'It's a loser': Republican strategist torches Trump's latest 'inhumane' argument
Longtime Republican strategist Rick Tyler slammed former President Donald Trump's anti-immigrant vision for the future in an MSNBC panel on Wednesday, following a political event in Michigan the previous day in which Trump warned that immigrants would invade people's houses if he's not elected.
In particular, Trump invoked the tragedy of Ruby Garcia, a woman believed to have been killed by an unauthorized immigrant — while falsely claiming that he spoke to her family when he hadn't, and couldn't even get her age right.
"It says something to me ... he thinks about a young woman who suffered a grievous crime, and he sees her as 17, he makes her 17," said anchor Joy Reid. "To me, that says something about his psychology which is gross and weird. Imagines her as a teenager when she's a 25-year-old woman. Doesn't know her age or anything about her and lies about talking to her family. He would never talk to her family. She's Latina, she's the kind of person he wants to deport."
ALSO READ: A criminologist explains why Judge Cannon must step away from Trump trial immediately
Tyler agreed.
"What Donald Trump is doing, he's telling the same lies that every wave of migrants who came to the United States has always been subjected to," he said. "When the Jews came, when the Germans came, when the Italians came. Irish. All these different groups. We were told the same thing, lose our culture, lose our language, drive down wages, and the crime will go up. And exactly the opposite has happened. In fact, we don't all go to mass on Sunday. We don't all speak Italian or German. We don't drink beer in the pubs every — I'm Irish, I can say this. We're not going to be facing Mecca, saying prayers in Spanish three times a day. It's not going to happen." Instead, he said, "The economy has always gotten better. The food has gotten better."
Tyler added, "And the fact is that without migrant labor ... we do not eat without immigrant labor, you do not have houses without immigrant labor, you do not have highways or bridges without immigrant labor. And by the way, when you're my age, you start to think about retiring on Social Security and Medicare. And without immigrant labor, there's no Social Security or Medicare. In fact, we need more migrants to come to the United States. And their crime rate is lower than the average American."
At the end of the day, said Tyler, "it's a loser" to attack immigrants.
"See, the thing is, I ask people all the time, I'll say, what do Nancy Pelosi and Rudy Giuliani have in common, which is not a funny question," he continued. "But almost never do people say they're Italian-Americans. They don't think of it. And there will come a time when you say, Hernandez and Rodriguez, well, they are both Latino names? I didn't think of that. Why? Because the Latinos in particular — it's not Mexico anymore, it's all Central America. And by the way, they're running for their lives. They're escaping from gang violence ... in fact, the reason they have a lower crime rate is because they are trying to stay out of trouble."
Watch the video below or at the link here.
Rick Tyler says Trumpian immigrant hate is a "loser" www.youtube.com