New Year Reflections, Part III (The Political Circus)

Today, I had the opportunity to watch some of the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings on immigration. Testifying was Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. It was quite the spectacle. Some questions were about immigration, some about cyber security. Then, it was Senator Patrick Leahy's (Dem-Vt) turn. Leahy decide that the most important issue of the day facing the USA was whether Trump really referred to certain countries as "shitholes." As Nielsen was present during the meeting in question, he wanted her answer. She testified that she did not hear Trump use that word, but that he was passionate about his point of view.

Leahy said this: "Now last week in the oval office, President Trump reportedly said the most vulgar and racist things I've ever heard a President of either party utter. In fact, I've never heard any President, Republican or Democrat, utter anything even similar." And I am shocked, shocked, that there's gambling going on. Rather an odd comment for a nearly 77 year old Senator. Democratic President Lyndon Johnson frequently used the "N" word when referring to blacks. Republican President Richard Nixon called Mexicans "dishonest," said blacks lived "like a bunch of dogs," and that San Francisco was full of "fags." Italians didn't "have their heads screwed on right." The Irish? "Virtually every Irish I've known gets mean when he drinks." As for my people: "The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality." In other words, Nixon did not like anyone.

Although Senator Leahy claims that he never heard the vulgar language from these other Presidents, I wonder if he ever heard of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I do not know what language Roosevelt used, but I do know that he ordered the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II - something not done to German or Italian Americans. How would the good Senator Leahy compare that to Trump's alleged description of third world countries? Speaking of which, Senator Lindsay Graham, also shocked by Trump's alleged comment, once referred to Mexico and other Latin American countries as "hellholes."

Additionally, Democrats cannot fathom Trump's apparent hostility to immigration. Trump: "All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large number of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That's why our Administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens."

And this from Trump: "We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it." Okay, the above two quotes are actual quotes - but not from Trump. Bill Clinton made both of the above comments. And former Democratic Senator Harry Reid introduced a bill in 1993 to revoke so-called birthright citizenship. His concern was that there was an "incentive for pregnant alien women to enter the United States illegally, often at risk to mother and child, for the purpose of acquiring citizenship for the child and accompanying federal financial benefits. And: "unless changes are made, our dinner table eventually will collapse, and no one will have security and opportunity."

I suppose we may claim that Leahy and others like him are hypocrites. We might claim that Leahy's assertions that he has never heard such bad words from other Presidents is simply not believable. Or, we can rely on that old standby: how can you tell that a politician is lying? His lips are moving.