New York, Dec 6: He said it four times in seven seconds: Somali immigrants in the United States are “garbage.” It was no mistake. In fact, President Donald Trump’s rhetorical attacks on immigrants have been building since he said Mexico was sending “rapists” across the border during his presidential campaign announcement a decade ago.He’s also echoed rhetoric once used by Adolf Hitler and called the 54 nations of Africa “s–hole countries.” But with one flourish closing a two-hour Cabinet meeting Tuesday, Trump amped up his anti-immigrant rhetoric even further – and ditched any claim that his administration was only seeking to remove people in the US illegally.
“We don’t want em in our country,” Trump said five times of the nation’s 260,000 people of Somali descent. “Let ‘em go back to where they came from and fix it.” The assembled Cabinet members cheered and applauded. Vice President JD Vance could be seen pumping a fist. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, sitting to the president’s immediate left, told Trump on-camera, “Well said.”
The two-minute finale offered a riveting display in a nation that prides itself as being founded and enriched by immigrants, alongside an ugly history of enslaving millions of them and limiting who can come in.