The killing of Sarah Beckstrom, a 20-year-old serving her country in the National Guard to help pay for college, is horrific.
Her fellow soldier, Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, remains in a fight for his life.
Their alleged attacker, Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, is in custody and will likely face the federal death penalty.
It’s important that we stop for a moment and recognize the unacceptable terror of two people serving our country being gunned down in an apparently targeted attack just blocks from the White House a day before Thanksgiving. It’s also important we examine Lakanwal’s path to the United States to understand whether any red flags were missed.
But it’s equally important to stop pretending that Trump’s increasingly overt racism passes for sound immigration policy.
As infuriating and saddening as this crime is, it is not a remark on all immigrants. Yet, here he goes again.
“We don’t want those people,” he said Sunday night, speaking of refugees from Third World countries.
That was around the same time the official White House account posted a video of Trump reciting the civil rights song “The Snake” by Oscar Brown Jr.
“ ‘Oh shut up, silly woman,’ said that reptile with a grin,” Trump intoned over footage of immigration agents rounding up, you guessed it, brown people. “You knew damn well I was a snake before you brought me in.”
I mean, the Klan would blush at some of this stuff.
While we’ve seen it before, this time Trump’s attack on non-white immigrants seems like a move not to placate his MAGA voters but to marginalize them — an embrace of an increasingly powerful farther-right-than-MAGA contingent of his base that is open in its disdain for pluralism and equality.
Shortly after the tragedy in Washington, Trump vowed on social media to “remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country.”
Please note that he completely dropped any charade of this being about violent criminals or even those who crossed the border illegally — the people MAGA (and many others) thought would be targeted in an immigration crackdown.
Instead, he seems to be cultivating support from younger, angrier Republican men who eschew traditional conservatism as weak and misguided. Sadly, there are a growing number of these small-tent conservatives who are open in their belief that America should be a white Christian nation governed by men.
The America First folks, led by Nick Fuentes, are the most high-profile of these types outside of the administration, but there are other groups, some affiliated and some openly hostile of one another, that are amassing power both within the Republican base and in its power structure. On the inside, one need look no further than the ranting of Stephen Miller for proof that racism is increasingly official Trump policy, stretching far beyond closing our borders or removing undocumented people.
Sound alarmist? Let’s let Trump finish.
He promised in a social media post a few days ago to “denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization. These goals will be pursued with the aim of achieving a major reduction in illegal and disruptive populations … Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation.”
Disruptive populations. Like U.S. citizens of Mexican origin? Indian Americans? Or maybe protesters? Or voters?
Before you hit the keyboard to tell me it’s just another Trump rant with no teeth, check out the official account of the Labor Department, which recently posted a picture of the Lincoln Memorial with the text (in a font associated with the Third Reich) that reads, “(t)he fight for Western Civilization has begun — and Americanism will Prevail.”
Or look at the Department of Homeland Security, which recently posted “Remigration now,” and has for months also been claiming we are in a battle for “Western civilization.”
That particular term, remigration, is used by far-right believers of the Great Replacement Theory for the idea that white-majority counties can only survive if they — peacefully or violently — remove non-white people.
“Give me your tired, your hungry, your blonde,” if you will. Keep your “shithole” residents.
In the lull of the holidays, with other issues on our minds, like how to pay for Christmas, many have felt a lessening of tension around this rogue administration. The Democrats seem to be gaining traction for the upcoming midterms, offering the hope of a Congress that isn’t supine.
The media have started referring to Trump as a “lame duck” on his way out, ignoring to the point of journalistic malpractice his groundwork to undermine or even rig the next election — whether the GOP candidate is a third-term Trump or a not-so-great-replacement like Vice President JD Vance.
But this is a moment of consequence, when the mask is off.
Funding is kicking in to supercharge the deportation machine to new levels. Literally billions of dollars will be devoted to rounding up and removing those here without proper papers, including people who have lived here for decades and done nothing but work hard and raise families.
That has left American immigrants, citizens or not, afraid. Our schools have lost students, our businesses are missing customers. We have pushed even legal immigrants into an underground, uncertain who or what is safe.
At the same time, the midterms are less than a year away, and the election deniers Trump has installed in key posts are already working to create systems that will likely make it harder for poor and marginalized Americans to vote. That involves curtailing mail-in ballots (leaving some to decide whether to take time off of work to vote) or imposing identification rules that could disenfranchise married women, foster kids, naturalized citizens and more.
This should be a moment for the nation to pay tribute to Beckstrom and pray for Wolfe. Profiles of Beckstrom describe her as a caring, public-spirited young woman who wanted to make a difference and serve her country. She never got the chance.
But it’s also a moment to be honest about what is happening. We have a president who is saying all brown and Black immigrants are a problem, even some who have earned citizenship.
It was never about the “worst of the worst,” but it is about being able to tell the difference between the snake and its victim.