Boing Boing Staging

Trump calls for 'ideological certification' of immigrants, and mass deportations—including Hillary Clinton

Xeni Jardin

Trump said immigration would be suspended from countries like Syria and Libya [Carlo Allegri/Reuters]

After a very weird day in Mexico with President Enrique Peña Nieto, then a Twitter shitstorm in which Trump was accused of lying about the content of that meeting, the Republican Presidential candidate gave a long-awaited speech in Arizona that was to put forth his policies on immigration.

You can watch the speech in entirety at CSPAN.

Some semblance of an immigration policy was there, to the extent that Trump is capable of conceiving of or describing actual government policy that some version of the American government can carry out. But what will be remembered–and Trump commanded his audience to “remember” the night–is how much this garbage sounded like the same old garbage he’s been spewing all along.

In the speech, Trump called for “Ideological certification” of all would-be immigrants, and said we should only let people in who “love us.” This is fine. Not fascist at all.

He then promised to “triple the number of ICE deportation officers” needed to enforce his mass deportation master plan. It is a beautiful plan, and he explained that it would be accompanied by a big, huge, beautiful, “impenetrable,” tall proud wall that sounded very phallic.

Then, he said of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, “Maybe they’ll deport her.”

This is fine.

His on-stage hype men wore “Make Mexico Great Again Also” hats, which reports say Trump came up with himself and made Rudy Giuliani wear on stage.

Al Jazeera:

He opened his speech by detailing the stories of undocumented immigrants who committed violent crimes, telling thousands in the convention centre in downtown Phoenix that he had “met with many of the great parents who lost their children to sanctuary cities and open borders”.

Later, he pledged to impose “ideological certification” for immigrants seeking to enter the US, to include questions about so-called honour killings, women, gays and “radical Islam”. He said immigration would be suspended from countries like Syria and Libya.

“We have no idea where they’re coming from, we have no idea who they are,” he said of Syrian refugees.

He raged against low-skilled undocumented immigrants who compete with US citizens for jobs and pledged to “remove criminal aliens immediately”.

He also reaffirmed his pledge to build a wall on the country’s southern border with Mexico, as supporters chanted “Build a wall”.

Earlier in the day, news pundits described Trump’s posture during the Mexico City photo op as “presidential.” Tonight in Arizona, the tone was pure nationalist, fascist, xenophobic red meat. Comparing him to Hitler is too easy — he’s more V for Vendetta villain.

You can read a detailed analysis of the Trump Arizona speech here. God bless all the fact-checkers and hot-takers tonight. Theirs is a hard job.

Below, some of the voices of reason in my Twitter feed, while I was watching the speech.

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