{"id":442624,"date":"2025-12-12T15:46:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T15:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/442624\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T15:46:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T15:46:10","slug":"trumps-somali-insults-are-a-disgrace-to-the-american-dream-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/442624\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Somali insults are a disgrace to the American dream \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

SACRAMENTO \u2014 After Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said he was proud that his city had the largest Somali community in the United States, President Donald Trump unleashed a vicious rant<\/a> during a press conference ostensibly about the auto industry: \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be proud to have the largest Somalian \u2015 look at their nation. Look how bad their nation is. It\u2019s not even a nation. It\u2019s just people walking around killing each other. \u2026 They have destroyed Minnesota.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump also penned a social-media post<\/a> claiming Somali gangs have taken over Minnesota and \u201care roving the streets looking for \u2018prey\u2019 as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses.\u201d The Hennepin County District Attorney\u2019s Office, which is the top law-enforcement agency overseeing the Minneapolis area, released<\/a> a video debunking those claims. Nearly 90% of Somalis there are legal residents, with 58% of them having been born in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey contribute nothing. \u2026 I don\u2019t want them in our country,\u201d Trump added, as he has pushed forward a plan to reduce<\/a> the nation\u2019s refugee-acceptance program by 90%. Somalis actually have revived some downtrodden Minneapolis neighborhoods as they mostly pursue the American dream, but why pick nits? The bulk of the new refugees will be white South Africans<\/a>, but I\u2019m sure race has absolutely nothing to do with his latest immigration-related tirades and decisions.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s seems hardly a coincidence that Trump also has directed ire at Haitian immigrants in Ohio whom he falsely accused of eating pets<\/a>. His decision to eliminate free-entry days<\/a> at national parks on the Juneteenth holiday commemorating the end of slavery and Martin Luther King Jr. Day also don\u2019t seem like coincidences. In reality, the only roving gangs that Twin-Cities residents need to worry about are the masked ICE patrols Trump has sent to the region, but that\u2019s apparently the point.<\/p>\n

Trump is maligning \u201cgarbage,\u201d as he referred<\/a> to a Somali member of Congress and her \u201cfriends,\u201d to justify efforts to quash immigration from non-white countries. Can the GOP stop pretending otherwise?<\/p>\n

Conservative media are focusing on Minnesota\u2019s social programs, with City Journal\u2019s Christopher Rufo explaining<\/a> that \u201cfraud has allegedly been perpetrated by members of Minnesota\u2019s sizeable Somali community\u201d with \u201cmillions of dollars in stolen funds have been sent back to Somalia, where they ultimately landed in the hands of the terror group Al-Shabaab.\u201d Minnesota\u2019s Democratic politicians and media have been loath to \u201cconnect the dots\u201d because of their \u201cprogressive pieties,\u201d Rufo added.<\/p>\n

That may be true and any fraud is appalling, but perhaps one reason for the lack of dot-connecting<\/a> is Minnesota officials\u2019 fear that the administration and its supporters would react as they have, by blaming the entire Somali community for the criminal acts of a few and using the scandal to justify heavy-handed immigration policies.<\/p>\n

There are two schools of conservative immigration thought. The first, to which I subscribe, acknowledges immigrants often flee countries ravaged by crime, tyranny and disorder. That\u2019s why many people come to the United States. Our nation\u2019s settlers fled persecution. My father escaped Nazi Germany, which was literally putting people in ovens (although many Republicans lately have struggled with their views<\/a> on such horrors). Under this long-standing view, Americans should welcome immigrants, but promote E Pluribus Unum.<\/p>\n

The other conservative view<\/a>, which is clearly embraced by national conservatives and populists, is that America is fundamentally a white, Christian nation and that immigration, to whatever limited degree we allow it, should align with those demographics. Some conservatives still tout the, \u201cwe\u2019re only against illegal immigration\u201d canard, but that\u2019s not what\u2019s going on here. Trump\u2019s policies \u2014 along with much of the anti-immigration rhetoric on the right these days \u2014 are about limiting immigration in general. Minnesota\u2019s Somalis and Springfield\u2019s Haitians are, after all, primarily legal.<\/p>\n

No one disputes that law-enforcement should clamp down on government fraud. The root problem is the government freebies themselves, which often are overly generous and lacking in oversight. But it\u2019s not like fraud scandals are confined to immigrant and minority communities. One can find similar scandals<\/a> involving any ethnic group (including native-born Americans).<\/p>\n

The president always doubles down. Following the brouhaha over his comments, Trump said<\/a> to supporters: \u201cWhy is it we only take people from sh**hole countries, right, why can\u2019t we have some people from Norway, Sweden, just a few. \u2026 We always take people from Somalia, places that are a disaster, dirty, filthy, disgusting, ridden with crime.\u201d It\u2019s clear what he\u2019s saying.<\/p>\n

By contrast, in his last presidential speech, Ronald Reagan said<\/a>, \u201cWe lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people \u2014 our strength \u2014 from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation.\u201d Reagan was right. Trump is wrong. Americans shouldn\u2019t be ashamed that our nation is a beacon to the tired, poor, huddled masses, but we have reason to be ashamed of him.<\/p>\n

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute and a member of the Southern California News Group editorial board. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SACRAMENTO \u2014 After Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said he was proud that his city had the largest Somali…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":442625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,1269,16837,3549,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-442624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-opinion","12":"tag-opinion-columnists","13":"tag-san-diego","14":"tag-sandiego","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}