake, (and one apparently was Not even made here), somehow is the reason Trump lies with impunity, it is absurd. Trump lies as he breathes. Trump and his sycophants don't need an excuse to lie, they just do it, and never apologize. Bret, you say that "the truth shouldn't be a cheap trick," but it is to Trump.
Wow. Where have I been the last three decades? “Conservatives used to get the law of unintended consequences. They understood the economic necessity of demographic growth through immigration, especially now that the number of U.S. births is at a 30-year low.”
Mixing the tenses. They used to get it, especially now? Sure, Donald Trump didn’t call all immigrants animals. That makes the policies coming out of his administration much more humane for families being separated like cattle. Makes me happy to waste billions on an unnecessary wall.
1
This misrepresentation falls in the category of ‘you can dish it out but you can’t take it’. It’s not fake, but merely, face; as in, in your face. And yeah, going ‘high’ just makes your knees more vulnerable.
The animals in this particular zoo are those who separate children from their parents. Trump continues to support this horrible practice, and our "opinion columnists" continue to ignore it.
2
Are we supposed to believe Trump is primarily concerned with the “animals” in MS-13 when as much as 40 percent of the people his administration is deporting have no criminal record? What percentage of those here illegally are realistically members of MS-13? Or can we instead safely assume that he’s more concerned with getting as many people out as possible, most of whom just happen to be of a particular complexion?
Jack Holmes, Esquire Magazine
1
Amazing. Trump is being taken out of context.
Absolutely. amazing.
I believe the term is "flack."
The great realignment begins. It is more important to discuss the treatment of this problem then to dissect the causes. Mr. Trump is a racist. He incites racism in the 20 to 30% of the population who are easily able to be incited. The other 70 to 80% of us need to get together and fight these people. We are doing this. Mr. Stevens starts to suggest this when he says that the center-right of the Republican should get along with the Democrats to fight the bigotry.
We do not need to be tribal. Our society has been built on assimilation of hard-working striving people from all over the world.
What we need is a center party. Let’s call it “the Fair Party” or the Democratic Party or anything else. The Trumpers have taken over the Republican Party. They can have it. Let’s have a new party. A new realignment. Let’s not spend all our time in semantics. Trump is a repugnant racist. Let’s call a spade a spade.
Look up makeitfair.us. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter. Get involved. It’s important.
1
I did watch the entire 54 minutes of the Roundtable on Sanctuary Cities and Immigration Laws on C-Span. The majority of comments around the table were spent praising the President; making no distinction between all "illegals" (defined as criminals) and rapists, murderers, or MS13; attacking Governor Jerry Brown and Democrats; praising ICE; and comments praising deportation of thousands of "illegals" who were all referred to as criminals. There was enough context to at least make it unclear that the president was referring to MS13. The continued characterization of all "illegals" as criminals and worthy of deportation is disturbed me. ICE treating "illegals" like criminals such as snatching them in front of their children in the carpool line for school. It is worth listening to the entire Roundtable which is more damning in my opinion that the "animals" quote. For me, this administration's handling of immigrants and deportations is a dark stain on all of us for a long time.
Fake news -- from Bret Stephens.
Stephens asserts in his column that Trump's remark about Immigrant "animals " is made, once read in context, in reference to M-13 members. However, when Trump, responding to Sheriff Momma late in the transcript to which Stephens provides a link, uses "animals," the most straightforward interpretation of the usage is to " people coming into this country, " not to M-13 members -- except insofar as one accepts Trump characterization of Immigrants in terms of M13 members and other criminals.
True, one might, acknowledging Trump's frequently sloppy speech, grant Trump a little slack by reading Trump's use of "animals" as possibly intended to refer to M-13 types. But that is not what the clearly very literate and frequently acute Stephens writes.
I must have missed Mr Stephens’s explainer on the illegitimacy of the summer 2016 dust-up over use of the word “deplorables.”
1
Donald Trump is Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd) living in Toontown from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit."
The more you hate Trump, the more I love him and will vote for him again. Your approach is backfiring.
True ! the media turned the MS 13 comment into fake news. HOWEVER, Trumps assertion in the same misused d sentence that Sanctuary Cities allow MS13 animals in is also misleading since the data indicate crime in Sanctuary Cities is similar to other cities.
The president has never bothered to take comments “in context”. The double standard of a reasonable apologist.
The irony for me is that Trump is cancelling asylum for thousands of primarily women from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, many of whom fled to the United States under both Republican and Democratic presidents, to escape from violent gangs such as MS-13. These people have been in this country for 15-20 years, have been productive, paid taxes, and now their asylum status is being canceled. They will be sent back to their home countries into the hands of the very gangs Trump denounces.
I know one of these women personally. She has begun citizenship proceedings, which take YEARS. She has one child who fled with her from Honduras and is married to a U.S. citizen. Don't think, folks, that marriage to a U.S. citizen automatically allows her to stay; instead, the two subsequent children she had will be allowed to stay and she and her son, under Trump's asylum cancellation, will be sent back.
This column indicates that, because Trump called MS-13 "animals" in response to a direct question, he didn't call them "animals." What kind of logic is that? No one I know is sticking up for gang members of any nationality; if you want to see some really vicious gangs, try looking into some of the Albanians and other eastern Europeans operating in this country as well. But they don't look brown to Trump, so he's not after them. Bottom line: Whether in response to a direct question or simply out of the blue, he DID call people animals. Their BEHAVIOR is animalistic. There's a difference.
72
Two flaws in your column share the error of giving Donald Trump credit for nuance.
One is the notion that failing to point out Trump’s raging dehumanization of other human beings will somehow strengthen opponents’ arguments. That ignores the reality that Trump and his supporters have never needed generalizations to smear anyone to their left. When they need a target, they make one up, from Obama’s birthplace to this week’s claims of a spy in his campaign.
The other is the idea that Trump’s comments can be separated from his bigoted dog whistles. No, Trump did not say that all immigrants were animals. He also didn’t say they weren’t. “Animals” is just the latest ingredient he’s tossed into the xenophobic stew he’s been cooking for decades. It would be a mistake to not call attention to this kind of hatred.
88
In my opinion, a major reason for the decline of mainstream journalism is that (as the author states), even mainstream journalism is not objective, reliable, and unbiased.
It would be a great service to society if some newspapers would set a higher ethical bar for what they publish, with an aim to inform, educate, and raise the level of discourse.
4
There are a lot of reasons newspapers are failing and other outlets (CNN, MSNBC, the quasi-social netscape, the phone, small groups of the like-minded) are thriving, but objectivity isn't the leading one. Do you subscribe to a newspaper, or watch documentaries or read lengthy magazine articles on public affairs? The problem is that these sectors of publishing aren't trying to please you, and Trump is. He's telling you what you want to hear.
Good column, My question to all is, doesn't the fact that Mexico is overrun by gangs and violence and corruption affect our ability to deal with MS-13 and immigrants here.
Give Trump credited at least he is willing to finally have and has tried to made Congress address Immigration. Both sides could fix this, and need to, At least Trump is willing to take the heat for trying to solve this continuous issue and has placed the four pillar solution on the table along with a path to citizen ship for DACA. Because of the political and gang situation in Mexico open borders wont work. WE need the Democratics and main stream media to provide help not emotional hype
Nice try, Bret, but reading T's opening remarks can certainly lead you to believe he was painting everyone with the same brush. He is deliberately confusing his audience by suggesting that illegal immigrants who commit crimes are let go. This is not what the law requires. These people are not immune from California's criminal laws just because they are immigrants. But if a person is placed into the system the system is allowed to operate as it usually does (incarceration, bail, etc.)without the interference of ICE. Given the number of racial profiling arrests, it is safe to assume that many of the detained are in fact innocent. If an non-illegal immigrant is arrested and released because of insufficient evidence we applaud that as Justice working. This obfuscation on T's part is deliberate and is indeed the dog whistle many claim.
4
The president does not enjoy the same presumptions or benefits of doubt that an honest person would enjoy. That combined with what he has said in the past to appeal to hatred, racial and otherwise, shifts that presumption further. This is not the first time Mr. Stephens has sought to place blame for Donald Trump on the left and its purported allies in media. That this effort is repeated over and over does not make it less unfair or inaccurate.
4
It's really quite simple, Bret. The sheriff was speaking specifically. Trump was speaking generally. She said MS-13. He said these. I view "these" as an encompassing descriptor, that implies more than just MS-13 "animals".
11
This was a teaching moment, and Bret Stephens missed a chance. On immigration, Trump taps into the emotions of cultural loss and worse - as well as a legitimate concerns that the system is broken. The left focuses on the manifest injustices of that broken system. Both sides have a point, but there's a third way. It's time for the U.S. to adopt a system like that of Canada, which focuses on the qualifications of immigrants. (By the way, I am not sure Trump wasn't trolling the left with his trademark ambiguity.)
4
"...the president habitually...buries the signal of his bigotries in the noise of his syntax." Very well said. Trump--willfully, I believe--created just enough distance between his "animals" remark and his denunciation of MS-13 to allow his base to take his comments out of context and interpret them as an indictment of all immigrants.
It would have been helpful if the White House press corps had been able to question his claim right then and there. "Sir, are you saying that all immigrants are 'animals,' or are you referring only to MS-13?"
After all, if Trump wanted his remarks to be unambiguous, he could have said: "These people, these MS-13 gang members, are not really people at all. They're animals." So clear, so easily understood. But that wasn't Trump's goal.
So let Trump's critics blast him for his hatefulness, and let Trump disingenuously explain that he was simply misunderstood. This time...And the next...What's the big deal?
7
Except that Trump made no reference to gangs or MS13 or gangs, and he gave no indication that he was agreeing or disagreeing with, or just expanding on, the preceding comment. To conclude he meant to limit his "animals" reference to gangs would require the reader to assume the President bears no malice toward immigrants, generally. But, as you point out in your column, he doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt on this. After his handlers tell him what MS13 is, he suddenly clarifies his quote. If he wants to be understood, let him bother to speak clearly.
11
I too lambasted the knee-jerky reactions of some in the press, and some politicians - but its only because we all use this language about these sorts of criminals at some time. We're all guilty of it - and if you say otherwise, you lie like Trump, or are a saint.
But Mr Stephens and others take their semi-apologetic retort way too far.
Of course some of us overreacted - as we're being conditioned by a POTUS with a foul mouth, who says more despicable things in a week then most presidents said over two terms! I expect nothing but lies and despicable comments about others/groups. So this one sounded like more of the same.
And of course all the broad-brush painting Trumplodites out there will simply extend his comment to mean all immigrants. Which is unavoidable and sad. Too many people now, be they Trumplodites or not, are painting with that broad brush, and acting like...like animals themselves.
We're burdened with a nearly illiterate president. A very grown man, whose command of the language is abysmal, and to properly use the term - its truly like catnip to his supporters. They love it! Its like Meth to them.
To now go after a small number in the press and on the Hill for overreacting to this incident is disingenuous, and certainly in no way matches the numbers of just wrong, despicable things Trump has said, and will say. To try and play the gotcha-game over this is itself overreacting.
This will certainly be buried by his next despicable comments. A sure bet!
3
A country with huge illegal immigrants can at best be an illegal country, and should find no space in global institutions and organizations? How can a law abiding country have illegal citizens? If illegal entry is possible and justified, why have the legal and law abiding immigrants/visitors to acquire passports and visas?
1
Scientifically speaking, all people are animals -- we are not some sort of unique creation separate from all other living species and I'm pretty sure we don't qualify as plants, fungi, protoplasm or minerals or some other such thing. Of course, Trump was using "animals" in the pejorative sense, as a wild creature consumed by bloodlust and eager to create chaos. Relatively few animals, wild or not, actually behave that way and humans have proven time and again to be even more capable of engaging in horrid behavior for no valid purpose than any other animal.
5
Once again it’s the expectation that Democrats and liberal Americans dot every i and cross every t while the President and the Republican Party lie indecently every single day. Until the left realizes it is involved in a war and unites with a constant ongoing campaign labeling Republicans and the Republican Party indecent, which it is, nothing will change. Democratic weakness perpetuates Republican indecency.
6
Bret - did you take umbrage when Hillary Clinton's about deplorables was taken out of context. She said some Trump suppporters were deplorable (and they are) but others are in industries that are dying and we need to help them. Did I miss your column?
14
Aww, poor Dawnood, nobody gives him the benefit of the doubt, even when he's such a good guy. I mean, based on his history, general demeanor, and the way he just classes up the joint, there's just no reason not to always assume the best in him, right? If he said something that was insulting to animals, then I'm totally outraged on behalf of animals. That's your inner snowflake talking, Bret; you and I are on the same page there, Bret, no doubt about that.
2
While I understand Mr. Stephens' point, and he does have a valid point here, it is also worth saying:
it does not matter what a person has done, no matter how foul or evil, that person is not an 'animal'. As soon as you allow yourself to denigrate anyone as "non-human' you open the door to the true evil we have seen in the past.
Trump is setting himself up in Duterte territory here. Was Trump allowing himself the wiggle room to be understood by his base one way and claim "I was only talking about the bad guys (wink, wink)" when called out? Yes.
That does not make the comment any more acceptable and it is the normalization of allowing any human to be cast from humanity, for any reason, that may be the most subtly evil thing we can do.
" To call MS-13 “animals” is wrong only because it is unfair to animals."
This comment from Mr. Stephens is a very dangerous one. I urge him to reflect on why.
3
Mr Stephens,
You say "Tomato", I say 2500+ lies since inauguration day...You can't blame anyone at this point when they are assume the worst, when this "president" makes a statement.
Mistakes in reporting (that are ultimately corrected) not withstanding, the press is still the clear winner when it comes to presenting facts.
5
Trump has built his political rise on dehumanization of immigrants. Its a tried and true formula that many fascists have used, here is its methodology:
1. Identity vulnerable populations that are not assimilated into society;
2. Openly criticize and blame them for the ailments of the society;
3. Build political will in society to have them discriminated against so that it is acceptable to take their homes, property, jobs, and rights;
4. To attain true mastery, the campaign should lead to killing and genocide of the vulnerable population.
1
the ruckus over immigration has been cluttered by conflation, maybe the media could help some with a full face, all caps, glossary distinguishing immigrants, from refugees, lawbreakers (in this case, those whose fervor to enter the country is matched by their disrespect for its law) from law abiders (those who play by the rules of law and wait in line because their fervor to enter the country is matched by their respect for its laws, laws that will protect them as those they flee would not).
the undocumented trespassers are no more "immigrants" than the guy who breaks into your house is an "univitied guest."
2
Ok, point taken, but why is it always the responsibility of everyone else to take extra care to wade through the swamp of Donald's Trump's jabberwocky fueled by a toxic imagination to correctly interpret every single word he spews indiscriminately?
