A favorite pastime of mine is watching how quickly the national media discover nuance and complexity in a tragedy once it’s a Democrat who’s at the root of it.
Political violence committed by a Republican? Right-wing, pro-gun, white supremacist inspired by Fox News and Donald Trump’s hateful rhetoric!
Political violence committed by a Democrat? Well, there’s plenty of blame to go around, and both sides need to do their part in bringing down the temperature a little.
Deadly virus spreading under a Republican administration? Mismanagement, ineptitude, willful ignorance, science denial!
Deadly virus spreading under a Democrat administration? Well, it’s the nature of a virus to spread, and the population density and age are factors — plus it’s up to the individual to do his part.
And now that major Democrat-run cities are well into a second year managing the influx of illegal border crossers by the tens of thousands, immigration isn’t so black-and-white either.
New York Mayor Eric Adams was featured in a viral video this week wherein he said some very interesting things about the unabated stream of migrants bused from Texas into his city, where residents get the privilege of bathing, clothing, feeding, and housing them all at taxpayers’ expense. That’s money that doesn’t get to be spent on things like homeless shelters, police, and more public services that would otherwise go to actual Americans and legal residents.
“We have a $12 billion deficit that we’re going to have to cut,” Adams said. “Every service in this city is going to be impacted.” But what he said thereafter was even more urgent. “They’re destroying New York City,” he said. “It’s going to come to your neighborhoods. All of us are going to be impacted by this. … The city we knew, we’re about to lose.”
I remember a certain someone who spoke of the mass migration problem in similar terms.
Trump, October 2018: “This is an invasion of our Country…”
During that time, a month ahead of the midterm elections, Trump was warning about the so-called “caravan” of several thousand migrants marching from Central America to the U.S., where they would demand entry and all the perks that come from scamming our laughable asylum policy.
Here’s the headline The New York Times ran the same day as Trump’s remark: “How Trump-Fed Conspiracy Theories About Migrant Caravan Intersect With Deadly Hatred.” The corresponding article used the words “alarmist,” “hatred,” “paranoia” and “conspiratorial” to describe Trump’s posture.
By contrast, an article in the Times on what Adams said in the video merely noted that the mayor “has struggled to provide housing and services to the migrants” and said that his outcry was an “escalation” of rhetoric. To the extent there was anything remarkable about Adams’ comments at all, the Times allowed that they were “his most ominous yet.”
And just like that, the border crisis isn’t about “hatred” and “paranoia.” It’s about a mayor’s struggle!
Nothing really changed here. The border has been a mess for years. The problems that come with crushing migration from Latin America’s most destitute nations are still the same. The only difference is that it’s now a prominent Democrat at the center of it.
