One of Donald Trump’s arrows in his war on American decency is his threat to cut off federal funding to sanctuary cities. So, in its never-ending desire to be helpful to all things Republican (especially when anti-immigrant), the Your World show hosted a Trumpkin to promote the plan without noting any of its drawbacks nor challenging any of the guest’s overblown rhetoric.
The guest was former New York Police Department and former Fire Department Commissioner Howard Safir. He’s a man with some ethical blotches on his record, including two of the worst cases ever of police brutality against black men under his watch.
Nevertheless, Fox host Neil Cavuto didn’t utter a peep of challenge when Safir demonized sanctuary city mayors with the dubious claim that they are only out to get (illegal) votes:
SAFIR: I think it’s pandering by these mayors for votes. They know that immigrant communities are gonna mainly vote Democratic, but what they’re ignoring and what [Chicago] Mayor Emanuel is certainly ignoring are the 700 murders that are taking place in Chicago this year, mainly committed by illegal aliens. The fact is, there are two million criminal illegal aliens in the United States, and that’s not my statistics, that’s the fact that fingerprint cards are sent to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency showing that these people have been arrested. He should be caring about his citizens, not about illegal criminal aliens.
Instead of challenging Safir to prove his claim, Cavuto seemed eager to cut to the chase of promoting funding cuts.
CAVUTO: It just seems weird to me, and maybe you can help me out with this Commissioner, where we go from here, because is the legal response, then, not to do anything when federal officials are trying to track down illegals?”
As Safir talked about a Supreme Court case to back up his contention that state and local police are obligated to help federal immigration officials, Cavuto interrupted to say, “That’s the law, right? That’s the federal law.”
Trump “should not give an inch on this,” Safir said, and should “stop all grants to police departments and cities that are not helping immigration." He continued, “We should arrest them, we should incarcerate them, and when they serve their sentences, we should send them back where they came from.”
Cavuto interrupted: “So, it’s clearly illegal what these mayors are doing … and the fact of the matter is that Donald Trump could threaten the federal funding because they’re not going along with this. How likely do you think that is?”
SAFIR: Knowing Donald Trump, and he’s a very strong guy, my belief is that he will at least hold back some of the funding. As we all know Washington is a very complex place and you don’t always get what you want but I think he needs to take a stand on this because there is no reason that the rights of criminal aliens like the ones who killed a young woman in San Francisco or killed a 90 year-old man in Minnesota should be given priority over our citizens. This is something that is really important and he needs to send this message and I believe he will.
Fact check: Despite Safir’s suggestion that sanctuary cities provide havens for hardcore criminals the reality is that they do not shield those who commit serious offenses.
Also ignored was how cutting off funding could harm innocent people.
At the end of the interview, Cavuto gave his stamp of approval to Safir: “Commissioner, good chatting with you again,” he said.
Watch it below, from the December 7, 2016 Your World.
What makes the Right’s prediction here irritating is that they have consistently acted like this for the past 60-80 years. It’s a state of constantly assuming that they can bully people at will and get away with it, that they can brutalize other countries and that nobody will lift a finger to stop them. I still remember a classic example of this from my high school History class. We had a guest speaker relating the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis and how the Kennedy Administration dealt with it. During the Crisis, as things were reaching a head, there was a typical meeting of the various hawks and doves to discuss what they should do next. This is roughly the transcript as it was described to us:
Foreign Policy Hawk: “Well, clearly, if the USSR doesn’t back down, we’ll need to launch missiles and take out the sites in Cuba to secure the region.”
Foreign Policy Dove: “And if we do that, how do you think they’ll respond to us?”
Hawk: “Well, they’ll probably take out our sites in Turkey, as they’ve been threatening.”
Dove: “And what do you think we’ll need to do in response to that?”
Hawk: “Well, at that point, we’ll really need to start launching missiles against targets inside the Russian border…”
Dove: “And after we start nuking them, how do you think they’re going to respond to that???”
Hawk: “Well, at that point, I think it’s clear that cooler heads will prevail…”
Just imagine if we had the Pence Administration running the military during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I think we can all see the way that situation would have turned out…
And it strikes me how vicious Santorum’s comments here really are. He had no problem whatsoever telling this woman to get out of the country, and essentially saying that she’d gotten away with something by even being here in the first place. You could even make a slogan out of his cruelty – “You don’t belong in MY country.”
I do wonder if it would work, though. California, NY, Chicago, etc. are big economic engines for the country, including for Trump. Would his Wall Street cronies really let those places die?