Sorry, but it's a Boy Who Cried Wolf situation where this time he added an adjective or took away a verb. Nonetheless, his underlying contempt for all immigrants save his Anglo Saxon relatives managed to rear its ugly head anyway.
True, one doesn't want to encourage the "fake news" narrative by jumping too soon or projecting, but the reality is that the fake meme of fake news to describe legitimate media rolls merrily along entirely independent of factual example. We may worry about encouraging it, but it needs no encouragement as no counter argument cuts through the Trump generated fog of confusion.
3
"And for just as long politicians have tried to portray immigrants as criminals, from the Know Nothings of the 1850s..." Dude ... the Know Nothings were uber-Americans - per Wikipedia, which happens to be correct in this instance, "[t]he Native American Party, renamed the American Party in 1855 and commonly known as the Know Nothing movement, was an American nativist political party that operated nationally in the mid-1850s. It was primarily anti-Catholic, xenophobic and hostile to immigration..." Injecting "fake history" into your argument doesn't help it one bit.
Respectfully, I think you may wish to re-read the article. The wording is sloppy, but it seems that the writer was identifying the Know Nothings as one of the political groups that portrayed immigrants as criminals. Ironic, given that the article explores similar misinterpretation.
Nice try, Bret, but the problem here isn't the liberal media occasionally misrepresenting trump's words or meaning.
The problem is that we have a president who so frequently misrepresents facts (i.e., lies) that when he says something like he did the other day about illegal immigrants, it's fairly easy to assume the worst about what he intended.
Sure, liberals assumed that he was painting all illegal, and mostly non-white, immigrants with a broad, ugly brush. But his white supremacist supporters also assumed the same, nodded in agreement, and went on with their day, comfortable in the knowledge that this parody of a leader had their backs.
3
Agree with Mr. Stephens on all counts...or, do I? Is it really correct that the way to win a political argument in America is to be precise, judicious, thoughtful, restrained, accurate, factual, etc.? Let's review the dominant "positions" of the political party that controls all levers of power: Just for starters, the former President was not an American, the most recent Democratic presidential candidate should be imprisoned for life, the earth is 6000 years old, ANY attempt to regulate gun ownership is a violation of the 2nd Amendment, white Christian males are the victims of an unfair system, Net Worth = human worth, Vladimir Putin is a great leader to be emulated, all reductions in income tax rates result in more taxes being collected, climate change scientists are anti-American conspirators...I could go on for days. Yeah, Bret, the way to win power in America is with moderation and facts. Not saying I want to stoop to their level, just saying that expecting the employment of facts and moderation to result in anything more than self-respect is not consistent with modern political history.
2
The thrust of the meeting was to campaign against so-called "sanctuary cities," and Trump's comment responded to a completely wrong statement by a California law enforcement official that the sanctuary laws shield people who commit crimes of violence. That statement was dead wrong. I agree that the meeting reports were off on the MS-13 comment, but focusing on that error misses the Big Lie -- that neither the immigration law nor the sanctuary laws block deportation of violent criminals.
1
So I read the comment in context and the entire conversation between opportunistic politicians, sycophants, true believers and Trump was troubling and sad. True to form Trump expected flattery and praise which the others in the room were happy to provide. If you can stomach the whole thing then it’s easy to see that Trumps intentionally conflates gang members with others and “animals” is about more than MS-13. Just as his comments about Mexicans sending criminals, rapists and other “bad people” across our border was a blanket characterization of illegal immigrants so too is his “animals” quote. Context is about more than just the immediate statement, its understanding that statement in light of previous ones as well as actions taken that reinforce Trumps overall intent. But all this is expected & is typical of Trumpian exaggeration and bombast. The unremarked elephant in the room is the other people in conversation with Trump and what they had to say. Reading their comments goes a long way to understanding Trumps appeal. You see how their fears and bigotry feed the Trump ego and he in return reinforces their beliefs and stimulates their reactionary impulses. Its a closed loop where reflection and humility have no place and the authoritarian impulse is nurtured. The followers ignorance is more to be feared than Trumps as he doesn’t exist as a threat without it. They make Trump what he is, he merely reflects it while playing the room. Sad indeed.
3
When someone repeated (hundreds of times) cries wolf and there is none, it is understandable and rational to perhaps draw the false conclusion that the next time they do it there is no wolf. He brought this on himself. Open your eyes Bret.
2
Stevens jumps on a mistake which was retracted as fake new, while numerous right-wing media continuously spreads lies, propaganda, half-truths, conspiracy theories, et. al. with impunity.
5
A literate person would have an arsenal of words to choose and animals would not be one. Trump is on the world stage and repeatedly has resorted to name calling, off the cuff inappropriate statements and generally gross behavior.
His use of the word disgrace is used casually unaware he is a disgrace to the country he represents.
Treason is another favorite, where are his priorities, enriching his fortunes or acting in the best interest of the American citizens?
The Trump, Kushner families and Evangelical zealots have taken precedent over Presidential decisions.
2
Bret is usually so complicit in the very kind of misrepresentations that trump makes. So it may be useful to hear from a master of deceit how it’s done. Then avoid Stephens and trump
1
This is a classic example of the kind of false framing the right has been using with devastating effect for the last 25 years (See Newt Gingrich and Frank Luntz for details.), and that the Democrats have yet to figure out. MS13, which comes from Los Angeles, has been around for over 30 years and it's just been in the past year, or less, that the group has been identified with the immigration problem?
Make no mistake. A decision was made to mention MS13 in the same breath as illegal immigration, and get all right wing propaganda outlets to repeat it as often as possible. This is how it works. This is why so many still believe Obama is a Muslim. The examples are legion.
Eventually, illegal immigrants are identified with MS13.
This is race baiting of the most insidious, and dangerous kind.
1
On October 9, 2016, just weeks prior to Trump’s upset presidential victory, Ana Navarro, of CNN, tweeted the following from her verified Twitter account, “Should Donald Trump drop out of the race? Yes. He should drop out of the human race. He is an animal..." So Navarro was on tv yapping with other media types about the shame of calling human beings animals, yet here she was in 2016 calling a presidential candidate an animal? Bias much?
1
Mr Stephens is misleading readers here.
If you read the context of Trump's entire statement then it is clear he is referring to all illegal immigrants as animals. Nowhere in his statement does he talk about gangs. Here is Trump's entire statement to make clear why it is so heinous and hateful:
"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."
2
Nowhere in your article do you mention why Trump refers to MS-13 as animals. It is certainly not to better inform the public, nor to quickly bring the members of this violent crime syndicate to justice. Clearly, his rationale for the bluster and name calling is to incite hatred of all immigrants by appealing to the bigotry and xenophobia of White Nationalists and Neonazis. As with everything else that he says and does, Trump has no regard for the welfare or safety of the American public. His tweets and his racially tinged comments are intended to score political points with the most extreme, violent, and receptive members of his base. He is a cheerleader for hatred, and it is really the only thing that he does with any degree of competence.
1
I doubt all those who repeated this "animals" comment did so knowing it was taking it out of context. They probably heard it somewhere (AP maybe) and repeated it. Who could blame them for believing it? That's what this column should have been about. Or the sad fact that we have a mobster as president and for all practical purpose messiah to some, and how this is not going to end well for the country. I'll leave the chastising for mistakes for another time.
Here’s the problem: Trump always creates his own context. Nearly all if is based on lies. Some out of shear ignorance. Need we go back to his attacks on Obama?
To be blunt. Trump is a lout and will always act like one. His base loves his mean girl style. Most of the country is appalled.
2
Thanks for the link to the actual transcript. It make clear that Trump was not referring to MS-13, but to all of the people being deported. It is the cry of "Fake News" that is, as usual, fake news. And the obsequiousness Trump demands is nauseating.
1
Maggie Haberman had it right. Trump trolls us with outrageous statements that are just ambiguous enough to allow him to deny racist or xenophobic meaning when he is called out. Then, he plays the victim card, claiming the press is out to get him.
The fact is that Trump has been saying and doing outrageously racist things since he discriminated against people of color in his real estate rentals in the 1970s. But I have yet to hear him call a white mass murderer or a Neo Nazi an animal. Those who support him because they see him as a bulwark against the browning of America heard exactly the sweet music they wanted to hear when Trump made his insidious "animals" remark.
Portraying those who oppose racial dehumanization as allies of criminals is the oldest trick in the demagogues' playbook. Remember the Willie Horton ads? Defending a reasonable criminal justice program was portrayed as siding with black murderers and rapists.
We know from history where the dehumanization of other races, religions, or ethnic groups leads. It leads to extermination. We've been through that in America with slavery and Jim Crow lynchings. To paraphrase Justice Robert Jackson, a democracy avoids evil ends by avoiding evil beginnings.
So yes, Mr. Stephens, Latino gang members are evil. Murderers, rapists, and other violent criminals of all races and ethnicities are all evil. Trump is a skillful demagogue who knows how to stoke racial division. And American patriots will continue to resist.
3
Few would argue that MS-13 is composed of decent people, and that they shouldn't be deported. The problem is that ICE has been shown to use the gang-banger label repeatedly to deport Hispanics who are not members of any gang. In fact, they were recently caught falsifying a "confession" of someone who qualified for DACA, and had a legitimate work visa. It was probably easier to catch him than a real gang member who might have a gun (courtesy of NRA gun laws) and who might actually shoot at them. The quota imposed on ICE to "get results" is the thing here, and Trump's dog-whistle is the justification.
104
More addle-pated columnizing. It makes some, but not much, difference that Trump designated on MS-13 gang members, not all (undocumented) immigrants, as "animals." It is wrong as a matter of civility, not to mention the inevitable consequences of demonizing people, to disparage them by calling them "animals." I am glad that AP has corrected the record, but the gist of the revulsion stands. No other President has offered such language about others, and this one is leading us in a death spiral of indecency which is perilous to democracy.
1
Bret is a voice of reason at NY Times. Fake reporting of what Trump actually says is the reason why he still stands and holding his base. In America each group wants to favor their group. As long as it is within the limit of norms, that is not a problem. The present immigration policy may be good for certain groups, but is not good for America. If it continues without any change, it may endanger American culture and American way of life. People who are interested to preserve those, must demand change in current immigration policy. If they wait long, it may not be possible. A merit based policy, as proposed by Trump, is the way forward. The groups who favor the current policy will use all tools to discredit Trump and supporters of change. Trump's loose talk may be also helping them.
2
Actually, however, Bret was wrong.
Taken IN context, it is a huge stretch to think that the subject of "people coming over the border" was limited to MS-13 just because someone else had mentioned a theoretical case of an MS-13 gang member.
Meanwhile, Trump is advocating second chances of criminals to help white evangelicals recruit from our prison system.
2
When you are dealing with a person like The Donald, it is difficult to exaggerate his awfulness.
He is a low brow communicator who seeks to relate to our lowest common denominator, our most base instincts.
Whatever the context, calling brown skinned immigrants animals, while calling Nazis fine people, tells us more about the soul of the man, then any contextual re-interpretation.
Despicable? Deplorable? Disgusting? Dishonest?
All of these descriptions apply to The President of The United States.
6
Oh, okay, let's cut him some slack. The leader of the free world who constantly attacks all news as fake...can't communicate. Poor tyrant.
4
They, the Republican members of congress, are complicit.
We, the American People are complacent.
Allowing a minority to run roughshod over America.
To them, he is the messiah.
To me, he is the antichrist.
5
You nailed it
I am just so tired of Trump and splitting hairs in analyzing what he said. The man is a lair. Plain and simple. He lies here, conflates there, expresses bigotry and then pretends that he didn’t. Those are the facts. Whether the news media misportrayed something here doesn’t change the the overall story, which is that we have a dishonest bigot in the White House.
6
Jesus would not call others ‘animals’ no matter their crimes.
Trump doesn’t get a pass on this.
2
"Consider this week’s implication by major news organizations that the president described all illegal immigrants as “animals” during a White House roundtable with California officials. That would indeed be a wretched thing for him to say — had he said it.
He did not. The Associated Press admitted as much when it deleted a tweet about the remark, noting “it wasn’t made clear that he was speaking after a comment about gang members."
I must say Bret, you and your fellow opinion writers at the NYT continue to amaze me. Being able to turn an "invidious" comment by a fellow reporter into a "jab" at Trump, goes way beyond righteous. How about some fair and balanced opinions. Whether you like him and his policies or not, how about just an admission that the reporter at the AP was wrong. An apology was in order.
Had our previous president suggested these thugs (gang members) were "animals", you would have lauded him for his understanding of the situation, rather than finding a way to berate him and his agenda.
Cannot you, just once, admit a mistake, and move forward. I guess not. Your negativity sells papers. The fact that it promotes the divisiveness is not your concern.
2
Another Trump apologist spinning his latest racist statement.
Trump's comments were taken IN context. I will paste his full statement below to show that he was talking specifically about "people coming into the country."
The person he was talking to DID mention MS-13 theoretically, but the subject was dealing with crime among immigrants including the non-MS13 homeless guy who was acquitted of the murder of Kate Steinle. THAT guy has been equally portrayed as a boogeyman to scare up votes and sell Trump's stupid wall.
And now he is lumped in with MS-13 as animals, just days before Trump tried to pitch the latest Evangelical cause of prison reform for repentent white criminals. No doubt that's open to the Texan boy who just killed more people than any single MS-13 teen ever will, as long as he finds God.
Here is Trump's full quote so you can see it IN context:
"THE PRESIDENT: 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.
The dumbest laws — as I said before, the dumbest laws on immigration in the world."
Clearly he's talking about all undocumented immigrants.
3
MS-13 is a brutal and murderous gang, way worse than animals.
If they were a neo-Nazi gang that acted the exact same way liberals would call them animals...and rightfully so
4
He thinks they all are animals. By all I mean all.
Do you think we are stupid?
3
Yes, it was a mistake for many to attack Trump for this particular comment.
BUT it was an easy mistake to make, because the full context was not just the immediate question about gangs.
The full context includes Trump's performance of "The Snake" at political rallies. It includes the policies being pushed through ICE and USCIS.
Trump's dehumanization efforts are far more than just his answer to that one question.
3
Had any of us, in conversation with friends and/or family, or even strangers, had spoken as Trump had, we would be pressed by those around us to explain ourselves. It would, most likely, lead to an interesting debate about inherent humanity, the history immigration, et al. As President of a major country, however, Trump seems incapable of understanding that words must be chosen more carefully. It's like having a 3-year-old in office.
2
Rich, Puh-lease. Spare me/us this "we're gonna dive deep into our use of dehumanizing language" nonsense, should someone use an inappropriate term. If only! If only that was a common thing, we'd not be in this discussion in 2018.
We all use the "animal" term at some point. Even about mundane things we use it (as hyperbole) and no one calls anyone out on it! "Look at the mess those animals left!" "Only an animal would do that!"
