Trump Finds New Way to Demean Immigrants
Call me what you will. An anti-Trump zealot. A victim of Trump Derangement Syndrome. A Deep State aficionado. The truth is I am not a fan of President Donald Trump. And what I have come to dislike most about the Trump presidency has been his anti-immigration stance, particularly in regard to Mexican and Central American undocumented immigrants. He has cruelly used them as props in a campaign to convince his base that white America is under siege. This odious campaign has relied on name calling and clever dog whistle references to keep his America First campaign fires burning. As a Latino, I can’t help but object to this kind of presidential behavior.
So how to account for my initial hesitation in accusing Trump of once again employing a dog whistle when he referred to a “tough hombre” during his recent Tulsa rally performance? Why was I willing to momentarily give Trump the benefit of the doubt and assume his use of the word “hombre” had nothing to do with slyly conjuring up images of scary brown skinned criminals causing havoc throughout our fair-haired country? Why not my usual reaction of disgust in response to what many considered another instance of read-between-the-lines white nationalist insults. Someone might have thought I had been infected by the Lou Dobbs-19 virus.
Turns out that initial hesitation was actually prompted by my scant knowledge of his TV show The Apprentice, and it eventually proved worthwhile. Though Trump did not, upon subsequent scrutiny, deserve any benefit of the doubt, that hesitation gave me the time to figure out his latest approach for demeaning Latino immigrants. Hand it to our cruel president to come up with an especially cruel approach, for it’s one thing to be smeared as a murderer or rapist — it’s quite another to be metaphorically lumped in with a pack of “tough hombre” Trump-employed lawyers!
The past four years have given me reason to brood as first, candidate Trump described Mexican immigrants as “murderers and rapists”, and then President Trump later described Central American immigrants as a malevolent force conducting an “invasion” of our fair land. The Trump administration’s exploitative use of images showcasing tattooed Mala Salvatrucha-13 (MS-13) gang members, and his referring to them as “animals” demonstrated his desire to dehumanize immigrants. Finally, his insistence on building a “big, beautiful wall” along the border further cemented my appraisal of him as an unscrupulous demagogue willing to exploit the fears of his white constituency. What bolstered this appraisal was his referring to the wall as a first step in getting “bad hombres” out of our country. This initial use of the word “hombres” (in the October 13, 2016 presidential debate) was a dog whistle intended to depict all south of the border immigrants as the fulfillment of such menacing Hollywood Latino tropes as the droopy mustached, bandolier-wearing bandido, the drug cartel chief, and the inner city gangbanger.
Trump recently resurrected his use of this loaded term during the controversial June 20 political rally in Tulsa. Attempting once again to strike fear in the hearts of his mostly white non-mask wearing audience, Trump riffed during one part of his rally speech, “Hey, it’s one o’clock in the morning, and a very tough, I’ve used the word on occasion, hombre, a very tough hombre is breaking into the window of a young woman whose husband is away as a traveling salesman.”
Nevertheless, as much as I have grown to detest Trump and his use of demeaning names and dog whistle references, I did not in this instance feel offended by his use of “tough hombre.” Why the subdued reaction? Because the words jogged a long forgotten memory. Though I am not a fan of reality TV shows, I happened to flash back to the one episode of The Apprentice I bothered viewing a few years back. In suddenly recalling this particular episode, I thought of TV star Trump sitting in his faux corporate boardroom as he introduced contestants to one of the show’s judges. The judge was George H. Ross, a real-life lawyer for The Trump Organization. I faintly recalled how Trump gleefully introduced the lawyer as a “tough hombre.” I knew he meant the term as a Trumpian sort of compliment. In the context of this TV show, a “tough hombre” connoted a ruthless shark of a lawyer, the kind of lawyer who appeals to Trump’s sense of macho business world toughness.
Accordingly, upon hearing him use the term at the Tulsa rally, I didn’t automatically rush to associate his use of “tough hombre” with sinister ethnic-bashing connotations. Although some of Trump’s critics quickly denounced the rhetoric, I benevolently decided to give him a one-time pass. “How can I criticize Trump for using the ‘tough hombre’ term,” I asked myself, “when I know he once used the term as a compliment?” I went so far as to think, “Give the man a break. Maybe this was just an innocuous use of a term. Perhaps he refers to a variety of people as ‘tough hombre.’ Could be he calls his barber a ‘tough hombre.’ Possibly the White House tanning bed maintenance man. Even his overworked caddie.”
But later the next day, as my mind skirted near the edges of Trump Derangement Syndrome territory, I reconsidered my initial assessment. The heck with conjecture; I went with the evidence at hand. Latino immigrants and a Trump-employed lawyer were all I had to work with to decipher the true motives lurking in the President’s stable genius brain.
That’s when it hit me. I thought of some of the lawyers who have served Trump, people hired because they seemingly fit his idea of ruthless shark, and hence, tough hombre. A veritable rogues gallery of names creeped across my mind, including the likes of Roy Cohn, Jeff Sessions, Alan Dershowitz, Kenneth Starr, Michael Cohen, William Barr, and Rudy Giuliani. Words like slimy, criminal, obsequious, vicious, unethical, unconstitutional, and looney tunes soon followed.
The names and descriptors generated a visceral reaction that prompted me to assemble a theory that captures the basic meanness of Donald Trump. I determined his use of “tough hombre” rally language should, in fact, be considered a new low in Trumpian-style dog whistling. What else do you call the accusatory lumping together of undocumented immigrants with not only murderers, rapists, and animals, but worse yet, the likes of Trump-employed lawyers? As I see it, if one can indeed go so far as to credit Trump with a self-awareness regarding the quality of people he hires to represent him in court, we are left with two options, each of which rely on the following transitive property formula:
(immigrant = tough hombre) → (tough hombre = Trump lawyer) → (immigrant = Trump lawyer)
Thus, the use of “tough hombre” can either be seen as (1) an intentional use of a highly sophisticated double frequency dog whistle designed not just for the ears of those attracted to the aforementioned negative Hollywood tropes, but also any other immigration-conflicted voters savvy enough to comprehend the unsavory nature of Trump-employed lawyers or, (2) if we are willing to be more generous, a Freudian slip that accidently revealed the depths of Trump’s contempt for the immigrants he metaphorically equates to a lawyer breed possessing the trait of contempt for legal limits.
Under either of these options, Trump is evoking the following sentiment… “Hey, I know I hired a tough hombre lawyer like Jeff Sessions to work for me, but do you really want a wave of similar lowlifes crossing our southern border?”
I’ve since made up my mind. No more benefit of the doubt for Donald Trump. If he resorts to repeating the “bad/tough hombre” label there will be no more misjudging his real motives. I only hope he chooses to lay off this particular insulting rhetoric. After all, undocumented immigrants experience a hard enough time. They don’t need to bear the additional burden of being mistaken for the caliber of “tough hombres” who provide Trump with dubious legal advice.
