Monday on NBC’s “Late Night,” MSNBC’s “All In” anchor Chris Hayes said President Donald Trump was using border security as a way to tap into “anxiety” over America’s changing demographics.
Hayes said, “It was the most perfect moment that encapsulated what this is really about. We’re down in McAllen. We’re talking to folks from McAllen. We’re talking to —a guy I talked to had a conversation with 20 years in CBP. You know, the border, border protection. I talked to lawyers for migrants and people that offer them care. And they’re talking about what the situation is. Meanwhile, he flies north to Duluth. And in a huge stadium of folks all keyed up in Duluth about the scourge at the border. And we’re down at the border like, ‘what are you talking about?'”
He continued, “But, that’s the whole point. He did this on the campaign. He would go to Kenosha, or he’d go to somewhere in Ohio and talk about the border and people would be chanting, like, going nuts about it. Because it’s not actually the border. Right? It’s this idea of invasion. It’s this idea of the country’s changing in ways they don’t like. The border is a convenient metaphor for that anxiety.”
Myers said,”Obviously, immigration has been framed as a problem for a really long time. Is it safe to say that the real issue is that there are certain people that don’t see it as an immigration problem but as a diversity problem?”
Hayes replied, “More than that, an existential problem about what the country is. I mean, Stephen Miller is very clear about this. Steven King, the Iowa congressman who tweeted literal Nazi propaganda a week ago, these are people that really think that the nature of the country existentially — America won’t be America if it changes too much demographically. And they see themselves as guarding against that eventuality. They’re very clear about that. And that’s why it’s very hard to come to compromise with these people about legislation. So, even when you go, and you say, ‘we’re gonna put money into border security,’ which we’ve done every year. Border security numbers are through the roof. We’re going to have more people patrolling the border. Which we’ve done every year. There’s more people patrolling the border. They say, ‘OK, now let’s strike a deal.’ And they, ‘no, we don’t want a deal. Because what we want to do is change the demographic tide of this country to preserve the white majority we have now.'”
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