Or in re; those torch-bearing marchers in Charlottesburg..."bunch of animals, IMO." Yeah, I used it.
Its use, in this context, at the dinner table, or in the workplace break room - would only get some head-nods, and we all move on. Its a compact term used to communicate a lot of stuff.
Its more a term of confusion when referring to these sorts of criminals. As in, "How can people act like this towards others...they must be like animals." Is it a correct use? Not even close, as most animals don't wantonly kill their own or not their own.
Wanton killing is not a common practice in the wild. But it is in the Human Kingdom. So the better term, would be to call these miscreants, be they MS-13, ISIL, Al Qaeda, the Mafia, or Putin, to call them HUMAN. As they are wholly acting like Humans
We need a better term then "animal"...maybe HumanZ. Humans with a Z factor that leaves the rest of us confused and scared. Asking; "Who are these people? They cant be the same as me...?"
1
I read Trump's actual comments. With all respect to Mr. Stephens, the participants were talking about immigration in general, and it's absolutely unclear that he was "just" talking about MS-13. Obfuscation is part of Trump's purpose. His history is of demeaning all immigrations except WASPish types.
Putting "context" to Trump is actually what accomplishes his goals. You can read for yourselves and make your own judgment.
"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."
13
Well said; too bad it will fall on deaf ears. Trump is a demagogue but you don't disarm a demagogue by shouting back. It's just a complete waste of time to make this point because, as the comments suggest, nobody on the left wants to hear it.
The left should ask itself: Do you want to make a soundbite for your base? Or to make yourselves feel righteous? Or do you want to do something constructive to disarm the most dangerous demagogue this county has ever had (and that's saying a mouthful). Remember Joe Welch as he "at long last" took down Joe McCarthy and his stooge enablers. "Have you no sense of decency Sir?"
3
Mr. Stephens, with all due respect, President Trump, were he asked what he said, would agree, and say, in his own twisted way, that all immigrants are animals. He simply cannot say a kind word.
His daily ugly rhetoric is shocking and misleading, and whether the word "animals" was reported out of context, makes no difference. He reinforced and described, again, quite viciously, his view of "others." For example, when he called Democrats treasonous at the State of the Union, the Republican Party responded with applause. His deliberative remarks are far worse than our misinterpretations. There is no splitting of hairs. I am sorry, Mr. Stephens, but he could care less about you, or me, or any media truth. His mind, strengthened by too many maniacal friends in Congress, is too dark to let any light in, or out.
2
Trump’s message has always been that he can say and do anything mean and shoddy against any group of people, be it young women beauty contestants he wants to spy on, people of any color or economic means that are not super wealthy, anyone with some money he can falsely convince to give to him (he isn’t going to work for it) be it for education, steaks, etc. Everything he says is a lie. Everything he does is for his aggrandizement, never ever for the good of the country. I know it’s tedious because he is probably one of the most amazing liars and greediest people ever, but everything he says and does must be questioned, and it is getting to be really, really bad as he gains more confidence in his now greater powers to lie and steal with impunity. The rate at which he lies and steals is mind boggling. At this point, defending a perceived slight against his words - when he really did mean to call all immigrants animals and it was his lie that he mean only MS13 and one of many lies defending his inopportune but truthful slips - is shallow, specious and uncovers a need to pander to those who continue to look for false equivalencies and any other slight signs of humanity - not there.
4
Mr Stephens,
You say that politicians have always portrayed immigrants as criminals. True. What you leave out, or more likely don't know, is that this paper portrayed Italian immigrants in the early decades of the 20th century as criminals. Not the Mafia or the Black Hand. Italian immigrants.
3
The only problem with Bret's "solution" to rebut Trump's demagoguery is the part about "sane" Republicans. As of this moment, there are fewer than five in the Senate and one, John McCain, is, in the phrase used in hospice care, actively dying. Two more, Jeff Flake and Bob Corker, are leaving in January. Lindsey Graham rounds out the handful, and then only occasionally. In the House, Ben Sasse is the closest, and only, thing the Republican Party has to offer up as "sane," if by that term we are describing anyone willing to rebuke Trump in public.
2
Bret Stephens is now the Trump whisperer. Bret knows what Trump meant and when he meant it.
Trump riffs a solid stream of consciousness and contradictions where mere people get lost in all the babble and spew.
Thank you Mr Stephens for you service, but this man is the President of the United States and with that comes the responsibility of thoughtfully considering ones word before they exit ones yap. After all, HR Clinton had her 'deplorables' moment and every fly over state inhabitant took it personally.
Trump rightly gets plenty of bad press because of what he his, but life isn't fair, some Americans think they know what Trump meant in this instance and how he meant it. Trump only has himself to blame, but that won't happen.
4
"After a California sheriff commented that her county is unable to notify ICE when an MS-13 gang member is in jail for a minor crime, Trump launched into a riff about “people trying to come in” and being deported who are “not people. They’re animals."
Only a dullard would interpret Trump's remarks as all encompassing. He was clearly reacting to the reference to MS 13. He may very well think all immigrates are animals (to describe the man as a jerk is insulting to jerks), but not in this case.
it's fine to dislike the man, but hysteria will not win the day.
3
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the lowest fertility rate in 30 years. How is the deficit in viable replacement rate reconciled to avoid the “Japan Syndrome”?
I-m-m-I-g-r-a-t-I-o-n-!
2
I find it strange that no one takes the statement that we are deporting thousands of these illegal violent immigrants to issue. Since the total number of MS-13 members in the US is estimated at 8-10,000, he is letting a small proportion of the immigrant population represent the whole immigrant population, legal and illegal alike.
2
MS-13, no defense, no excuses, these are enemies, they deserve no quarter, no mercy and no place in the United States.
7
Others may deserve the benefit of the doubt, but this monstrosity of a president deserves no doubt that he is a disgusting exception to the otherwise noble biped category in the animal kingdom.
Yes there were references to MS-13, but in much broader remarks about ALL illegal immigrants coming across the southern border. Had Trump referenced MS-13 in labeling them "animals," you would have a point Mr. Stephens, but Trump is incoherent most times; what he is talking about can easily be construed in half a dozen other ways.
Trump said, "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."
When the discussion was about illegal immigrants in general, not limited to MS-13, the term "animals" could very well be Trump's thinking out loud about all immigrants.
3
Speaking of buying into a false narrative, “the economic necessity of demographic growth” is a whopper
How about “the environmental necessity of an END to demographic growth “?
4
Really ??? You're worried about the media using Trump's words out of context? At this point, that is the least of our concerns.
Let's get back to the real problems - Trump's lies, ties to Russia, corruption, and refusal to do his job - including his to read and consider policy issues beyond what Fox News says. And then there's GOP spineless refusal to take action and save democracy. Focus on the forest, not the trees, for heaven's sake.
3
Read the transcript--his comments were NOT a taken out of context, as Trump completely muddied any context. He purposely conflates MS-13 with illegal immigrants. From all his talk of MS-13, you'd think they were lurking on every street corner. They're not! Yet he's obsessed with them. Why? To stir his xenophobic base. Nevermind that the majority of illegal immigrants are coming in through airports and are from Asia.
5
In the Democrats' blind zeal to criticize the President and make the President look bad, they put themselves in the position of defending the honor of MS-13 gang members.
I am sure the country agrees that we really should have more upright MS-13 gang members here contributing.
2
If the 'animals' remark was attributed to Barack Obama, it would never have been believed because he would never say such a thing, even in private. The problem with Trump is that he lies so often that his remark was entirely consistent and believable.
2
Google definition of animal: animal
ˈanɪm(ə)l/Submit
noun
1.
a living organism which feeds on organic matter, typically having specialized sense organs and nervous system and able to respond rapidly to stimuli.
Humans are animals. What most people are arguing about here assumes that other animal species are in some way horrible or capable of horrible acts. Well surprise, surprise, pretty much the human animal is the only one capable of these acts sometimes to the horror of everyone and sometimes to cheering and legitimizing crowds, and lawmakers.
"I also suspect that the president would be just as eager to deport Latin American immigrants and build a wall with Mexico if groups like MS-13 didn’t exist."
This is the crux of the matter. I think it may be the case that Donald Trump is in the White House because he dusted off the white nationalism of earlier figures in American history and made it cool, at least for all those group related emotions simmering under the surface all over white working class America. He jumped on the issue, showing no shame, and converted millions of erstwhile conservative Democrats and independents into loyal, rock solid supporters of whatever Donald Trump is selling.
So when the media jumped on in, they were being reflexive i.e. biased in their reference to Trump's proud naked white nationalism which he and his supporters would prefer we call "Americanism" or simply patriotism. Trump may be a patriot, I will grant him that. He is also a racist, no matter how many times his apologists disavow the term. He uses racism, especially the "dog whistle" kind to mobilize his base and it seems to work all the time. Not just some of the time, but always.
What to do about it? He needs to be defeat in November 2020 and removed from office. If we Americans can't do that, I think we need to reconsider our standing in the world. Are we really a great nation under Donald Trump? Honestly, I think that notion is absurd. We are not. We are something else.
3
The levels of self-deception and intellectual dishonesty demanded to defend the words and actions of this "asterisk" President are extreme. Hearing, reading and watching such easily-dismissed-by facts (remember them?) defenses daily is exhausting and deeply depressing. Had Trump's "animals" labeling been a one-off, perhaps it could have been explained away. That is not the case here. Tying yourself in knots today in an attempt to convince readers you know the target of Trump's "animals" reference was not pretty. Not at all.
2
I take exception to the inference that MS 13 is OUR fault because we deported people who then turbocharged the gangs. No one has any responsibility or accountability except Americans, who are supposed to solve everyone else’s problems. Of course we should welcome MS 13 members and protect them from ICE as it’s OUR fault these poor misunderstood people have turned to gang life. And if we stop the various flows of money, then the violence in their countries will increase, which again is OUR fault?
No, it’s not my fault, and I refuse to debate a negative term applied to a vicious, violent, immoral gang.
1
To call MS-13 animals is definitely unfair to animals. To call much of the Republican congress as being bigoted and in the firm grip of corruption is being unfair to mobsters, to call Trump a human being is an insult to human decency and to call some mainstream media as being "fake news" is being extremely generous to Fox News, Breitbart and WSJ.
3
Bret -- read what Trump said and what the sheriff said before he opened his mouth. Then read it again. It is far from conclusive that Trump was referring to MS-13. This column treats it as fact and it is not fact. What we have is the president's word that that's what he was referring to. I rest my case.
4
“... they would have taken the trouble to hear what Trump said in context, without invidious media interpretations.”
While I agree with your criticism in general, I must ask: “Did you say the same thing about Hillary’s “deplorables” remarks and how they were mischaracterized by the media in general, and the Fox/GOP/echo chamber 24/7 for months on end?
2
The depravity with which MS-13 conducts itself is staggering (human trafficking, kidnapping, rape, drugs, mutilation, dismemberment....), and has put whole communities on Long Island into living in a state of fear -they are monsters. It's irrelevant that MS-13 members were deported from LA and were "supercharged"- is the suggestion that removing them from the US is to blame, and therefore, we shouldn't deport? It's likewise misleading to suggest that Trump's immigration policies are "squalid". Aren't your points that: 1) No, Trump didn't say that - the media deliberately misrepresented his statement by taking it out of context; and 2) Calling MS-13 "animals" is unfair to animals, which don't engage in this type of brutality? It's fair to call out media which misrepresented with the goal of gaining more anti-Trump supporters, but you, Mr. Stephens, should be called out for doing the exact same thing - using this opportunity to further fuel the anything-Trump-is bad thinking.
1
I had the same concerns. It was immediately clear from the context what Trump meant when he said that, although he knows how to make imprecise statements that he can sell off to his supporters so that they hear what they want to hear.
Nonetheless, by baiting the media into REPEATEDLY publishing their own interpretations that he can fairly easily deny and turn around against the media, he continues to enlarge his status of a victim of fake news.
Come on, NYT, you should be smarter than this!
Mr. Stephens, it is never right to dismiss fellow humans as somehow less than human, as animals. You think you have the evidence to allow you to do so just as those who dehumanized slaves did. You haven't lived the lives of the people in M-13.
Further, you know that Donald Trump does think that lots of people are animals -- including the children caught up as rapists in the Central Park Jogger case. They were innocent, proven, yet Trump would have been happy to see them executed.
3
This column highlights a very real problem with the Trump-hating media: the intentional misinformation when it comes to Trump's statements. I am no fan of this president whose statements are often untrue, bombastic, counterproductive, and stupid, but the media does a disservice to the public and its own credibility when it lies about what is said.
Remember when the media (including this newspaper) repeatedly asserted that Trump said he believes Putin when the Russian president said there was no meddling in the 2016 election? That is another example of fake news which only feeds ammunition to the Tumpistas. Read Trump's statement carefully. He actually said that PUTIN really believes there was no meddling - Trump did NOT say he believed Putin.
But the liberal media - falling into the trap again and again - went with the story that Trump believes Putin. It is outrageous that media outlets that tout themselves as ethical and purveyors of straight news succumb to the same tactics employed by those it criticize.
1
Wait - so we have a President who lies, repeatedly, every day - who made up a false claim, for years, that President Obama was not born in the US - who called for the execution of young black men even after they were proven innocent - who called countries (countries that I work in and love) shitholes - and Mr. Stephens is lambasting the left for ONE MISTAKE?
Mr. Stephens - this is playing right into the hands of our Borderline-Personality-Disordered President. People like him try to twist reality to make everything someone else's problem, no matter what they, themselves, are doing. Here is a perfect example - he commits countless outrages every day, but the focus is on one mistake by the left?
No. I'm sorry. We have the right to be human, to be imperfect. Us being so does not make him right or us wrong. The record speaks for itself: Constant mendacity on one side, occasional errors, quickly corrected, on the other. The two sides are not equal, and we have nothing to apologize for or be embarrassed about.
1
“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.” Quote from Politico
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2018/may/17/context-dona...
He did refer to “people coming into the country” as “animals”. The discussion he participated in centered on MS13 but his response is a general one on undocumented immigrants and how he wants to deal with them.
Facts are facts and Trump has shown in his words and actions to be a xenophobic who stokes hate and fear to capitalize for his electoral benefit. People like this are called demagogues and are a danger to democracy. Trump is a bigger threat to the norms and social fabric of this country than any gang or criminal ever will be.
1
Watching the video of the guy ranting to the Spanish speaking people in the restaurant the other day, as many of us have seen, to me was the consequence of having a man, or at least the semblance of a man, in the white house who has fomented hatred and division in this country and have allowed people like the ranting Schlossberg to spew his hatred openly and without shame. Whether the presidential buffoon was referring to MS-13 or not, his open bigotry has opened a door that will take years, if ever, to close.
