The magic pill of migrant fear

Trump talks the economy in Georgia but can't stop himself from fear-mongering about immigrants.

In remarks on the economy on Tuesday in Savannah, Donald Trump promised supporters that his plans would cure many of their financial ills.

Among his pledges:

• Manufacturing would return to levels from 50 years ago (the United States is a service-based economy)

• “Entire industries” would return to the United States to construct manufacturing facilities on federal land Trump said he’ll make available to companies

• He’ll prevent “world war three”

• He’ll “shut down the border” on “day one” of his presidency (shutting down the border is neither a realistic possibility or helpful to the economy considering daily cross-border trade)  

• “100 percent tariffs” on foreign-made goods will force companies to relocate to the U.S.

Whether any of these things happen of course depends on whether Trump wins in November, but that’s really besides the point. Also besides the point is any sustained focus on economic policy at all. Most presidential campaigns release initiatives like the one Trump rolled out yesterday — which the campaign called “new American industrialism,” a phrase Trump did not utter once — well before 42 days from the election. 

At the center of the plan are tariffs and tax cuts — specifically for corporations. Trump said yesterday that he’ll cap corporate taxes at 15 percent, but with the caveat that the cap will only apply to companies with manufacturing facilities here, although the specifics weren’t exactly clear. Tariffs are wildly popular among voters, especially those who favor Trump, but are unlikely to bring down household costs, economists have said.

Trump’s interest in the economy feels hollow at this stage of the campaign, and the tone of his voice when discussing economic policy compared to other subjects he veered into on Tuesday is telling. There really isn’t an issue that Trump can’t somehow tie to immigration, and even when he can’t, that’s where he’ll head anyway. 

He was at his most animated and effective on Tuesday when fear-mongering about immigrants — and the crowd in Savannah at its loudest. Trump’s remarks on the economy came from a teleprompter. His rants about immigrants come from the heart, and that’s what his people want. 

“Send them back!” a woman in the crowd yelled as Trump deviated from the economy towards immigration.

For Trump and his supporters, there is always something — or someone — else to blame. For my story on Trump’s remarks yesterday at the Guardian, I spoke with a supporter who blamed immigrants for empty grocery store shelves — there’s just too many of them here, she said. Trump has an easy fix for that, saying he’ll “stop the invasion” of immigrants. The woman and her two friends had waited in line since 4 a.m. to see Trump.

Explore more columns

• Careening toward darkness

• We've been here before

• Small respite and large threats

The former president seems to have a magic elixir for everything that ails the country, in the eyes of women like the three I spoke to outside of yesterday’s event — and that miracle drug seems to always include bad and dirty immigrants. If Trump says immigrants are taking Americans’ jobs, they are. If he says immigrants are eating people’s pets, they are. 

On that last one, I asked the women how they squared that story with the facts that have come out disproving Trump’s wild claims about Haitian migrants eating domestic animals in Springfield, Ohio. One of the women said she’d seen a video of a woman being arrested after eating a cat only to be corrected by her friend in the group, who noted that the woman in the video wasn’t actually Haitian. 

One of the women I was speaking to then pivoted, saying she’d seen a Tik Tok video about horses that had been butchered by undocumented immigrants in Texas. She appears to have been referring to the slaughter of a single horse in Pearland, Texas that occurred in 2020.

***