Kristi Noem Thanks Trump For His Sadism
That’s what America is right now.
The Department of Homeland Security has budgeted $200 million to feed Donald Trump’s massive ego. That shouldn’t get them too far past lunch, but nonetheless, DHS is planning to run anti-immigrant snuff ads throughout the U.S. and overseas that pay tribute to Trump’s sadism. It’s a clear demonstration of the Trump administration’s political priorities and moral depravity.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced the two-year campaign on Monday, which she later admitted was all Trump’s idea. Noem spoke Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference’s Ronald Reagan dinner. During her remarks, Noem said Trump told her after she was nominated, “I want you to do [ads] for the border, and I want you to do those everywhere, not just in the United States, but I want them around the world. I want you to tell people not to come to this country if they’re going to come here illegally.”
Apparently, all we needed was to just say that illegal immigration is not in fact legal. This is the “Just Say No” campaign of illegal immigration, except it’s more “We Say No.”
Kristi Noem, The Merry Puppy Murderess Of South Dakota, With Her Rendition Of The Gravel Pit Tango!
Noem said Trump whined, “We’re not going to let the media tell this story, because the media will never tell the truth. We’re going to run a marketing campaign to make sure the American people know the truth of what you’re doing.”
This is just one of many differences between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Biden probably could’ve benefitted from more aggressive marketing of his beneficial policies, especially to key demographics where he struggled, and Trump is an unhinged megalomaniac with access to our nuclear codes.
Noem claimed that Trump is so darn modest, he didn’t want to appear in the ads himself: “I want you in the ads, and I want your face in the ads,” he told her, as they planned his propaganda party together, “but I want the first ad, I want you to thank me. I want you to thank me for closing the border.”
This is just not a request that an emotionally healthy person makes of a dog killer.
“I said, ‘Yes, sir, I will thank you for closing the border,’” Noem confirms. “So if you notice, in that ad, we thanked him for closing the border.”
All our questions about whether Noem thanks Trump for closing the border will be clearly answered in the video where Noem thanks Trump for closing the border.
The first ad launched on Fox News. I’m not going to share it here, but it’s quite the propaganda puff piece for Trump. (He does appear in the ad, of course.)
“Thank you, President Donald J. Trump,” Noem gushes, “for securing our border and putting America first.”
“Let me deliver a message from President Trump to the rest of the world,” she continues. “If you’re considering entering America illegally, don’t even think about it.”
The obvious implication here is that potential illegal immigrants are watching Fox News. A migrant is probably already in trouble if Fox News is playing wherever they are. It’s like they got stuck at a rest home in Arizona.
“Let me be clear,” Noem says. “If you come to our country and break our laws, we will hunt you down. Criminals are not welcome in the United States.”
The current president is a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist, but the benefit of propaganda is that you can pretty much erase your own rap sheet. Besides, Trump is significantly more rich and white than the mug shots of brown criminals that flashes on the screen in Noem’s ad.
“If you try to enter illegally, you will be caught. You will be removed. And you will never return.”
That sounds ominous. I assume she means the captured migrants will “never return” to the U.S. and not “never return” anywhere, even their country of origin. Although I’m not sure how much benefit of the doubt I should give someone who shoots puppies gangland style.
‘Distrust those in whom the impulse to punish is powerful’
So far, there’s little evidence that DHS can enforce a tough border policy while maintaining the most basic respect for human life. Last Tuesday, the White House posted a video on social media titled “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight.” The video depicts illegal immigrants being restrained and shackled on an airport tarmac in Seattle before boarding a deportation flight.
So, “ASMR” is short for autonomous sensory meridian response. The term is used to describe a calming sensation people claim they feel in response to close personal attention or certain audio or visual stimuli. It’s outright deranged to suggest that someone might feel relaxed or even a sense of bliss from seeing and hearing another human being placed in chains. That’s antebellum entertainment.
Elon Musk, who was once an illegal immigrant, responded to the White House video, “Haha wow.”
This is all classic Goebbels-style propaganda, where threats to the nation are simultaneously depicted as larger than life and almost insurmountable yet also less than human and easily vanquished by a strongman leader.
I’d written most of this prior to seeing a production of Anna Deavere Smith’s Notes from the Field on Saturday night, and there’s a quote from civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson that felt especially relevant:
Why do we want to kill broken people? … That’s one of the things I don’t understand. What is it about us that when we see brokenness, we get angry? We want to hurt it. We want to crush it. We want to kill it.
Nothing about Trumpism is new or even that innovative in its evil. Throughout American history, people have savored the ritual humiliation of others and come to associate their perceived safety with senseless brutality. We need to stop punishing broken people — yes, even those who put us in this current situation.
Musk is still here illegally, in spite of having bought his citizenship and having bought trump (as Putin owns trump too, it will be awkward for trump when his owners' agendas conflict, but for now, both owners want the same thing - to destroy the country). If Musk was really looking for waste, he would cite trump's golfing and going to sporting events, and this ad campaign. You are right that President Biden should have been more aggressive in telling the American People about his accomplishments. Noem is right, I have to admit, about the media not telling the truth, because trump would have never been elected in the first if they had, and certainly not in the second place. She's saying it to justify the expense of the ad campaign, and probably because cons have whined about the media for over 40 years, so it's a habit for them, and it's worked, because trump was elected twice, thanks to the media being all in for him.
"there’s little evidence that DHS can enforce a tough border policy while maintaining the most basic respect for human life."
It's not clear to me they can enforce a "tough border policy," in the sense of actually excluding and removing many more migrants than previous administrations, at all.
But they can sure "market" their efforts as tough, in the sense of being brutal to those who are caught up in it.