2
I think the main stream media once again blew this. They are primed to go on air or press with anything they can find that is anti-Trump. So the leaped on this hoping believing praying that he was attacking all immigrants. So it turns out it was MS-13, and now the left is trying to twist and turn themselves into pretzels so they can stand up with MS-13 against the evil Trump.
But this isn't the only fake news the Times and other MSM media put out re Trump or in support of any of the major pillars of the progressive church. Every day. And I mean every day, I find half truths in the Times if not out right lies of commission or omission,all designed to serve the progressive narrative. For example a few weeks ago the climate team published a somewhat misleading article on global warming and bear hibernation. Since comments weren't allowed I wrote them a detailed e-mail outlining for them where they perhaps should have thought things through a little and not accept as gospel everything that has been published in a peer reviewed journal (there are peer reviewed journals and then there are peer reviewed journals). No response from them.
And everyday columnists of this great paper blather away blasting at Trump with little to no evidence of misdeeds. It has simply been decided by the left that Trump must go, is unfit, etc. and anything (true or false) that serves that narrative is fine and fair game and real reporting, not like "Faux news." Really?
1
The famous historian, Will Durant once said that man is just another Chimpanzee with pants. A generality based upon the actions of mankind throughout recorded history. Historical records are certainly not kind to us in that regard.
His insistence in generalizing and stereotyping entire groups based on the very worst, real or imagined, within those groups is his MO. It's his 'broad brush' approach.
It puts him in synch with his base.... who heard his dog-whistle, 'they're animals'....
That's what Schumer, and so many others, responded to.... and for that I forgive them all. They all were right to condemn it and him. Why play his game?
2
If A=B and B=C then A=C. If A contains B but not all A is B then the first statement may or may not be true and A=C may or may not be true. But if B can never be C then this falls apart completely. If you define A,B and C with values, there are more possibilities and the simple statement becomes complex. If B acts like C, it is not the same thing as equivalence. If A does not contain all of B then there is no B=C. When you say B=C you mean A=C. QED
Right, Bret. Trump has never slandered any group or groups of people. And the media, print, TV or radio, has never made a mistake, leading people to comment on incorrect information. This has never happened before. Now it has and you and Trump supporters have absolute proof that the MSM is slanted and biased against Mr. Trump. It must be comforting to know you and others like you are right. Those of us who live in the real world understand that people make mistakes, say inarticulate things that can be misinterpreted or are just flat out wrong in their opinions. They apologize and everybody moves on. Mr. Trump is totally different in this respect. He daily says ignorant things, historically inaccurate things, lies, twists the facts, belittles people, maligns people, and yes, slanders them. Your other point that immigrants have brought the worst gangs to U.S. shores is correct. But we in America who were raised to be fair don't blame all Republicans for Nixon or Hoover or all gun owners for the killers who go to schools. You should be more careful when justifying Mr. Trump
1
Not to long ago the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and most Corporations were in favor of immigrants, legal or not. Because not only did immigrants work cheaper than their American counterparts they also did not belong to Labor Unions.
In addition, most times they were willing to do work that Americans would not do.
We are a country who was founded on Immigration. And a huge percentage of those Immigrants were from Ireland, Italy, Germany, Holland, France, China, Japan etc.,some legal, some not. The only jobs offered then were domestic for the women and harder labor for the men.
Unless of course they were well-educated or had brought wealth with them.
It now appears to be the same with the immigrants that we attract to our shores.
Same old story, different day.
I would bet that most Americans do not know if their ancestors came here legally or not.
MS 13 is entirely a different story and should not be lumped in with all of the other immigrants.
So far, one story by the AP has been proven misleading. It is to bad that they were not more careful. However, it does not measure up to Trump's lies or Fox News. We need to remember that.
4
Although I agree with Mr. Stephens's point that the mainstream media must be careful to avoid sloppy or misleading reporting so as not to give ammunition to the "fake news" crowd, I must say that after having read the transcript of the President's remarks I find the context ambiguous at best. Mr. Stephens believes the president was referring to MS-13 gang members when he spoke of "animals." Well, maybe, maybe not. What the president actually said was "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." The President's statement, which he made no attempt to restrict to gang members, followed a remark by a law-enforcement official who said he might not be able to tell ICE about an MS-13 member he knew about because of confusion about what's allowed by state vs. federal laws.
Now, I don't think the President actually believes all immigrants are animals. But I also think he doesn't mind at all if those in his base who do believe that, believe that he does too.
6
Thank you Mr. Stephens. It does not serve the resistance well to misrepresent Trump when he provides all the ammo we need all ready.
3
He was not responding to a question about MS-13. The question was about a sheriff feeling constrained because she couldn’t call ICE in unless a serious crime was committed (which is appropriate): in her followup, she mentioned that even if she thought someone was MS-13, she still couldn’t call ICE absent that serious crime.
So the question, in a followup, mentioned a hypothetically suspected MS-13 member who was not being accused of a serious crime. But MS-13 was in no way the subject of the question. That almost peripheral reference has been latched onto to create a false narrative about Fake News.
And you bought it.
19
I agree with the comments on Trump's use of the word "animal" in relation to any fellow human. But we must listen to the main message of this editorial: Our leaders and reputable publications must be more careful than others and not feed Trump "fake news" SOUND BITES.
2
Thank you for these thoughts. Trump and his supporters have created an incendiary climate. Caution is advised for all sides.
5
Conflicting views, discussions concerning immigration in America today?
I don't think there is any clarity at all, any intelligent approach to immigration, and the reason why is the particular situation the U.S. finds itself in at the moment, the numerous and conflicting factors which impinge on the problem of immigration. I will list some of the factors below.
People want some coherent concept of the U.S. in government/economic sense. The U.S. is a nation of millions difficult to organize, manage. The U.S. is increasingly made up of a diversity of races, ethnic groups, religions. Vast bureaucracy frustrates people increasingly. Modern life has corrosive effect on so many traditional cultural beliefs. Education separates people along talent, intellectual lines, rewarding discipline and thought while increasing an underclass of the less able. Some groups in the U.S. reproduce at higher rates than others which conflicts with other categorical demands within the U.S. Vast economic competition within the U.S. not to mention between nations puts terrible pressure on a population, forcing people within the U.S. to combine as best as possible with "like" members.
These factors with other factors (feel free to add your own), is leading gradually to a sad and ruthless, "who gets and does not get to be on the boat" type of discussion, much deeper than any simple immigration discussion. A question of national, corporate identity and membership in the country.
3
"Feel free to add your own": The environment, which suffers with every additional scintilla of "demographic growth."
A little science lesson. We are all part of the Kingdom Animalia. No matter what your if you can read this you are in the human species. Indescrimate vicious killing is a horrible thing. However, perhaps we could all use a lesson in speaking in a clear, concise manner. Perhaps that would help vicious rhetoric regardless of political affiliation. Continuous bashing solves nothing.
4
"The blunt truth is immigrants have brought crime to our shores for a very long time: Decades before MS-13, there were the Dead Rabbits (Irish), Flying Dragons (Chinese), Undzer Shtik (Jewish) and, of course, the Cosa Nostra." all leading up to the climax, the Trump Administration (Re publican). Granted this could be a case where the media is out ahead of itself. But how can that compare to the overwhelming evidence that the President of the United States is unfit for his position but the news media has to pretend he is. You may be right but forgive them if they don't, exactly, know where the battlefield is anymore. It's moved daily now.
6
Andrew Breitbart and James O' Keefe were and are infamous for editing videos obtained by posing as friendlies when their agenda was to secretly record leftie dirt, and when not enough dirt was recorded, edit the videos to look like there was. So which network started the fake ball rolling not showing the earlier part of the "animals" footage? Why did no one vet that accusation?
Will Brett admit that the left does not usually use fraudulent statements? Trump's been telling the world how much he hates blacks and immigrants for decades, by behavior when not spoken plainly. Too bad critics jumped him unfairly, but what other politician uses the word "animals" with such glee or ever other than Trump? If the critics got this specific instance wrong, they didn't get the criticism of his constant crude bigotry and hate wrong.
Outright lies are the right's province the huge majority of the time. The worst falsehood on the left is Robert Kennedy Jr's anti-vax megaphoning, that stinks to high heaven. Irrationality is not what the left is about, it's about reason, science, and the golden rule. Too bad somebody started that gossip train rolling.
I advise all of us to vet all information as thoroughly as possible. Stephens is right this will be used by the Trump lovers.
3
I live in Kennedy's district and voted for him in the past. I cannot bring myself to vote again for an opponent of vaccination. I'll probably leave the line blank this November.
Peter, you cannot live in RFK Jr.'s district because he doesn't have one! He's not in Congress. Joe is. And Joe is most definitely not anti-vax.
So your vote will go to the republican. Great.
The truth shall set us free. We must never forget that the only way to defeat facism is by being 100% honest with the information that we put out. Lies are easy which is why lies are the tools of dictators. We must be better than Trump. Don't let him win by pressing us to stoop to his level.
5
No one stooped to his level. Trump was referring to *all* undocumented immigrants as “animals”!
Read the transcript. Trump said this:
“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.”
Case closed. Stephens, who is often more rational, was being an apologist for Trump this time!
Google the conversation and you will realize that Trump did talk about undocumented immigrants when he dropped the “animal” remark.
"The blunt truth is that immigrants have brought crime to our shores for a very long time:"
Sure, so let's continue to let them in. Makes sense.
We've had mass shootings for years. So don't get worked up about.
Did you read the rest of the piece? Or even the next sentence in the piece? Or just go with the out-of-context "print bite" that fit your pre-existing prejudice? This comment is a perfect example of exactly what Mr. Stephens is writing about.
Wow, I just read the whole exchange. NOTHING was taken out of context. DJT was NOT referring to MS-13.
Brett, you are now the leading champion on normalizing this type of behavior. Please stop.
22
The President is not interested in accurate discourse. His inflammatory language is constructed to leave him an out if he is criticized. His aim is to have impact, a hit on everyone's emotions. His words are dog whistles for his base. His scattershot approach leaves him room to pounce on anyone as misconstruing his words. This might work except over his lifetime he has smeared the innocent, discriminated against Afro-Americans, indulged in shady business practices, and engaged in personal misconduct. I can understand Mr. Stephens's reluctance to believe someone in his tribe has stooped to sewer level, but the majority have noticed the Emperor is not wearing "an honest Republican cloth." He is nakedly vile.
8
While I agree with nearly all that you say, I doubt that measured words, understanding context and nuance, and playing straight with the populace will reach the depths of the supporters of the most lying, vicious, racist, no-nothing, president I can remember.
What is needed is better propaganda.
2
Let's put all this in context shall we, Bret. You chastise people for playing Trump's game. But following the rules of civil discourse, researching the facts rather than basing opinions on ignorance has gotten us where, Bret? To the point where the mud is flying all over the place. You are right. We should rise above the fray and use the one thing that separates us from "the animals",namely our superior intellect. Perhaps we need to start to recognize that there is little moral difference between gang members and those who have to "decided" to leave their intellect at the door when they try to address problems. For every day in America we are faced with people whose emotional responses to perceived threats results in making the wrong choices. It isn't them we need to worry about. That's why we have laws. It is the people who don't use their intellect and the facts in designing those laws that are the most dangerous.
2
President Trump has used this phrase in regards to MS-13 on a number of occasions. If you recall two sets of parents whose daughters were randomly murdered were invited to the state of the union. They kill for the sake of killing and have overrun El Salvador and Guatemala.
What is the difference between MS-13 and ISIS?
To equate these people with Irish Gangs of the Antebellum is insane. The Bowery Boys were clearly anti-Catholic and it wasn’t just the Irish. That is a far cry from open border policies intended to solidify political power, a power that is absolute and permanent.
2
It's always all about your class, and your politics.
Cosa Nostra, Dead Rabbits etc were basic reactions to finding oneself isolated in a system, already out of control, unless you can pay your way and buy into it.
It is our own hungry drug-consumption that feeds the gangs everywhere. And whose fault is that?
You forget to mention los Marielitos and the Cuban wave of immigration, the boat-lift, when Castro took advantage of our anti-Communist paranoia and emptied prisons, mental wards, whatever...cleaning up the streets at our blessing- those whom were welcomed with open arms- passing special laws to favor them, because they were escaping the horror of Communist tyranny.
And their descendants today in south Florida- the diaspora- are just like everybody else everywhere.
We're all immigrants from somewhere sometime.
Good and bad.
Australia and much of the U.S. were originally, intentionally, populated by criminals. And today, what's the difference?
"Papa was a rolling stone, wherever he laid his hat was his home, and when he died, all he left us was alone."
In whatever language, unfulfilled, basic human need, isolation, prejudice and violence raises a sour bread.
1
I’m very confused. Stephens is the same man who thinks shooting unarmed people approaching a border fence is just fine, right. So what’s his problem with what Trump said then? Is his point that Salvadorans are people, but Palestinians are animals? Seriously confusing.
3
Yes, those of us who oppose Trump must stand by a much higher standard than he demonstrates. Too often I have seen Democrats fall to Trump's low level of debate.
With regard to the crimes of MS-13 gang members, I encourage Times readers to look a little deeper. It is doing animals an injustice to compare them to these people, whose actions are depraved and horrific.
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/The-most-violen...
3
Calling any group 'animals' is wrong. The Russian mob in the US are every bit as vicious as MS-13.
Context does matter and if this gang was 'white', they would not be called animals. They would be ignored as Trump does with the Russian mob. They are a police matter.
Context does matter and Mr. Stephens ignored it.
9
Another nothingburger. He's called immigrants animals in the past, as well as rapists and other horrible things. NYT is putting this out to appear less biased when there are other, better ways to achieve this. (Though I will say that while I prefer bias in my media be minimal, I am suspicious of any media that is not critical of certain specific Trump policies, like the Muslim ban, restricting legal immigration by changing sponsorship policy, and removing important language from government websites, like "climate change" and "nation of immigrants." I feel like these are very obviously Bad Moves.)
1
Sorry, Bret, but these were President Trump's exact words. They were not taken "out of context".
THE PRESIDENT: 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.
https://www.vox.com/2018/5/18/17368716/trump-animals-immigrants-illegal
4
No! The entire statement and discussion please. There is a reason the AP and even the Times itself changed their original stories to clarify he was referring to MS 13.
Nice try, though.
I'm watching as this once great democracy of
ours continues to disintegrate before our eyes,
With trump at the helm spewing vicious lies and hatred from every pore of his fat body.
Alas he is only a symptom of the underlying moral
rot here. All this blather about immigrants as if they were the reason the average American suffers. Nothing could be further from the truth.
But trump and his " base" harp on it while healthcare costs rise, environment destroyed,
education and women's health derailed,
escalating tension in Middke East, no investing in infrastructure... the list goes on and on.
