Warnings that Republican nominee Donald Trump poses a fascist threat to U.S. society as a whole — and to the nation’s immigrants in particular — grew Friday following his visit to Aurora, Colorado, where he used a rally to spew xenophobic vitriol that even the city’s right-wing mayor condemned as lie-filled and dangerous.
Throughout his 80-minute speech, Trump — flanked by posters that read “Occupied America,” “Deport Illegals Now,” and “End Migrant Crime” — used openly fascistic language to falsely characterize Aurora as “infested” with Venezuelan gang members who came to the United States from “the dungeons of the Third World, from prisons and jails, insane asylums and mental institutions.”
Aurora, Trump lied, has been “invaded and conquered.” Trump pledged that, if elected to another White House term next month, he would invoke the draconian Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport alleged gang members without due process — a plan he dubbed “Operation Aurora.” More broadly, Trump has vowed to carry out the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”
Trump’s rhetoric in Aurora — which built on the anti-immigrant lies his campaign has spread about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio — stemmed from conditions in a small number of city apartment complexes that officials, including Republican Mayor Mike Coffman, say right-wing media outlets and politicians have seized upon and warped.
Coffman, who initially helped fuel the xenophobic hysteria, said in a statement following Trump’s rally Friday that he “cannot overstate enough that nothing was said today that has not been said before and for which the city has not responded with the facts.”
“Again, the reality is that the concerns about Venezuelan gang activity in our city — and our state — have been grossly exaggerated and have unfairly hurt the city’s identity and sense of safety,” said Coffman. “The city and state have not been ‘taken over’ or ‘invaded’ or ‘occupied’ by migrant gangs. The incidents that have occurred in Aurora, a city of 400,000 people, have been limited to a handful of specific apartment complexes, and our dedicated police officers have acted on those concerns and will continue to do so.”
Sara Loflin, executive director of the advocacy group ProgressNow Colorado, said in a statement Friday that the former president was “only here to continue to lie while barely setting foot in the city of Aurora or even Colorado at a luxury $500-a-night resort.”
“Donald Trump depends on these racist falsehoods to intimidate people of color from participating in elections and exercising their right to vote,” said Loflin. “In our lifetimes, there has never been a president as willing as Trump is to foment hate and violence among his supporters.”
Trump’s rally in Aurora came in the wake of reports that retired U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley, who served as chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the former president, told journalist Bob Woodward that Trump “is a fascist to the core.”
“Personally I think it’s pretty worrying that the GOP candidate, who attempted to overthrow the republic and whose top general calls him ‘a fascist to his core,’ is running on a flatly authoritarian campaign of lies and a promise to round people up,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes wrote late Friday, citing Milley’s comments and Trump’s Aurora rally.
“Today,” Hayes added, “he went to a city with a Republican mayor who refused to campaign with him to spread more blood libel about immigrants while calling his political opponents ‘scum’ and internal enemies and promising to use a 1798 law for mass arrests.”
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