Trump hits a new low on immigration

The fourth Republican presidential debate was, by most accounts, a bit of a snoozer. But in a good way. There was less interpersonal conflict, more substantive discussion of economic policy. Donald Trump, in particular, was judged “subdued” and “surprisingly subdued” and “uncharacteristically subdued.” Trump himself pronounced it “a very elegant evening” in which “everybody actually did fine.”

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All very forgettable, civil and elegant. Except the part where the Republican front-runner proposed the forced expulsion of 11 million people and endorsed the historical precedent of Operation Wetback, an Eisenhower-era mass deportation program that was as ugly and offensive as its name.

Trump did not actually say that name, presumably because it would have sounded racist. (I apologize for the necessity of using it to make my argument.) But shouldn’t it set off moral and ethical alarm bells when a candidate embraces a policy with a historical label too loathsome to mention in public? Instead, Trump said: “Dwight Eisenhower. You don’t get nicer. You don’t get friendlier. They moved 1.5 million people out. We have no choice. We. Have. No. Choice.”

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