Oh yes and colluding with an enemy power to
interrupt the voting process.
1
Underlying this entire dispute seems to be some kind of assumption that it’s OK to call any person an animal
3
Clearly, you are unfamiliar with the actions of
MS 13.
Here here Bret! The fake news got one wrong. One....
Where's the article that voices the truth about the hate filled comments and lies trump and his gang spew every day. Where's the article that points out that our President is driving us closer to those that are our enemy nations and further from those that are our friends. Where's the article about how it's terrible that we now have a completely bought and paid for "quid pro quo" government. You know the list and it doesn’t end there. If you're going to knock the fake media and, by silence, defend the fading morality and hatred that has taken over our nation, you're going to have to do better than this column.
2
Schumer and Pelosi, thank you for defending MS-13. Every day I think there is nothing more that the Dems, liberals and far-leftists can say or do to get Trump re-elected and then I find out I was wrong!
I feel sorry for the Dems and liberals who disagree with their party on some issues, this being one of them, from the comments I have read. Speak up to your leaders. Oh, wait, don’t. I want Trump to be re-elected.
2
If you can seriously say that Schumer and Pelosi defended MS -13 you are not interested in honest dialogue, only winning some partisan game. Only it's not a game and treating it as such is poisoning our country!
1
Before you re-elect a demagogue, please inform yourself
MS13 is indeed a heinous criminal gang only it happens to be indigenous to the USA. Since immigrants, in aggregate, are more law-abiding than citizens born in the USA, the administration should seek to increase immigration if the goal is to reduce overall crime rates.
2
When virtually nothing Donald Trump says or tweets has substance or legitimacy or even the slightest sense of thoughtfulness, it's not unreasonable to simply dismiss everything he says as a lie or deception. Come on, he's the one who set the bar so low, not us.
So sorry Bret (and all of you Trump apologists). You have no right to expect that anyone should believe anything Trump says and we have no obligation to give him the benefit of the doubt. You and I and everyone else know that he thinks everyone who isn't white is an animal.
Just recently, one of my conservative colleagues yammered on about what a liar Pres. Obama was when he said "you can keep your current doctor." Funny how some people can't forget this one unfortunate declaration by the last president, but, it seems ok to give Trump a pass. Am I missing something?
1
I am afraid that I put a previous post in without really reading all the facts . I have since read the following
"THE PRESIDENT: 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.
It’s not clear whom the president was referring to — whether he was simply picking up on Sheriff Mims’s reference to MS-13 gang members or referring to deportees more broadly. But he didn’t exactly bend over backward to specify that not all immigrants deported by this administration are “animals.”
We have a president who has made it clear what he feels about immigrants. Knowing this man's history, and attitude towards immigrants, I wish I could withdraw my previos post.
3
I think Bret misses the point. Trump says outrageous things in ways that resonate with his base. If he includes a qualifier that mitigates the outrage, he knows they don't hear it, but it gives him an out.
In this case, he got a two-fer. Fake News!
The base falls for it every time. They "know" a lot of people are out to "get" Trump. Bret and other opinionaters should not be so gullible.
2
You are reaching. The issue is not about Trump's "animal" remark, but how virtually all of the left leaning media chose to interpret it.
When the agencies which are responsible for reporting the news willfully distort that reporting to serve an agenda ( no matter how righteous ) - their credibility on ALL reporting suffers. This does in fact play into the hands of Trump's supporters, and rightly so.
Mr. Stephens is a writer of some note. Logic is his wheelhouse. He writes a topic sentence, supports it, completes the thought, calls that a paragraph. And does it again, until he's written a coherent piece.
Donald Trump's wheelhouse is free association. If his life depended on it, he couldn't write a logical piece. He starts to make a point, digresses, then digresses from his digression. He couldn't find his way home with a flashlight.
Mr. Stephens knows very well what happens when leaders divide humanity into Us and The Others. And yet he gives Trump the benefit of every doubt here. His lens in this column is very fine. He goes close-up on a leaf. Meanwhile the forest is burning.
5
Bent over backwards to make this complaint. Trump's a bigot period. What's wrong with pointing it out?
1
If he is misquoted, he brought it on himself. Perhaps you haven't noticed, but Trump routinely says bigoted and untruthful things about different individuals and/or groups. If you want to be on the good side of your old pals in the Trump camp, just come out and say so, Bret. We'll still read what you have to say -- unlike some people you know.
2
The issue isn't that the alleged liberal media is being baited and falling for it. That is another step in the wrong direction.
The issue is why is there such a lowlife in the White House? This man demeans the office and our country every time he tweets or opens his mouth. The office was once held in high enough regard that someone elected was expected to rise to the office, its norms and its demands. Trump makes a great case for cluelessness.
We should not be baited. Opponents, like the office, should be treated wirh dignity. What Trump has elevated is the language of frustration: the heartless, uninformed prejudices once whispered out of sight are now "elevated" to public utterances. It is now OK to be ogres because we are a tribe of angry, frustrated and fearful people. It is childish self-indulgence. It is NOT presidential.
Trump is the master of implication, as was Reagan. He uses codified language with technical deniability that right-wingers can look at each other knowingly over. When all you talk about when the topic is Spanish speaking immigrants is murder and rape, animals and criminals, completely ignoring their contributions, hard work and family values, you get your point across loud and clear. They are not us. Us versus "them" is not a policy to be proud of and ignores the very meaning of our national motto "out of many one".
We know perfectly well what he means and how he divides us. And you do too Bret. His mouth belongs on a street corner in Queens.
2
The problem is that thoughtful in depth parsing of words makes ineffective political communication. By calling M-13 animals, Trump intentionally communicates that immigrants are animals. Your column supports his case.
2
To the Media,
There are a ridiculous number of ACCURATE snippets daily to feed the masses from all of the Trump food groups - lies, insults, sexism, racism, environmental destruction, shariah Christianity, gun sales. No need to make stuff up - it's a media Thanksgiving 3 times a day every year in the Trump administration.
1
No human being should be called an animal, even if they are members of MS-13. They are people who have been driven by desperation to take the paths they take.
It's not clear at all that Trump was referring only to MS-13. It's a plausible claim, but it misses what for me is the main issue: the fact that he used the term to describe human beings, specifically human beings of color. I have never heard him use such language to describe (for example) murderous white supremacists like the Charleston shooter or the Charlottesville driver.
1
Just so. Let him hang himself legitimately as he's been doing, there's no use our picking up his exaggeration as a tool of defense.
We need to stay tethered to *this* reality in the face of another being expertly spun. We cannot become just another group of spinners ourselves.
Are you saying that the man who pours the gasoline actually didn’t light the match? What a stretch!
3
Trump's words are carefully parsed to appeal to his base, in this case white supremacists.
That you appear to be walking back his immigration policies I assume is to get the votes of immigrants.
It's all about November.
2
Time to Vote Out the golden boy come 2019 when he is up for re election, If one of his many scandals doesn't harm him enough, then all those democrats that didn't vote for hillary can at least vote against him this go around.
But that the USA seems doomed to fail as the Empire that once was, is rite large on the borders as they get ready to oust the kids that have made lives here and are all getting swept out due to the Trumped up fears.
Let’s be honest here.
Most people nowadays click to share a sensational news story on a social network without first even reading the story, much less doing any research to see if there is any truth behind it. This is why Trump got elected in the first place. Enough people identified with the nationalist sentiment he evoked, and didn’t care in the slightest that he lied and cheated his way through life, and now seems to be running a reality show from the White House.
So some have now chosen to fight Trump with Trumpian methods. Grab a sensational headline – even if it is not the whole story. React quickly – even if not accurately – before the story runs away from you. Exaggerate to make a point – at least you will get heard. Be crude and outrageous – at least you will provoke a reaction.
Trump has no idea what he is saying, what the facts are, or what he said yesterday. Half of the time he is making stuff up as he speaks. The only reason he gets away with it because he obfuscates, blames, exaggerates, lies – and switches topics frequently enough that no-one remembers what happened to yesterday’s topic.
In the current era, thoughtful people like yourself will find their reflective analysis drowned by a bigger cesspool of uninformed sentiment. By the time actual facts have emerged, most people have already reacted and moved on.
The right side of the political spectrum does not own the rights to passionate exaggerations. Leave some of it to the left, in peace.
1
This columnist is so horribly misguided I try very hard not to read him, but curiosity got the better of me this time, and it's even clearer now that he gets off being a kind of scold just for the sake of his own partisanship. This president doesn't exist in a vacuum and his comments are part of a larger and completely disreputable project of smearing all immigrants, including refugees, from places where people are something other than Caucasian. Mr. Stephens slyly acknowledges the president's prodigious shortcomings while his ruler smacks the knuckles of those he wishes to provoke. It's a pointless exercise and the space he takes up in this newspaper could be put to such better use. Smug we don't need.
2
OK. I get it. On the lie meter the score is Media 1 Trump 20,000.
I suppose this means that Trump wins.
Like in the popular vote.
2
That this debate even qualifies as a relevant discussion in the NYTimes is sad beyond description. Why is it not possible that out of a population of over 350,000,000 (yes I know not all of them qualify but bear with me), we cannot find 1 decent human being to represent the United States with the dignity and grace that the Office deserves. I was raised on stories of George Washington’s cherry tree, Abraham Lincoln’s courage and depth of soul and Harry Truman’s broad shoulders of responsibility. We have allowed this oaf to disgrace not just the office of the President, but the entire history of brave, dedicated and honest Americans who have built this country. Where are the articles covering this?
2
And here it is: the take nobody wanted or needed.
The problem with this issue is bigger than him calling MS 13 people animals. His true feelings about immigrants -- his despicable, clear and obvious racism -- has been documented for many years.
So even if you were to give him a Mulligan on this one -- and that is definitely iffy -- his history of lies, racism and overall classless, graceless bad behavior has left its mark on all of us. There's no need to give him the benefit of the doubt because there is none. We all know what he is.
1
This column assumes that the current occupant of 1600 doesn’t deliberately use value accusations against entire groups that leave him sufficient “wiggle room” to claim that he was misinterpreted. Meanwhile, his rabid, far-right supporters hear the dog whistle, which was his intent all along.
326
Stephens does not care that Trump's supporters hear "animals"as a reference to all immigrants, and approve. Nor does Stephens wish to consider the meaning of Trump's inaugural campaign speech. His column is at bottom about trashing democrats.
30
Do you really believe that half the country are "rabid, far right supporters" ? If so, you have a problem because that many rabid far right supporters will be very hard to overcome. I'm guessing the number of rabid far right supporters is probably in the low thousands, the very vast majority are simple working folks tired of the Democrats identity politics and nonsense, and sick of the Clintons. If you look at the election results from the Obama wins in 2008 and 2012, you'll find that many counties Trump won in 2016 Obama won in 2008 and 2012, thus those rapid far right supporters of Trump, well...a lot of them voted for Obama....Maybe, just M A Y B E, the Dems ran a tremendously HORRIBLE candidate in 2016 ? Do you think?
6
I'm sorry Bret, I don't buy your context argument. The previous speaker mentioned one "suspected" MS-13 member, and not being able to tell ICE about him. If the sheriff actually had evidence against that person, they could have arrested them. Our Dear Leader then said " 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. " So, am I to believe everyone trying to come into the country are MS-13, and everyone being deported are also MS-13.
It's obvious to me, taking into account all of his previous coments about illegal immigrants, that he was speaking about all immigrants.
2
Very balanced. As an independent Trump supporter I agree with every word, and if liberals would think like this and stop talking like any restrictions on immigration are unreasonable and based on bigotry, I'm sure they could work out a deal with Trump. It's not really that important to most people, but just a marker for all the issues out there about which liberals think only they have the correct perspective.
3
Trying to think of ways to defend this president's rhetoric must be a very difficult job. Good effort!
11
Except in this case he's is actually right. The point of this article is that the anti-Trump groups did a very good job in actually suppporting Trump with their misguided attacks.
Watching as all these Americans (e.g. in the NYT comments section) tie themselves in knots in attempts to defend MS-13 as "human beings" is just bizarre. Trump has them right where he wants them. And it's their fault this time.
1
Though I have to say, the more I learn about people, the more I think being called an animal is a compliment.
5
"Those who despise him for his deceits should endeavor to give no impression of being deceitful in turn."
Sure, why debase yourself. As Shaw said "I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it."
Still we need to remember that the primary strategy of the Trump candidacy, born on an obvious birther lie, was to indulge the fear and hatred of millions Americans who in turn cheered an openly racist, nativist, hate-filled man all the way into the White House. Facts and logic and good will, have nothing to do with it.
So, at least, let's acknowledge that there are very few in the 40%+ of Americans who approve of Trump's presidency who will make the effort to distinguish between a relatively rare misrepresentation by the responsible media and the constant flow of obvious lies emanating from the White House.
So why bother getting it right? People of good will can have honest disagreements about immigration policies. Tradeoffs are complex and consensus on priorities is elusive . Democrats, Never Trumpers, independents, have a lot to discuss and facts and good reporting matter. Just don't expect Trump supporters to care. They are off playing in the mud.
8
I read the fawn fest which passed as a speech and conversation with California officials at the White House roundtable and if the media interpretation was "invidious" the word needs to be redefined.
The attendees were falling all over each other and engaging in mutual adoration that simply rehashed boiler plate talking points. To think otherwise is to deny any semblance of honest reportage.
The Democrats are no better in their efforts to obfuscate our government's role which has become the quickest way to line the pockets of the few by emptying those of the many.
Our government is no more polarized than any of those who take their seats at any political gathering. They are all poseurs and touting one as better than the other is playing their game. We the people are up the creek and none of the professionals on either side of the aisle give a hoot.
I've seen better productions presented on my kids middle school stage. These guys are a joke.
A tough and fair criticism, Mr Stephens, though it took me time to get there. I was about to characterize a turn in your thinking, and blast off and ill thought letter.
Then I thought I'm doing it myself - the ubiquitous knee jerk reaction to perceived assaults against my ideological thinking. The dynamic behind Fake News.
So I read the whole piece. You're right.
Trump employs narcissist constructs on multiple levels, his brilliance actually, adeptly playing people against one another and for his best interests. All's his foes do is take the bait, like every GOP 2016 presidential candidate did, and where does that get them. Look at his administration. It's "The Apprentice", with astronomically higher stakes.
What do you do? Fighting fire with fire is not the way, because in this framework, whoever starts the first fire usually wins. That's how deceit works.
I'm not sure what will work with Trump, but I might start by looking at Robert Mueller. He thinks long and hard, then rises above.
That's what we need to do.
