It was two hours of hyperbole, caricatures of political discourse, simplification and misinformation. A full-blown rally in which the Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States, Donald Trump, displayed his usual repertoire in the most fertile ground for the multiplication of hoaxes. The conversation between the former president and Elon Musk, owner of X, had no other effect than to amplify the ideological positions of both and reaffirm some of the most basic prejudices of a sector of the population, starting with xenophobia, the fear of foreigners without resources. The arguments would probably not make the cut, as implausible and generic, in the revision of a fiction script. However, Musk’s social network, heir to Twitter, the platform that expelled Trump after the assault on the Capitol, is today the most effective springboard for the dissemination of these stories.
Immigration was one of the main themes of the live chat, hosted by the head of Tesla and Space X from a friend’s ranch in Wyoming. The slander is not new: there are countries that release their most dangerous criminals and send them to the United States. “They take them out of prisons, which is very expensive, you know, to maintain the prisons, although they don’t do much maintenance. I assure you. But they take them out of the prisons, out of the jails. They take them out and bring them to the United States. They deposit them in the United States and tell them: ‘Never come back or they will execute you.’ And they don’t want to come back. And they won’t come back. They come from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, from South America. They come from everywhere. And there are many really bad ones,” says the Republican candidate.
The immigration-evil equation is a semantic trick that has been in use for decades on both sides of the Atlantic. Added to this is another one, which identifies migrants with laziness and unproductivity. It could not be missing from the conversation. “They are also bringing their unproductive people. Now, these are not people who will kill you. We have enough of them. But these are people who are not productive,” the tycoon continues before insisting: “They don’t want to work or whatever. And these countries are in many cases getting rid of unproductive people in the caravans. And they are also getting rid of their murderers, their drug dealers and really brutal people.”
( @realDonaldTrump – Truth Social Post )
(Donald J. Trump – Aug 16, 2024, 4:16 PM ET)Kamala Harris is allowing Venezuela’s dangerous criminals to freely enter our country through her WIDE OPEN Southern Border, and now she wants to bring Venezuela’s dangerous economic policies… pic.twitter.com/RNPYPtpanq
— Donald J. Trump 🇺🇸 TRUTH POSTS (@TruthTrumpPosts) August 16, 2024
Trump often uses this speech to attack the Democratic candidate and current vice president, Kamala Harris. He did so during the live broadcast on X and also days later through his social network, Truth. He threw Venezuela into the mix. “She is allowing dangerous Venezuelan criminals to freely enter our country across her vast southern border and now she wants to bring Venezuela’s dangerous economic policies to our nation as well. If Kamala is elected and implements her communist price caps, there will be famine, starvation and poverty like we have never seen before. America will NEVER recover!” he said.
The former president milked the Caribbean country’s serious political and social crisis, which was exacerbated after the July 28 elections, to the very end. First, he resorted to the mass exodus to confirm his thesis of the dangerousness of migrants. And he used the drama of millions of Venezuelans to announce mass deportations. “We are going to have the largest deportation in the history of this country. And we have no other option.” […]. You know, in Venezuela and some of these other countries, crime is down 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%… They’ve gotten rid of about 70% of their really bad people.” Just days earlier, Nicolás Maduro, who revels in the absurdities of the far right, announced the temporary ban of X. “X out of Venezuela for 10 days! In our country there is a Constitution, a law, institutions and a State.” Chavismo, which lives off propaganda and disinformation, also wants its monopoly.
#Venezuelan #fable #Trump #Musk