One of the things I want to talk about with you a little bit later today is that Corona
virus is creating a perfect screen or veil for pushing hyper nationalist policy in the
United States, something that we've seen Donald Trump and the people around him clearly desire
to do since day one.
Even before day one of the administration, we knew that bamboozling people with hyper
nationalist rhetoric worked really well.
But before I tell you all of the ways in which hyper nationalism is sort of rearing its head
during Corona virus, I have to tell you about the acute latest way in which this is happening,
which is that Donald Trump announced yesterday on Twitter that he's suspending all immigration
to the United States under the pretense of mitigation and public health and corona virus
safety.
Now, this might be believable if Donald Trump had been on the side of public health all
along.
In other cases.
But he's not been he's been tweeting about we've got to liberate states.
States should open.
The country's ready to open.
Trump is at the same time understand saying things are going so well that we can reopen,
but things are going so poorly that we have to stop all immigration to the United States.
So by executive order, Donald Trump claims he will suspend all immigration.
He announced it last night on Twitter saying, quote, In light of the attack from the invisible
enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our great American citizens, I will
be signing an executive order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States.
Now, the White House was asked how long is temporarily, what is the legal basis?
What's the reasoning for this?
No answers on any of those questions so far.
And it may indeed actually not be legal.
Now, as a practical matter, most immigration was de facto slowed down or stopped anyway
because we've got border restrictions and flight bans.
So understand that this is all nationalist propaganda and possibly not even legal.
And what I mean by that is that at the presidential executive order level, it's not clear a president
can say immigration is just suspended, but it's a really great piece of red meat to throw
to his nationalist supporters.
In practice, if you shut down flights to the United States from other countries, it's hard
for new immigrants to get here.
If you shut down crossing at the northern and southern borders of the United States,
it's practically speaking very difficult for new immigrants to get here.
So realize that the policies themselves that prevent people from coming here, including
tourists, have been in place for weeks now, which effectively has actually stopped immigration.
That's not really what's at issue with that issue, is that the announcement that by executive
order Trump is suspending immigration may not be a legal thing and it may actually change
very little in practice.
So why is Trump doing this?
It's because he wants to placate his base with hyper nationalist red meat.
The hypocrisy is stunning.
And you only need to look as far again as Donald Trump saying we're ready to open in
a whole bunch of different states.
We've almost won against the invisible enemy.
Trump is fomenting protests that are demanding that we reopen.
And yet, he says things are so uniquely bad that I'm going to do something that has not
been done before, which is I'm going to suspend all immigration for public health reasons
because we are fighting the so-called invisible enemy.
It's completely incoherent unless you understand that Corona virus is merely a filter through
which Donald Trump can push his preexisting nationalist ideas to fire up his base.
We know that this has Stephen Miller's fingerprints all over it.
Much like America first and a whole bunch of the other nationalist nonsense that Donald
Trump has been spouting.
And then last thing here, and then I want to move on to the bigger hyper nationalist
picture, as always, with the things that Donald Trump tweets that he will be doing.
Sometimes he never actually does it.
So we do have to keep an eye on whether Trump actually does sign this executive order.
As of now, he hasn't hasn't done it.
Let's now move on to the conversation of the ultra nationalism that is being promulgated
under the guise of Corona virus.