4
Although I agree with Mr. Stephens that context is everything, I disagree when arguing for subtlety in interpreting Donald Trump's statements. He has repeatedly denigrated immigrants in numerous comments, such as the infamous claim that they are 'bringing drugs...bringing crime...they're rapists...' (though some, he assumes, 'are good people'). Trump is not one for subtlety, and the collection of hand-picked anti-immigrant folks in the meeting with him were also not exactly quiet about their distaste for immigrants in general. Couching the liberal argument with the initial admission that "Yes, historically many immigrants have been criminals" doesn't achieve anything: it certainly doesn't help those who are attempting to enter the country desperate for amnesty -- those trying to escape the very type of "animals" being denigrated by Trump. Subtle, nuanced thinking (an Obama specialty) is not exactly Trump's forte.
4
Republican and Democrat politicians alike have for decades engaged in what has become a circular firing squad on the issue of illegal/undocumented immigration. The NYT has published hundreds of articles and op-eds and clearly Americans have taken sides. Yet, I don't believe I've ever read one piece on how we fix the problem. Or, am I to assume America has no immigration problem that needs fixing? This is not a rhetorical question. It is one for which fair-minded American should want and demand an answer. Because when we once again assemble in this circle and begin firing away (Donald Trump included), we move no closer to finding solutions.
1
Given Trump's history, is it any wonder observers might think the worse when he compares immigrants to animals. Context, in the broader sense, means something, doesn't it? I could list many, many instances of Trump's insulting statements towards the vulnerable. But,why? Mr. Stephens, you know them already. And yet you jump to defend this monstrosity. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.
4
As several other commentators have noted, both Mr. Stephens and President Trump are morally incorrect to label immigrant gang members as animals. They are not. They are human beings, perhaps engaging in atrocious behavior, but still innately human and inherently worthy of respect as a person. No matter how terrible they have acted, religious teaches us that they were made in the image of God, just as others of us were as well. And lest Mr. Stephens accuse me of being a hugger, I am not. I do however, believe in I/Thou relationships as described by Martin Buber.
2
There is no doubt that the media has been the source of "fake news" on occasion. Sometimes they just don't get it right. But considering the whole of what the press says and prints, they do a remarkable job of being honest and delivering facts to the American people. On the other hand, perhaps the most outstanding characteristic of Trump is his dishonesty. He says and tweets whatever comes to mind and continually spews out fake news. My fear is that the Trump and Guiliani war on Mueller and his investigation, based on lies and fake news, will essentially go unchallenged by the more honest people in and out of government. That could be a disaster for all of us.
7
I agree with Mr. Stephens. Taking Trump’s rhetoric out of context inflames the base but turns off the centrists and independents. Worse: perpetual outrage blurs the difference between an unfortunate statement and a pernicious policy. Trying to decrease legal immigration; setting up hurdles for people who escape dictatorships like Iran and Venezuela; making it hard for tourists and professionals to visit and/or work in the States are all terrible policy moves. Preventing illegal immigration and deporting or arresting violent criminals are not. And calling gang members “animals” may not be a very imaginative insult but otherwise I don’t see what is objectionable about it. And incidentally, I am an immigrant.
It is best that we do not play Trump’s game. He may have been misquoted but that doesn’t make all news or the majority of news designatable as fake news. Getting every story 100% correct would be an impossible standard. The news media does the correct thing when it retracts and corrects what it reports in a timely manner.
As much as Trump misinforms and lies, we can not allow him to become the sole source of our information. Dictatorships try to control the news media for their purposes. The news media needs to remain a check on this administration as it has been on all previous administrations. Other administrations have been misquoted but they did not try to undermine the totality of the news media. Trump’s goal is to be the victim while designating his targets for victimization and he trys to tar all those that are not within his in group with his generalizations and prejudices. The news media cannot shirk from its duty to deliver the best information that it can.
2
Donald Trump often chooses not to be precise when making public pronouncements. He does this so he can send dog whistles to his base and then deny doing so after he’s called out on it. He did it during the campaign (suggesting that “Second Amendment people” could stop Hillary Clinton’s agenda, for example) and he’s doing it as president.
The best way for Trump not to be misinterpreted would be for him to choose to speak clearly and coherently. That’s never going to happen.
7
What tendentious nonsense. Trump made the comments in exactly the way they could be construed (as applying to all immigrants, i.e. a racist dog whistle). All you have to do is listen to the recording. He then provides cover by issuing a "clarification" that he was referring to MS-13, putting critics on the defensive as defending MS-13.
It's his method by which: 1) he plays to the blood hatreds in his base; then 2) he gets them off the hook by a sleight of hand; while 3) keeping him in the media spotlight that a) diverts us from bigger issues and b) generates enough controversy to dominate the news cycle yet again. It is a sickening formula that plays us all for suckers.
5
Mr. Stephens, if your man would simply learn how to speak in clear and coherent sentences and paragraphs, he could prevent a lot of this.
However, I do not believe that he ever could, or that he even wants to. It's hard to hold a president to things he's said when no one is able to figure what that is, or when his minions start up the familiar "Well, what the president MEANT to say is . . ." lies and obfuscations.
4
This piece is more deceitful than usual for Stephens. He finds a neat way to blame Trump critics for Trumpian garbage. He has drifted into a long disquisition on ethnic crime rings, certainly an instructive side piece, but not all that useful since it leaves out that most crime is small actors with no organization or long term plans. But that's just a misunderstanding of data, like Trump, to talk only about the bits that interest him.
What he intentionally leaves off the table is the coarseness Trump has brought to our public discourse. The fact that we are having a discussion about whether Trump was accurately quoted when he used the term 'animals' to describe certain immigrants is a pretty low point. That he used it at all is the issue and that we, Stephens, finds it appropriate if used correctly for MS-13 suggests we've lost any perspective and much of our humanity. Once some group, small or large, of people are animals and have open season declared on them things are out of control. From here to the Philippine murder riot is a very short journey.
13
I'm grateful to Bret Stephens for this intelligent analysis. Hatred of Donald Trump is not a political philosophy.
2
I append below the pertinent excerpt. Is Mr. Trump talking about gang members or is he talking about all immigrants? If this excerpt were all we had, one could make the case that we don't know whom Trump is calling "animals." That is not all we have. Moreover, such ambiguity is typical for Trump who has trafficked time and again in racist innuendo. There is no reason to give him the benefit of the doubt. Be skeptical and smart, Bret, despite Trump.
"SHERIFF MIMS: Thank you. There could be an MS-13 member I know about — if they don’t reach a certain threshold, I cannot tell ICE about it.
THE PRESIDENT: 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."
2
It would be wise for the NYT editors and BOD to read this column by Mr Stephens. He is certainly much more accurate and honest than the indignant hand wringing we got yesterday wrt their commentary. MS13 are animals and no amount of spluttering can change that.
Stephens is also the first commentator to underscore the economic, social and strategic importance of Latin America to the United States. He's completely right and its beyond reason that our elected officials don't get it.
More to the point, Trump is a demagogue and he is adept at riling both progressives and his core neo facist supporters. He doesn't need editorial support like yesterday's to validate his claims of "false news."
Unfortunately, Mr Stephens is wrong or naive in his comment that it will take "sensible Democrats and sane Republicans to repel and defeat the president’s demagoguery." The current state of the republican party excommunicated sane persons from its ranks.
People like Mr Stephens may claim republican party status, but they really are independents and hence occupy a political no-man's land. Ironically, they (and some of "we") are more in tune with more Americans on many (certainly not all) issues than the demagogues, but they (we) are politically impotent.
As Howard Beale once said, "woe is us."
1
This loathsome individual who occupies the white house has given enough reasons to the sane people making up this country to despise him. His every action is contrary to the well being of this nation. The press however does a tremendous disservice by deliberately misconstruing his statement by implying that he was referring to all immigrants.
There is absolutely no benefit to creating falsehoods regarding this man. It was much better when the press was completely honest, so that the Trump supporters could not have a rallying point against the press. It was not the decent thing for Trump to say, but then again we could never accuse Trump of being overly decent anyway. The press could have attacked him for using the term "animals' in describing MS-13, and would not have to defend an erroneous statement, and worse have people ponder over the complete legitimacy of the press in reprting on Donald.
The press has stupidly given Trump supporters ammunition.
It's as if Mr Trump is a weird oracle, and the learned spend endless hours trying to decipher the message he wants to convey. In truth, he has no idea what he's talking about most of the time. He just spouts whatever ignorant babble that comes into his head and everybody jumps around with some interpretation or defense of his ignorance. Pretty soon the media is going to understand that there is no intended message except Trump's desire to see himself on TV or in the newspaper. Perhaps the media might begin to understand and report Trump's utterances as the half-baked prejudices of an ignorant man and name them as such. At the most, one recognizes that these utterances are not benign. His is a campaign of dehumanizing people who are not part of his family. Period. There is no other context other than that for understanding Trump's gibberish and ignorant utterances. It is dangerous to do otherwise.
1
Why wasn't "undocumented" or "illegal" added in front of "immigrants", Mr Stephens?
He wrote: "I also suspect that the president would be just as eager to deport Latin American immigrants and build a wall with Mexico if groups like MS-13 didn’t exist."
Really? All of that set-up for the Democrats' admonishment: "It’s a gift to Trump"; and then Mr Stephens portrays Trump's eagerness to deport - as applicable to EVERY CATEGORY of Latin American immigrant.
What is Mr Stephens implying about Mr Trump's racial bias? ... Seems negative and "a gift to Trump".
1
We are also told that this whole issue of illegal immigration is all about *illegal* immigration; immigrants who come here legally are fine. That’s what many of Trump’s supporters tell me. And yet the administration has taken steps to cut back legal immigration as well. Especially from “—-hole” countries, a term that seems harder to put into the kind of context Mr. Stephens and others are demanding. Must we pretend that these distinctions matter to Trump? The man is xenophobic. It doesn’t really matter if the immigrant is a gang member. In fact, if there is no evidence that an immigrant is in a gang, ICE agents will just fabricate evidence to get them deported anyway, as a court just ruled in the case of the young DACA recipient from Seattle. Stop the pretense already.
2
Well, it was animals with Trump, deplorables with Hillary. Both remarks were taken out of context, but in the case of Trump given how he talked about Mexican rapists and murderers in the past it is understandable that people reading those words assumed the worst.
31
When someone is so inarticulate that he or she can’t form complete sentences or thoughts, littered with disconnected pronouns, then the resulting ambiguity can be freely manipulated.
I find it incredible that his supporters constantly say that it’s not his words we should listen to but understand his thoughts and concepts. So once again, free association provides whatever interpretation one wants.
83
Amen, and amen. I might be a flaming liberal, but for the most part, I try to base my opinions on actual facts. I often disagree with Bret Stephens, but I always read him. The immigration discussion (like the gun discussion) has veered so far from the course of reality in the last few years (c.f. the"gang of 8", remember?) that most discourse on the subject is completely irrational. Immigration has made us great. Period. We need the labor, we need the new ideas, and we need to give shelter to the desperate who have no place else to turn.
29
Please stop conflating illegal and legal immigration. We have zero need for people who break our immigration laws.
We also have zero need for more unskilled laborers. You in Oakland should know this better than anyone.
There are tens of thousands of unemployed young African-American men in your hometown, along with many times that number whose wages are depressed thanks to this foolish policy of bring in many millions of people with no skills or education.
Stop swamping the low end labor market with unskilled immigrants, create some tightness in that market, and we will finally see low-end workers' wages and incomes start to rise for the first time in over 20 years.
1
The MSM has turned into the opposition. The MSM has taken on an advocacy role and apparently abolished its actual role of reporting news, at least when it comes to reporting anything that has to do with Trump. It has taken on tactics that are used by political campaigns - it resembles dirty trick political TV commercials sponsored by one political party or the other, that give a very distorted account of opponents in order to disingenuously sway voters against the opponent. Most people do not like such negative political TV commercials, and tune them out as best as possible.
It is more than disappointing to see the MSM turning into a bad political commercial when Americans deserve a non-biased source of fact-checked news.
And most people cannot understand why politicians from the opposition party come to the defense of vicious MS-13 gang members, and declaring sanctuary cities and states, instead of making them face justice or else deportation. It is a losing tactic to come to the defense of MS-13.
9
Bret, I hope your rational and pragmatic response doesn’t fall on deaf ears. Shortly after the election, a couple of anti-Muslim hate crimes made national news, validating liberals’ fears and provoking outrage. Unreported in left and left-leaning press was that the alleged hate crimes were totally fabricated by the alleged victims. Rightwing media, however, was all over it.
I started approaching incendiary stories with a healthy dose of skepticism. What I’ve found is that many liberals don’t realize how often stuff like this happens. It’s wrong to equate it with the “fake news” on the right; there’s simply no equivalent to Pizzagate or Seth Rich conspiracy theories on the left. It is, however, still enough for Trump apologists to reflexively dismiss liberal outrage. We need to be much more cautious before we react if we ever hope to persuade them.
7
Based on the tiny interest in this OpEd, it's clear that Trump has changed the threshold for concern about accurate reporting to the detriment of us all.
17
Obviously Chuck Schumer is sympathetic toward MS-13. Anyone who does not repudiate him is not a decent person.
17
I wish Bret would read up on the rise of Hitler and the dehumanization that occurred and became accepted widely in Germany. Trump's assaults on decency and the amplification and reinforcement of his lies by Fox and the alt-right are objectifying people and making government-sanctioned brutality--like the separation of children from their parents and the demonization of anyone who is not white--acceptable and bringing us closer to the collapse of our democracy. It's that serious.
127
However you don’t need to tell out of context stupidity to discredit Trump, just accurately report the truth. That is enough in itself to show what a fool he is.
3
Agree that treating Trump’s habitual word salads and artful ambiguities as definitive statements can end up giving Trump undeserved political gifts. Better for media to point out that there is a persistent bias and pattern in what he says and that Trump statement x, y, or z seems to fit with his decades-long bias against blacks, Hispanics, and immigrants. Having said that, I listened to the full context several times—and did not hear the innocent or exculpatory context you heard. Further, MS-13, along with other criminal mobs and gangs, are brutal and merciless, but very human. When we as a society execute criminals, we are putting humans to death. Pretending groups full of bad people are not full of humans may be a political winner, but by excusing Trump’s eliminationist rhetoric you have taken a morally ugly path and cheapened yourself today in this column.
28
Well argued, and excellent use of the word "exculpatory." It would be nice if all comments were as well-written and reasoned as yours.
1
calling anyone an animal is just not right. It is rude and does not respect the human condition, no matter what you think of the other person/people or what you think they did. Walk a mile in their shoes
8
Hopefully those shoes take them right back to where they came from!
From the Washington Post: “Trump’s comment about “animals” came in response to a concern Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims expressed about the difficulty in reporting suspected MS-13 gang members to U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement.
“We have people coming into the country — or trying to come in, 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,” the president said. “These aren’t people. These are animals.””
