The invasion of the crumb snatchers
Please lock your windows and doors before you read another word,
We’re about to be “invaded.”
No need to worry too much, though, our President has taken matters into his own hands.
At first, he said he’d send 5,000 troops to the southern border to protect us from that marauding band of miscreants heading north from Central America.
Then he vowed to send 10,000, or even 15,000 more troops.
He might pledge a hundred thousand by the time I finish this sentence.
Mr. Trump wants you to have an inordinate fear of people from south of the border.
Especially just before elections.
He bristles after he’s called migrants future gang members and clandestine “Middle Easterners,” and fact checkers tell the truth. That there are no gang members or closeted terrorists heading our way — just families, including many small children.
He should have learned by now that such talk can be dangerous.
For him, events in Squirrel Hill and in Florida weren’t enough.
He still conjures up evil out of thin air at his frequent pep rallies.
Sending more members of the U.S. military to Texas and Arizona than there are stationed in Afghanistan must make him feel good.
He beats his chest, bares his teeth, and snarls for the cameras, while taxpayers pay for his false bravado.
He doesn’t care.
When much of the country is experiencing overwhelming grief, he flies to another rally and performs a comedy routine.
On the night that a mad gunman took the lives of 11 innocent people in a church, he chose to stay focused on getting more votes.
No president in recent memory has shown such callousness.
We all have vivid memories of George W. Bush standing atop a pile of rubble at Ground Zero with a bullhorn in his hand proclaiming, “I can hear you. The rest of the world can hear you,” or Barack Obama wiping away tears just after the tragedy of Newtown saying, “Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad. And, by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago every day.”
Donald Trump prefers the intoxication he feels when he delivers punchlines on the campaign trail.
Surprisingly, he’s recently become more accessible to the news media.
No better way to attack the news media, and call news outlets the “enemies of the people.”
The closer we get to election day, the more he feels compelled to engage in hyperbole.
He’s decided that he, alone, can change the U.S. Constitution.
He claims that he might do away with the 14th Amendment with a swipe of his pen.
He believes that he can erase what’s known as birthright citizenship.
Anybody who’s born in the United States is a citizen — period.
Trump says he’s looking into writing an executive order that will do away with that.
Hardly anybody agrees with him.
But it’s a great applause line at rallies.
He knows that much of his pre-election blather will be forgotten post-election.
He’s aided in his fear mongering by Fox News.
You can’t figure out if Trump feeds these ridiculous exaggerations to Fox, or Fox feeds them to Trump.
Last week, an ex-immigration agent appeared on Fox News to alert the public that the caravan heading to the United States has people with smallpox, tuberculosis, and leprosy.
For the record, smallpox was completely eradicated in 1980.
But the folks at Fox have been energized by the words of Trump to find stuff that doesn’t even exist.
While most of Trump’s recent scare tactics are designed to get his followers to the polls, he won’t stop after the election.
He’s going to continue to warn us about that caravan being an “invasion” that requires swift military action, despite its numbers dwindling daily, and it being nearly a thousand miles from the southern border.
Meanwhile, Democrats around the country have been running on one issue that affects nearly every American – health care.
They aren’t talking about “invasions,” or “caravans”.
They don’t have to. They’re not trying to scare anybody.
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight and 20-year TV news veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.