In his inimitable fashion—that of a bigoted ignoramus—President Trump referred to undocumented immigrants as “animals” in a meeting with similarly anti-immigrant officials on Wednesday.
“Animals” is probably not a term that more politic Republicans would use; it suggests a sensibility too crude for a proper elected official to put on display. But based on their actual treatment of undocumented immigrants, the thought that Trump voiced can't be all that far from their own thinking.
Consider: Even as Trump was ranting away, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy were meeting on Capitol Hill with the handful of Republicans who've initiated the discharge petition that would compel the House to vote on the fate of the Dreamers. (Once a discharge petition has the signatures of a majority of House members, the bill or bills it concerns must be brought to the floor for a vote.) To date, 20 House Republicans have signed the petition; it would only take five more, plus all of the House's 193 Democrats, who are all sure to sign, to reach the magic number of 218—a majority of the House.
According to an account in The Washington Post, McCarthy told the signatories that,
signing the discharge petition and paving the way for passage of a moderate immigration bill could hurt Republicans in November's elections by depressing conservative turnout and upending leadership's plans to focus on tax cuts and other GOP successes.
(What those other successes are is anybody's guess.)
Ryan and McCarthy assured their off-the-reservation colleagues that they would in time bring an immigration bill before the House. Their colleagues weren't buying it. “I didn't hear a plan today,” said Michigan Representative David Trott, who became the 20th Republican to sign the petition yesterday. “Time's running out. We need to do something.”
Indeed they do. Children are being taken from their parents at the border; law-abiding parents who've been in the nation for decades are being deported while their citizen children are left behind; and the Dreamers are condemned to a state of perpetual limbo. In response, Republican leaders do nothing, fearful of dousing the xenophobic and racist passions, stoked by the president, which they believe will drive their voters to the polls.
Paul Ryan would never call undocumented immigrants “animals.” He just treats them that way.