Viewed in context of Tweeter-in-Chief’s prior ventings about rapists and criminals pouring over the border (but not from Canada) this parsing seems just silly. We all know what he meant (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). So do his supporters and enablers in the Trumpist Party.
16
do donaid or bret know that MS-13 was born and raised in LA? i could be more at home with his excuses and remarks if i thought he knew that this was a gang started by immigrants from el salvador as a reaction to violent conditions in the second largest city in the US. once again the right wing dehumanizes for fun and profit.... and in this case column inches.
8
I suggest that Bret Stephens read today's NYT fact check by Linda Qi. Trump was ranting against "sanctuary cities" that do not offer sanctuary for MS-13 members (some of whom are US citizens as Ms Qiu notes--or anyone convicted of a serious crime). Migrants or refugees may be arrested in sanctuary cities for serious crimes, but not by the ICE. Once conviceted, the ICE can deport them. But El Salvador and M-13 stirs a memory: the US intervened in a civil war there, on the side of the right wing of course, and that side created a society many desperate souls long to escape (so too in Colombia).
41
If Trump refers to MS-13 members to animals for their deeds, why does he not refer to mass shooters such as the October 2017 LV shooter or the February 2018 Parklands shooter (sorry, I refuse to name them) as such? What makes a mass murderer different from a violent gang member? Where do you draw the line?
Regardless of whether he intended to limit his comment to MS-13 gang members or whether it was yet another dog whistle covering immigrants generally is no longer relevant: Trump's language has consistently been to dehumanise immigrants from poor countries, people of colour and non-Christians - and is an expression of his racism and bigotry. It does not have much to do for an alleged distaste for violent crime on his part. If that were the issue, he would be pushing for gun control legislation and he would not be defunding domestic violence programs.
144
Pease. Trump talks about MS-13 coming across the border to tar all immigrants - never mind that MS-13 is a product of US domestic and foreign policy. Nevemind that people come across the border to escape the Bandas that our policy created. Trump has no idea what he is talking about and talks only to give vent to his own racism. To claim he didn’t mean to refer to immigrants generally as animals is disengenious at best.
19
Mr. Stephens misses the broader point, which is that Trump’s lying and demagoguery on immigration - and on many other issues - makes it very plausible that he actually was describing all illegal immigrants as “animals.” Though that may not have been his intent this time, he has made such comments in the past. So, while there may have been a reporting error regarding this particular utterance, the broader truth still stands.
3
The point of the “news” is no longer to inform, or even persuade. It is to inflame.
7
Has Trump ever cared about context in criticizing others? Does he do nuance, ambiguity, grey areas? No. Everything is black and white, no room for discussion, no other points of view. That’s how he lives.
And those who live by the sword, die by the sword.
8
I heard him say that all those who cross illegally are animals. He didn't limit the insult to any particular criminal gang.
14
There are many violent gangs in America, some with far more violent records than MS-13, yet because the idea of wanton criminals tearing through our borders plays to the base, he chooses to sensationalize them (MS-13).
The reality is that if he and his administration were serious about addressing the gang problem, international and domestic, he would have also addressed some of the heinous murders committed by off shoots of the white nationalist movement such as the Klan, Skinheads, and other groups under observation by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Those are the people we should be worried about.
7
I agree that the media serves no one when they do not provide all the information.
However, while it has been a long time since I left my religious beliefs, I am having trouble remembering where Jesus called the lowest among us animals.
14
A president's words must be spoken carefully and thoughtfully due to the significant impact that they can have. This president is neither careful or thoughtful with anything that comes out of his mouth or whatever he slaps up on his Twitter feed.
It is absolutely unacceptable that any US President refer to any group of fellow human beings as "animals" no matter if they are gang members, white supremacists or illegal immigrants. We are all God's children and deserve a basic level of humanity no matter how far from the path we have fallen. So Mr. Stephens, please spare me the concern trolling.
309
What word should be used to describe human beings who forsake human values? Whether it's MS-13 or Donald Trump himself, vibrant words that differentiate people who behave decently from those who do not help us sort through clutter and understand values and perspective.
Dehumanized MS-13 gang members are animals. On many issues our still human but extremely unpleasant President and his supporters display animal values.
9
Animals? Rapists? Build a wall at taxpayers' expense? Such a waste that we have a billionaire president that never invested into his own educational awareness to attained a higher degree that the one he bought. (Think Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield.)
Well, we're stuck with him for now. I'm tired of his antics and his quirky perception of national and world views. I guess the need for secrecy in the WH is that there is really nothing to hide. No long range plans, no long range research - just a zest to undo everything Obama has done.
31
For those who say MS-13 members shouldn't be called "animals," I am pretty certain you wouldn't invite them to move into your homes, baby-sit or date your children, or join your workplaces and country clubs.
12
Why is it that Trump can lie, cast slurs, deceive, and denigrate at will—3,000+ lies and counting!?!—but when in the midst of that mendacious maelstrom, should someone make a slight mistake as to what he said; well, oh my goodness, isn't that a terrible thing to do to the president?
The media only needs to be slightly off-base before the hand-wringing and tut-tutting begins.
Meanwhile, the president hasn't apologized for any of the lies or smears he's perpetrated. The WH won't even apologize to Sen. McCain, let alone an undocumented worker from Mexico or an asylum seeker from Central America.
Let's not overstate the splinter in the media's eye, when there's a massive plank in you know whose eye?
63
Hey, I approach things from a Catholic perspective. St. Pope John Paul II stated that human beings have "infinite dignity." Pope Francis reaffirmed that in Laudato Si. So I do not care what they have done. You are free not to follow Catholic teachings, but the Trump Administration is a constant moral crisis. Our religious leaders and people like Mr. Stephens here are failing us.
7
Perhaps we'll get lucky and MS-13 will start rolling heads into the Opinion Kingdom before they get the message.
Being liberal and a MS-13 member, given what we're seen coming out of our Sovietized New York City mass-media central, is one and the same.
3
So true. Time and again, the press take Trump's words and project them out to the worst possible interpretation, making fools of themselves doing so. Anyone who watched the video here knows what Trump meant and, while the hugger crowd would think they can somehow save the MS-13 gang, pretty much the entire rest of the world would agree they're animals.
Good column, thanks.
102
Agree. The hysteria of the left self-defeating.
13
When you characterize any group as animals, then it follows that any means can be used to exterminate them. Such extermination has an unfortunately tendency to produce collateral damage which can, in fact, be very harmful to many innocent people. This is the direction Trump flogs his supporters. It should also be recognized that there are probably hard core gang members who are nasty but also hangers-on who for a variety of well understood reasons have an affiliation but who, given other options, would just as soon not be.
There is never any nuance or sophistication in how Trump approaches any of the issues of our time, and this is why he must be rejected as our nation's leader.
24
Interesting that your assertion about some of the gang members are hangers-on and would rather be doing something else. Basically some, you imagine, are good people. Apply that to Trumps comment after Charlottsvile about some members of the group could be good people. He was vilified in the press. How is this different?
MS-13, great grand step children of United Fruit Company's (supported by the CIA ) politically destabilizing activities in Central America following WW2 - are animals, but only in the sense that they may legitimately be described as chickens coming home to roost. Human nature not being exempt from the laws of nature is also subject to the first law of physics: every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
3
We all understand how Trump feels about Latinos. Whether he was referring to gang members or Latinos in general, most of us understand what he meant all too well.There is no excuse for what he said in any context.
4
What is your point Bret? Context? Perspective? Or trying to regain your standing with Trump supporters and others on the right? Either way, you miss the obvious that other commenters here have discerned. Whether referring to MS-13 specifically, or immigrants in general, it is clear that Mr. Trump chose his words intentionally for effect, but carelessly nonetheless.
Rather than hold him accountable for his lack of clarity, quality and honesty in his comments, reporters like you and others on the right give the President a pass.
Trump can talk tough. But to do so he should be precise and well-informed. When he is not then it is your responsibility to report it. Not to defend his intentional inarticulate ramblings by attacking your colleagues in the press.
14
The authentic realness — non-fakeness — of the news media is in the entirety of the unfolding coverage, not the initial reporting or instant criticism. The constant directive to walk on eggshells around the sensibilities of Trump supporters is a distraction from the looming dark force of Fox News, Sinclair media, and the Wall Street Journal. Thankfully, the holistic coverage cycle, at least for now, will cleanse their monocultural dogma.
11
My takeaway was that Trump is not a precise enough thinker and speaker to lead anything.
Just add it to the pile of his inadequacies for office.
2
While I totally agree with Bret Stephens that the biggest mistake in critiquing Trump is to get it wrong and then, worse, ignore our fiasco and move on, it's really a distraction. The point is we are living in one of our periodic anti immigrant cycles, one that fears Latinos in particular. And Trump has a long history of disparaging Latinos. So let's not get too hung up on the gotchas. Why is it we don't hear much outrage about French, German, Irish or Dutch illegal immigrants who have overstayed their visa and melted among the population?They are here by the thousands. But the poster child of our illegal immigrant is a Latino. So who is this Latino that so many Americans want to turn back to his country with such fervor and who Trump loves to demean? He is a person from one of the half-dozen nations the US has continually destabilized while propping up a puppet leader, oftentimes a mass murderer, do the bidding of our banks and fruit growing companies. Our Latino was born and grew up in the terrible legacy of our racist foreign policy toward nations like Guatemala, El Salvador or Honduras. Chances he has relatives who were killed by thugs trained at our School of the Americas in Georgia. We helped create thew conditions that made him want to flee to the US; therefore, as a fair nation willing to examine or sordid past, we owe him a lot.
12
"I also suspect that the president would be just as eager to deport Latin American immigrants and build a wall with Mexico if groups like MS-13 didn’t exist.
That doesn’t matter... "
It most certainly does matter. To blithely shrug at the notion that the president would love to redeposit immigrants from a particular place on the map shows just how skewed and ominous the thinking on this issue has become. It's getting harder and harder to recognize the America I was raised in...
3
The problem is that Trump may have been referring to MS-13 when he used the term "animals" but to many of his base it will be taken as referring to all immigrants.
4
Some of us beg to differ. There is no way of knowing whether Trump was referring to MS-13 because his comments were so vague for deniability purposes. If you're honest, you'll agree: the media was right. We all know what he really meant. See:
SHERIFF (Margaret) MIMS (Fresno County, CA): Now ICE is the only law enforcement agency that cannot use our databases to find the bad guys. They cannot come in and talk to people in our jail, unless they reach a certain threshold. They can’t do all kinds of things that other law enforcement agencies can do. And it’s
put us in a very bad position.
SHERIFF MIMS: Thank you. There could be an MS-13 member I know about — if they don’t reach a certain threshold, I cannot tell ICE about it.
THE PRESIDENT: 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.
1
So I guess what this means is that the media should have a 'count to 3' rule for Trump's utterances, where the '3' can refer to 3 minutes, 30 minutes, 3 hours, or whatever it takes to (a) verify that he actually said it, (b) put the statement in its proper context, (3) determine how much of it is true or verifiable, and (4) provide a counterpoint. Trump seems to love knee jerk outrage; it both draws attention to him and gives him reasons to 'prove' to his supporters that the media is out to get him.
And, who knows, maybe that 'count to 3' rule will show that some utterances just aren't worth reporting at all. That would be a blessing to many, and no doubt a curse to Trump.
5
Bret, please read your citation again. Just because, in the immediately previous sentence, a Trump sycophant implies (without evidence) that California lacks concern about MS-13 members, Trump does not get a pass on his declarative statement that "people coming into the country, or trying to come in" are "not people" but "animals." You're right about the importance of immigrants to our American community; it's not fake news when the president discloses his feelings about them.
4
While I agree with much of what Bret said, he is simply wrong about the premise.
Trump's reference was to all those we are currently deporting, not merely MS-13 members. His precise language was, “We’re taking people out of the country, you can’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals.” The API explanation notwithstanding, and the fact that MS13 was *one* of several topics under discussion at the time he uttered those words does not change the meaning of the words themselves. A fair interpretation is that all of the people they are deporting are so bad that their humanity can be fairly denied.
This assertion is false. We deported about 226,000 illegal immigrants, of whom a little shy of 800 were MS-13 involved (it rounds up to 0.4%). The most charitable thing that can be said of Trump's words is that they are accurate in 0.4% of the cases of deportation. It is a legitimate function of the press to call out propaganda. The fake news was Trump's assertion, not the media's report of it.
The danger of letting ,misleading statements stand is that people with less sophisticated listening skills take the president to be literally accurate. Many actually believe that the U.S. only deports the MS13-types. This is clearly not true.
I had no real position (beyond eye rolls) on this particular instance of Trump being Trump until Bret forced me to actually listen to the statement in context. So, thank you, I guess.
13
Mr. Stephens is taking a very generous approach to Trump's remarks. Unfortunately, Trump often speaks in rambling generalities, and it's difficult to discern or understand anything concrete or factual. Reading the transcript, as Stephens suggests, is rather a sickening experience, as once again everyone around the table praises the Glorious Leader, and no one is present who can or will articulate a nuanced view of the problem. Here is the exchange that led up to the use of the word "animals," and I challenge anyone, including Mr. Stephens, to prove to me exactly to whom Trump was referring:
THE PRESIDENT: And we’re suing on that, and we’re working hard, and I think it will all come together, because people want it to come together. It’s so ridiculous. The concept that we’re even talking about is ridiculous. We’ll take care of it, Margaret. We’ll win.
SHERIFF MIMS: Thank you. There could be an MS-13 member I know about — if they don’t reach a certain threshold, I cannot tell ICE about it.
THE PRESIDENT: 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.
1
It’s not possible to say whether Trump was calling anyone or anything a certain thing because the man can’t form a coherent thought. Regardless of which group of people he was calling animals, why is that any better than calling extremist elements of one group of people “deplorable”? We should expect more from our President.
3
Thoughtful and accurate. People don't realize how good he is at baiting the media and his political opponents. And how easy it is. His most effective strategy as one tweet can send them into the stratosphere.
Unless the delegations from both parties have a chance to work on immigration reform free from the hysteria that surrounds the subject now, the hard-liners and Trump will be able to block any attempts to solve the issue that the majority of Americans want to see resolved fairly.
What does he hate? Being ignored. Let's try that.
224
It should perhaps be noted that there aren't a lot of economic niches open to immigrant, and that restaurants and organized crime are among those few. Without immigrants American cuisine would be much poorer, but no doubt someone would step in to feed our tastes in sin.
5
Sorry Bret, but I just read the transcript "for context", and I think you doth protest a bit too much. The entire proceedings seem to be pointedly trying to conflate the likes of MS-13 with all undocumented immigrants. Multiple stories of immigrants found committing violent crimes and murders, and being freed afterwards. Only stories of the worst of the worst (and if past diatribes of this administration are any indication, likely greatly exaggerated), and no mention of how these are only a small fraction of undocumented immigrants.
