BY PETER WADE
Sunday July 16, 2023
Former US President and 2024 presidential hopeful Donald Trump applauds after speaking at the Turning Point Action USA conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, on July 15, 2023. (Photo by GIORGIO VIERA / AFP) AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Donald Trump promised to make America xenophobic again by bringing back his travel ban, a move that Rolling Stone reported he was considering in May.
“When I return to office, the travel ban is coming back even bigger and much stronger than before,” Trump said Saturday during a speech to the far-right Turning Point Action conference led by Charlie Kirk. “The U.S. will not be condemned for the same fate as countries like France.”
Trump while in office implemented a policy banning citizens from majority Muslim nations — including Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen — from entering the U.S. He also indefinitely suspended the Syrian refugee program and temporarily suspended programs for all other refugees. The Supreme Court upheld the ban, and President Joe Biden ended it on his first day in office.
“We are taking in people who are very dangerous people. We are allowing them to come in by the millions and millions and millions,” Trump told the far-right gathering, adding that he will follow “the Eisenhower model” and “use all necessary state, local, federal, and military resources to carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”
He said he would reinstate Title 42, which denied asylum to migrants and returned them across the border, in order “to end to child trafficking crisis.” He also promised to deter illegal immigration by signing “a day one executive order ending automatic citizenship for the children of illegal aliens, which brings all of their family members with them.”
“We must redouble our efforts to make sure that anyone who comes to America shares our values and assimilates into our culture,” he said. “We want people who can love our country and cherish our country. Under the Trump administration, we imposed extreme vetting and put on a powerful travel ban to keep radical Islamic terrorists and jihadists out of our country — and with great success, you know that. You didn’t see anything about that for four years, did you?”
To illustrate his point, Trump bastardized Al Wilson’s 1968 song, “The Snake,” reading the lyrics aloud to the audience.
In addition to his anti-Muslim rhetoric, Trump flirted with vaccine conspiracy theories. Because of his ties to the covid-19 vaccine and Operation Warp Speed, Trump in the past has appeared somewhat reluctant to engage with the anti-vax crowd, but during his Turning Point speech, he seemed to hint that he may be reconsidering.
“I will continue my long record of standing up to Big Pharma by creating a presidential commission to investigate what is causing the decades-long increase in childhood diseases, autoimmune disorders, autism, obesity, infertility, and other chronic health problems,” he said.
Opponents of routine childhood vaccinations — including presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — have claimed that the vaccines cause autism, despite a total lack of solid scientific evidence proving any link.
When Trump’s remarks turned to the classified, highly-sensitive government documents he took to Mar-a-Lago, Trump spoke as though because he didn’t hide what he was doing, he shouldn’t be prosecuted. “I had boxes piled up in front of the White House, and everybody was taking pictures of them because I wasn’t hiding anything,” Trump told the crowd. Those boxes would later end up at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida home and resort, where they were stored in unsecure locations, including on a ballroom stage and in a tacky bathroom.
Trump also boasted (again) that he considers it an honor to be indicted. “Every time the radical left Democrats indict me, I consider it to be a great badge of honor and courage,” he said. “I am doing it for you. I am being indicted for you. Better me then you.”