In the first place, cutting the funding to California, to New York, to Illinois is something that the Right Wing has dreamed of doing for years. They would LOVE to be able to justify withholding as much money as possible from those places. Because they hate the fact that those places don’t tend to vote Right Wing. This is political payback, cloaked in the aura of phony outrage over sanctuary cities. The real purpose is to put a hurt on liberal cities, first by starving them of public funds and then by presumably forcing them to support a Far Right agenda. So the Right would get to do a full Scut Farkus on a city like Los Angeles. First they beat the crap out of them and starve them, and then they laugh at them for having a bloody nose. All part of the fun of The Year of the Bully.
But the fun gets a little more involved, when it comes to how the Right Wing is planning to deal with the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country. Trump has already stated that he wants Jeff Sessions’ Justice Dept to prioritize the deportation of what he says is 3 million people in the undocumented population who’ve been charged with crimes or who have been sentenced for crimes. I note that there is a certain amount of looseness on this, which the Right is enjoying. At some points, they say that this only applies to violent felons who shouldn’t be in this country anyway – except that we already have a vigorous program of deporting and/or incarcerating those people. (The man who shot the woman in San Francisco had already been deported multiple times, so it doesn’t work for the Right to claim that he was living the Life of Ryan in San Francisco. He was a fugitive who we were already trying to get out of the country.) But at other times, the Right will say that ANY crime will be enough to get someone tossed out of the country. Just last week, I heard two angry right wing AM shock jocks in Los Angeles openly stating “Hey, look, if you’re an illegal alien and you’re worried about getting busted for having a broken taillight and then being deported, you know, you’re already here illegally anyway and you should know that any little violation could get you sent home because you shouldn’t be here in the first place!” Meaning that the Right really DOES intend to simply deport as many undocumented people as they can, starting with the ones they can justify under the criminal code. Because they consider ALL of these people criminals. Full stop.
But wait, it gets better. What about the other 8 million people, you say? Like the ones who are actually trying to hold jobs and who have mostly lived in a twilight status for years? Like the younger generation who were trying to make use of the DACA program – the “Dreamers”? Johnny, what do we have for the “Dreamers”? Well, first, it’s a cancellation of the program, since that was part of the Obama presidency and we know that the Fire Sale on those ideas will be in full effect as of January 20th. (Fire Sale = Everything Must Go…) Secondly, there’s the issue that all those twenty-somethings openly registered themselves in order to qualify for DACA – which means that if they don’t go underground quickly in 2017, they can be found and potentially deported by Sessions’ Justice Department after he gets done with the felons. There was a telling moment last week on a show called “The Messy Truth” where a “Dreamer”, Elizabeth Vilchis, had the temerity to ask Rick Santorum what he thought of her being tossed out of the country when she has gone to school here and worked to become a productive part of our society. Santorum didn’t mince words. He told the Vilchis “I think what most people in America feel is that you’ve been given a tremendous benefit by being here in this country… My guess is you wouldn’t have had the opportunities to be able to accomplish what you have, and my final point is you have the ability to go to any other country right now and apply those wares and be successful and then reapply to come back to America if you so choose. But go and make the rest of the world a better place.” When Ana Navarro tried to interject that America was this woman’s country too, Santorum angrily responded “That’s not what the law says.” Vilchis offered to Santorum that she had looked at going back to Mexico when she graduated high school, but the reality is that she would be banned from returning for 10 years and Mexicans really don’t have a legal avenue for coming back legally no matter what skills or talents they have. (As opposed to Cubans who are instantly granted asylum here) Santorum didn’t bend. He agreed that 10 years is punitive and maybe they could shorten it (meaning maybe only 9 years?), “but as much as I’m sympathetic with you, I’m also – you should recognize the gift America has given you, that you can give to the world.” Keep in mind that Mike Pence and Rick Santorum are of like mind on most subjects, including this one. It’s a Far Right perspective that takes the most draconian position possible. I have no doubt that the Pence Administration approach to the DACA participants will be to recommend that they self-deport rather than go through the legal system. This has nothing to do with whether these people have been living decent lives here – the Right Wing doesn’t care. They don’t want these people here, and they need political scapegoats – so these people have got to go. I frankly expect a lot of these people to in fact self-deport and a lot of other undocumented immigrants to do the same when they can. The rest are likely to go completely underground, where they will be further preyed upon by the same farming and day labor businesses that exploit them today. Which is what those businesses want.
What we’re looking at here is a way for the Right Wing to bully the parts of this country that don’t agree with them, and to terrorize a domestic population that they know they can pick on without reproach. If anyone thinks that the Right won’t take advantage of an opportunity like this, I have a bridge to sell them.