So who's "baldly misrepresenting" the facts here? Trump and his minions, or the tetchy liberals who may have overstretched a single passage but were largely correct about what the divider-in-chief was trying to achieve rhetorically? Talk about applying two sets of standards!
586
The context was MS-13, but DJT quickly pivoted from that specific group and spoke in general terms. This is what he said:
"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."
99
The inept and unwarranted response of the media, the political pundits and the left to Trump's saying that MS-13 gangsters are "animals" has been a disaster for the Democrats:
- It supports Trump's claims about "fake" news.
- It allows Trump to take the high road yet again in his blustering against the media.
- It reminds thinking people, which by the way includes (gasp!) many voters in fly-over country, that there is a concerted and ongoing effort to bash, belittle and demean Trump, his associates and his family at every possible opportunity.
- It reduces, hopefully briefly, the likelihood that the mid-terms and the 2020 election will favor the Democrats.
Goodness knows that there are plenty of well-founded reasons to criticize Trump and his policies. However, as the mid-terms approach let's focus on the many legitimate criticisms--there is really no need to try to manufacture fake calumnies against Trump.
7
Sorry, Tom, transcripts don't give context. You had the video, where you could have seen and heard it all, and which would have led you to to a different conclusion.
Unless you didn't want one.
8
Trump was the king of the birthers. Still is.
He has no standing to complain that some in the press did not read his mind on the intent behind his ambiguous (at best) "animals" comment.
47
Oh please, Bret. The media make this one mistake in reporting on yet another screed from Trump - and many media outlets expeditiously point out the correction - and you see this as an opportunity to pile criticism on mainstream media and Democratic politicians? I do believe that your finger-wagging and tongue-clucking would be better used on the conservative media and Republican politicians who have idly stood by as Trump has issued lie after lie after lie, or other debasing comments, including some high-profile examples directed at people of color.
I recognize that you are probably trying to be even-handed in your criticism, since, to your credit, you have called out Trump on occasion. However, given the lopsided ratio of his lies/debasing comments and the corresponding acts of complicity by Republican politicians to these mistakes by mainstream media and Democratic politicians, it really seems sort of silly on your part to devote much space to the latter.
44
“Made a mistake” is when they spell a guest’s name wrong or miss a date.
This is nothing less than the actual, fabricated, misleading, “fake” news that we heard so much about during the campaign. Turns out it’s real and I don’t think so many different reporters could have made this “mistake” so widely.
8
So, as usual, a couple of true but maybe overwrought comments by some Democrats are roundly chastised while the president makes about ten more odious comments every day. Oh yeah, I forgot, there is an absurd double standard in place. Democrats are required to be the adults while Republicans can say just about anything (or not say anything in the face of lie upon lie by Mr. Trump).
92
The problem is the Dems, liberals and lefty media have been SCREAMING "fake news" and "liar" and so on at Trump for the last two years. You can't do that, if you use the same kinds of lies and rhetoric as those you condemn.
1
"...sensible Democrats and sane Republicans to repel and defeat the president’s demagoguery." Not just sane but moral & principled Republicans which are hard to find & which we desperately need not just in the area you address but in all the other areas that are being destroyed by the current administration.
6
Good Trump vs. Bad Trump. Wikipedia defines "dissociative identity disorder, also known as multiple personality disorder, as a mental disorder characterized by at least two distinct and relatively enduring personality states." Other symptoms displayed by the President seem to agree with the Good Trump vs. Bad Trump hypothesis. One day, Good Trump can support expanded gun control, and next day he's against it. One day, Bad Trump threatens North Korea with annihilation in terms often reserved by the Iranians for Israel. The next day Good Trump blesses Kim Jung On and vows to secure his happiness. Etc. etc. etc. The president is not a liar: each one of his selves is truthful in its own way; each one whispers in his ear like those cartoon characters with a devil sitting on one shoulder and an angel on the other. Let's hope he gets treatment for his disorder, before he drags us all down with him.
5
The people who seem to have the disorder are Trump supporters and enablers.
1
I ask, who is the major American political figure who routinely takes other people's statements out of context, distorts them, or just plain lies about them? We can debate the answer but I can tell you without a shadow of doubt: it isn't Eric Swalwell. It isn't a woman. It isn't a Senator. It isn't a congressional representative.
15
No, Mr. Stephens. Even if Trump absolutely 100% was referring to gang members, people are not animals. They may be sociopaths, they may have no moral compass, they may do unspeakable things because something is wrong with their brain. Still, they are not animals. I do not know why one human being behaves in repugnant ways. Perhaps they, too, were brutalized. But, Trump is wrong to speak of human beings in this way. It is part of the process of de-humanizing immigrants. This is the way Trump spoke on day one of his campaign and he continues to do this. It is not befitting of someone in power. It is dangerous. How mind-chilling it is that his "base" cheers him on. Every day, we sink lower as a people and a nation as Trump models the most base behavior and he must be called out.
424
It is hard to know where it started. For example, "main-stream" media CNN's Ana Navarro called Trump an animal in the fall of 2016, "with apologies to animals" and encouraged him to drop out of the race, the "human race." Now Ms. Navarro was not running for president but I don't remember this causing a ruckus with the media or any penalties vs. Ms. Navarro from CNN? Not sure if Trump had already used the "animals" terminology at that point.
15
Sorry GRH, two wrongs do not make a right. Mr. Trump's title is President Of The United States. His language to dehumanize individuals, regardless of their moral standings, is unbecoming of the person holding the most important office of the land. My impression is the Mr. Trump continually communicates to his base in search of approval. This nation needs a leader and honest broker that speaks to all the people. I am quite concerned at this point in American History.
"No, Mr. Stephens. Even if Trump absolutely 100% was referring to gang members, people are not animals."
God, what a stretch.
Referring to 'members' of MS 13 as animals is just fine.
There are plenty of things to go after if you want to attack the man, but not this.
8
Bret is seriously ticked. That fifth paragraph on Chuck Schumer had me guilty-chortling as I was preparing spaghetti and meatballs. But I’ve been dealing with the excesses of the liberal MSM and its fellow travelers for a long time, so their propensity to demonize Trump outrageously and regardless of merit just on what they regard as good policy has become pedestrian to me.
However, Bret can be self-serving when he wishes, as well. He has a liberal immigration view for a conservative, so he conflates, as so many holistic liberals also do, legal immigration and illegal invasion. Trump and HIS fellow travelers on this issue inveigh against ILLEGAL aliens, yet have made it clear that they support LEGAL immigration whose character and boundaries we agree to as a people. How is that disfavoring “immigration”? It disfavors criminality. So, Bret needs to take his own advice and listen to Trump in context, as he advises the MSM to do generally.
Bret makes such reasonable-sounding arguments today, but they all really defend the notion of ignoring that illegality or defend the notion of pursuing an “open borders” policy of simply accepting anyone who manages to make it past the bouncers we post at the gate to make sure that the patrons who enter the bar are of age and not likely to be carrying nuclear weapons.
This isn’t 1832. Unbounded, limitless “undocumented immigration”, from ANYWHERE, not only is illegal but it’s unworkable.
9
Your super polite and friendly neighbors to your north have a means test for aspiring immigrants with standards so rigorous most born, bred, and naturalized Canadians would probably not pass it.
We don't want the world's tired, poor, and huddled masses yearning to breathe free unless it includes a photo op for our handsome Prime Minister and even then, we send people back to where they came from when they step out of line.
We have a 'nice' country and have constructs like borders and laws to keep it 'nice'. But underneath the niceness, lies a darker truth which is revealed in how we treat the people who were here before us - people who didn't have the wherewithal to keep us out.
Until such time as we evolve to a place where we can actualize the unity of all things and beings, we're relegated to maintain the fences that keep us contained. We are a work in progress.
1
We can all be self serving when we wish, and usually are, Richard. If we were to be absolutely honest with ourselves, we'd admit that our society and our economy depends, to some degree, on the gray area of immigration. The folks who do our most menial jobs are a fungible population, and if the rules were a tad more ductile we wouldn't even know we had a problem. For ages now we've dealt with this in the manner of Captain Renault, being "shocked, shocked I tell you" that we have undocumented folks washing our cars, picking our crops, cleaning up after us at home, in restaraunts, nursing homes, etc.
From time to time we've had exceptional carnival barkers hawking this issue to their advantage the way Rudy Giuliani does with 9/11. It's impossible to formulate solutions when we don't know what the problem really is. When the guy in jodphurs and top hat constantly screams the sky is falling and the wolf is at the door, we tire quickly and lose focus. This allows him to generalize the tactic to every area of public concern, establishing a new normal where truth and facts are not merely inconsequential but suspect. Media is marginalize and any mistake on their part is immediately magnified while all of his misstatements and distractions are not just accepted but memorialized.
The eventual result will be a tower of babel at the gates to a city of shame where looking at the facts only gets you turned into a pillar of salt. Don't become salt, face the facts, vote for truth.
2
In conflating illegal and legal immigration, Stephens is just toeing the NYT line.
It is a deliberate policy of willful obfuscation, accompanied by outrageous attempts to smear as "racist" those million of intelligent, good-faith Americans of all races and backgrounds who oppose the foolishness and cynical opportunism of our political class on this matter.
The Times editors and writers repeatedly make themselves look silly on this, but apparently can't help themselves. They don't even recognize their own fibs and fairy tales.
3
Thank you. I wish we had more commentators like you. In this fraught political climate, we need to remember that victory at any cost is no victory at all.
9
Pyrrhic, I believe.
The media made a mistake. A misstatement was made. One. Trump has passed well over 2,000 lies and/or misstatements since coming to power. I know that getting facts straight is part of what the media is supposed to do but isn’t it equally important for the President of the United States to TRY not to lie, to tell his nation and the world the facts? The premise of this opinion piece proves he has won; we hold everyone to a standard of perfection and he is held to none. Except, is he entertaining.
130
The very first day, the media propagated the news that Trump had removed the Martin Luther King Jr. bust from the Oval Office. This was not the case and the reporter made a correction very quickly but too late as a media frenzy had unfolded. Of course Trump took full advantage of this. And the press has continued to make mistakes.
1
Trump had almost no credibility to begin with and has only gone down from there. His words—good, bad, indifferent—are meaningless sounds. I know theoretically I should pay attention to him given that he is the president, but I skip past anything he says anyway.
55
I'm glad I read through to the end of this article. At first I believed it to be nothing more than a rhetorical defense of trump. Ok, so Democrats did take Trump's words out of context, so what?
However, Mr. Stephens' point is correct. Mass deportation only causes more instability in Latin American countries, thus leading to a vicious cycle of illegal immigration and crime. A sensible free trade and foreign aid policy with Latin American countries will allow them to develop, bring down the horrible levels of violence and instability, and reduce illegal immigration.
Instead of building walls and demonizing their people (yes, MS-13 is really bad, I get that), we should be working with our southern neighbors to grow their economies. People don't feel the need to flee strong and stable nations to seek asylum here.
45
It's also going to seriously destabilize countries when people who would send money to their home countries can no longer do so because they have lost their jobs in the U.S. and have been deported.
6
Thank you for pointing this out. I'm fearful that the MSM and the Democrats are being turned into mirror images of the right wing media & the Republicans. Quotes taken out of context & used to mislead are the long established M.O. of Fox & the GOP. Now they've elected a president who actually embodies the dishonesty & extremism they projected onto Obama & Clinton. The rest of us, faced with a leader whose intentions and methods are beneath contempt, are learning to parse his words & tweets for evidence of who he is--as if the people we would convince did not already know. This is a wickedly effective way of preventing democratic debate.
14
While it may well be true that Trump meant MS-13 in his statement, it certainly wasn't clearly stated, and required looking backwards a few sentences to even know that he was discussing criminals. One would hope for a leader to have sufficient awareness of verbal expression to avoid such impression. However, being more than a little suspicious of Trump, one wonders if the lack of clarity wasn't, in part intentional?
118
Donald the Mad may have singled out MS13 this time, but his bile has been directed at immigrants, the undocumented ones are only a portion of his hate filled screeds.
A wall on the Mexican border to keep out all Mexicans, his invective includes those escaping terror in Central America, and those who are willing to work for hours in the hot sun harvesting crops in the Salinas Valley. He implies he is standing up for those unemployed followers of his who believe their jobs have been stolen by them, even though the jobs are still there, all they have to do is drive their campers to the valley, get in line before dawn, and pick crops until sundown. The Okies did it, so why can't they?
He has fostered the belief that only white people deserve to live here, or as we saw in the 1900s, Aryans. Day after day we see attacks on those others, brown, black, tan, speak Spanish and some cretin rants about it.
There is no excuse for Donald the Mad's behavior, it is directed at all border crosiers, it is meant to infuriate the horde of bigots that think "He tells it like it is." Those of subnormal intellect believe he is speaking the truth, and those damned liberals are the liars.
Make no mistake, this is deliberate and pernicious, he is a master manipulator.
180
Stephens has spoken out against Trump's demagoguery many times, including this piece if you actually read it all. As a staunch liberal I cannot help but agree that stupid reactions to Trump's few instances of making a somewhat accurate point helps Trump, not immigrants.
7
I would amend your comment to say it is those at a lower level of human development, not necessarily intellect, that resonate most with his messaging. My country right or wrong, my group right or wrong, my culture right or wrong is the primary worldview this appeals most to.
4
In a way the context of his comments is not all that important. In the context of Trump those out-of-context comments fit the larger profile. He is a complete and utter foremen culi.
3
In his remarks, whether in response to a question about MS-13 or not, Mr. Trump was dehumanizing a group of human beings. He may have been referring to one particular group of reprehensible human beings in the case of MS-13 but this is still dehumanization. Dehumanizing the "other" is a time-tested tool of authoritarian leaders. Mr. Stephens would do better to hear and speak out against the demagoguery of the President than seek ways of finding Trump's choice of words understandable.
177
The inept and unwarranted response of the media, the political pundits and the left to Trump's saying that MS-13 gangsters are "animals" has been a disaster for the Democrats:
- It supports Trump's claims about "fake" news.
- It allows Trump to take the high road yet again in his blustering against the media.
- It reminds thinking people, which by the way includes (gasp!) many voters in fly-over country, that there is a concerted and ongoing effort to bash, belittle and demean Trump, his associates and his family at every possible opportunity.
- It reduces, hopefully briefly, the likelihood that the mid-terms and the 2020 election will favor the Democrats.
Goodness knows that there are numerous well-founded reasons to criticize Trump and his policies. However, as the mid-terms approach let's focus on the many legitimate criticisms--there is really no need to try to manufacture fake calumnies against Trump.
5
That's we should also refer to ISIS with respect.
1
Of course when Hillary calls black people "super predators"...that is perfectly A-OK because she is a liberal Democrat.
1