Why Donald Trump now discovers the ‘yellow danger’ Germany: Emu shot after police chase

During World War II, the Americans placed Japanese living in the United States in concentration camps. Under the pretext of being a ‘yellow peril’, even those with US passports, including women and children, were not spared. This harsh treatment of innocent people is considered a stain on American history.

Today the ‘yellow peril’ is celebrating a comeback, but it no longer comes from Japan, but from China. Donald Trump is taking full advantage of America’s fear of the emerging Asian superpower. When Maria Bartiromo, host of the Fox News program “Sunday Morning Futures,” asked him yesterday the softball question of whether he also believed that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) deliberately allowed young men to be smuggled into the United States as asylum seekers, he happy. “Yes, I think so,” he replied, without of course providing any evidence for this claim.

Is it the Chinese who are smuggling young men into the US?

At the same time, Trump accused the CCP of coordinating illegal immigration into the United States and also said he was convinced it would try to influence the upcoming elections. The “caravans,” the collection of immigrants marching together through Central America toward the U.S. border, would by no means arise spontaneously, Trump said. “These are people who want to get rid of their country of origin and group them into caravans,” the ex-president claimed.

When Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2015, he was still focused on his immediate neighbor. “When Mexico sends its people, they don’t send the best,” he explained at the time. “They bring medicine. They bring crime. They’re rapists. And some, I suspect, are decent people.”

Now Trump is taking advantage of the fact that immigrants are not only showing up at the southern border in record numbers — about 2.5 million last year — but also coming from all parts of the world, including China. Joe Biden’s administration also failed to take timely action to counter this attack. That is why Trump wants to make the fear of illegal immigrants the central theme of his campaign.

There is now an opportunity to fundamentally overhaul the US’s dysfunctional immigration law. A bipartisan committee drafted a 370-page bill in the Senate and introduced it on Sunday. This is the first serious attempt to close the gaps in existing legislation. The asylum process would be accelerated and immigrants would no longer have to wait in the US to find out whether their application was approved or not. Those turned away would be immediately deported and border staff would be significantly increased.

This law is also supported by parts of the Republican Party. James Lankford, a conservative senator from Oklahoma, led negotiations for the Grand Old Party. He says the current law will “dramatically” change the situation at the border and deter immigrants from making the journey to the US.

Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, also welcomes the law. For his part, President Biden has already said he would sign it immediately. Still, it’s unlikely he’ll get the chance to do so. With a bit of luck, the bill can still overcome the filibuster limit in the Senate – which requires 60 votes – but things look bleak in the House of Representatives. Republicans have a razor-thin majority there, and Mike Johnson, their speaker, has announced that it will “be dead before it reaches his desk.”

As chairman, Johnson has the ability to decide whether to vote on a bill at all. Trump has already loudly announced that Republicans should not authorize this law under any circumstances, and the Speaker who obeys him will follow this order. Instead of seizing the historic opportunity to urgently overhaul asylum law, Republicans will launch an impeachment trial of Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security, that is as pointless as it is absurd.

Trump not only wants the chaos at the border to last until the election, he also wants to do his friend Vladimir Putin a friendly favor. The aid loans for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan are also wrapped in the same law. Trump also wants to prevent this and, above all, hand over Ukraine to Russia. As far as Israel is concerned, Speaker Johnson wants to put his own bill to the vote in the House of Representatives, but this is also purely a diversionary maneuver.

The MAGA crowd’s conspiracy theories are becoming increasingly absurd. Pop superstar Taylor Swift is allegedly being used by the Pentagon as a secret agent against Trump, the soccer league matches have been rigged and now the CCP is smuggling young men into the US disguised as asylum seekers. How long will the Americans continue to play this evil game?

“If there is a bright spot on this bleak horizon, it is that the MAGA crowd is exaggerating,” notes David French in the New York Times. “(…) MAGA is not only deeply angry, it is also very strange.”