Long Cons, Short Memories.
One of the Trump administration’s first responses to the COVID-19 outbreak was to float the idea that the US needed to further lock down the nation’s southern border, despite the fact that there was no evidence the virus was spreading here from those areas. Trump surrogates took up the call using the same weasel language, implying that already demonized migrants were one of the causes of infection coming into America.
Yesterday immigration courthouses were specifically told that they had no authority to post bilingual CDC signage about how to protect oneself and others from spreading the virus.
Several months from now, Trump will begin making statements in front of Republican voters about how “America has endured, America managed to survive the terrible, awful plague from Mexico that they called, ‘coronavirus,’ which hurt a lot of people, but not as many as would have been if we hadn’t acted to put America first.”
“Wait,” you will say.
“Wait,” most ethical news outlets will say.
“That’s not right at all.”
“This Mexican plague,” Trump will continue, “coronavirus, which the socialist liberal Democrats and the fake news media tried to use to set up another hoax impeachment. But which we have fought back against with our perfect response.”
“This is patently false,” you, columnists, and nightly pundits will cry. “COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China, and America was not prepared to handle it either before or during the worst of the pandemic.”
“Bring up the data,” Sean Hannity will demand, a colorful bar graph appearing onscreen. “These are numbers showing how many illegals were infected and were still coming into our courthouses demanding to be exempt from our laws. They weren’t washing their hands, or using sanitizer, or any of the processes our CDC recommended to prevent the further spread of this disease. Liberals want you to pretend that Mexico had nothing to do with this. But to me it looks like, since they couldn’t get their criminals past the wall…they decided to send us their viruses instead. Back after the break.”
Sitting at home in his Barcalounger your distant, simmering great-uncle nods knowingly and retweets a poorly Photoshopped meme of a cartoon virus wearing a sombrero and bullet bandoliers.
These seeds are being planted now for use at a time of Stephen Miller’s choosing, and the closer we get to the election the riper these fruits will be.
Creative Control 