Politics - News Analysis
Trump Facing Backlash After Calling Immigrants ‘Invaders’ Echoing Words of NZ Shooter
Donald Trump and the New Zealand shooter have picked some eerily similar words.
On Friday morning in Christchurch, New Zealand, attacks by at least one shooter at two mosques left 49 people dead. The alleged gunman, who has been arrested, was found to have a manifesto where he declared “we are experiencing an invasion on a level never seen before in history.” The purported shooter specifically decried the “millions of people pouring across our borders.”
Hours later, a shockingly similar phrase came from Donald Trump.
Trump, after vetoing a bill that would’ve blocked his national emergency declaration to access border wall funding, briefly condemned the shooting before pivoting back to border talk. There are “crimes of all kinds coming through our southern border,” Trump said, adding that “people hate the word ‘invasion,’ but that’s what it is.”
Shortly after Trump calls the attack in New Zealand, where shooter called his victims "invaders," a "horrible thing," he goes on to talk about US illegal immigration:
"People hate the word invasion, but that's what it is. It's an invasion of drugs and criminals." pic.twitter.com/qBd0t25hQK
— Salvador Hernandez (@SalHernandez) March 15, 2019
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Also on Friday, Trump was asked if he saw “white nationalism as a rising threat around the world.” “I don’t really,” Trump responded, saying “it’s a small group of people” committing these crimes. Advocacy groups have said hate group activity has been rising in the U.S. for the past few years, and investigative reports have backed that up.
Trump first started using the term “invasion” when a migrant caravan started moving toward the U.S.-Mexico border from more than a thousand miles away. Those asylum seekers are being forced to wait in Mexico for months or even years as their claims are processed.
Twitter quickly called Trump out:
A day after a white supremacist killed 49 people, Trump is talking about an 'invasion' of brown people. https://t.co/FhINEAJh1y
— Dan Desai Martin (@DanMartinTalks) March 15, 2019
You know who doesn't hate using the words "invasion" and "invaders" to refer to immigrants? The NZ shooters; the words appears 53 times in their manifesto.
Trump moved quickly from a rote condemnation of the terrorists to using the exact same hateful rhetoric the terrorists use https://t.co/t491w1PrHN
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) March 15, 2019
Trump echoes the rhetoric of the New Zealand mosque shooter, who wrote in his manifesto, "For many years I had been hearing and reading of the invasion of France by nonwhites… once I arrived in France, I found the stories not only to be true, but profoundly understated." https://t.co/gR8TqSHXau
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 15, 2019
Trump today, well after NZ attack discussing his border wall "People hate the word invasion, but that's what it is”
NZ shooter describing the same term “invaders” into Western & European countries & Trump as their influences.
Words matter!!!! Let’s not forget below. pic.twitter.com/TqB71EOruK
— Scooter (@ScooterMcNeice) March 15, 2019
This quote.
Actually, there are whole groups of people who love the word invasion so much, in fact, they actually kill in its name.
(Trump knew the word invasion was going to be controversial, said so, and still he used it) https://t.co/eHPNXN6zTF— Juliette Kayyem (@juliettekayyem) March 15, 2019
WATCH:
“[Trump] used the term ‘invasion’ to describe what is happening at the border. The shooter in New Zealand talked about invaders… there is a commonality of the rhetoric… that is the dangerous way [Trump] approaches his own politics" – @nickconfessore w/ @PeterAlexander pic.twitter.com/axsIIjBqLn
— Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) March 15, 2019
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