Donald Trump has blown his opponents out of the water by winning the Iowa Caucus a mere 30 minutes after it started. Some of this is undoubtedly due to Trump’s insistence that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the U.S., and MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell thinks this is a key reason Nikki Haley couldn’t gain enough footing among MAGA voters in the lead-up to the Iowa caucus.
O’Donnell took part in MSNBC’s election night coverage of Trump’s win in Iowa and commented on this after hosts Ari Melber and Jen Psaki brought up the fact that Trump’s indictments have helped him gain GOP support, according to Mediaite.
“look, i also think we’re going to see tomorrow, and we saw last week that trump is basically running a campaign in the courtroom, right. he was there more than he was in iowa over the last week. is that going to work for the Republican electorate? seems pretty clearly from these entrance polls. yes,” Psaki said. “but to your point, the whole electorate is an entirely different population of people. and trump loves his own strategy. so it’s very possible that he may keep doubling down on that.”
Indeed, the Republican electorate seems more impressed with corruption than with honesty. Trump, with his court theatrics, often sounds like he’s campaigning and it certainly keeps him in the public eye 24/7. So for all we know, this may be his happiest time, even as he rants on Truth Social and looks for all the world to be enraged.
O’Donnell concurred with Psaki and then offered up another argument: “The worst thing we’ve learned about the Republican primary electorate is not yet in these entrance poll questions tonight. CBS poll, their final poll before the Iowa caucuses, this is a national poll shows that 81 percent of Republican primary voters and caucus participants, 81 percent of those people, agree with Donald Trump that immigrants are poisoning the blood of this country.”
“that means that 81 percent of the Republican primary electorate believe nikki haley has poisoned blood and is poisoning the blood of the united states,” O’donnell said, noting that Haley’s parents are immigrants from india.
“so, that as a roadblock for nikki haley is impossible. but it also shows you what you’re up against in any kind of campaign against voters like that, the convertability of voters like that to anything other than the trump view of the world is impossible. there’s no campaign ad, there’s no speech you can make. There’s no, you know, Republican who chris christie might be able to convince some of them. not them,” o’donnell said. “not any of the 81 percent. not one of them can be converted.”
That is the sad state this country has arrived at largely thanks to Donald Trump. He’s made racism almost acceptable again, with his comments about “Bad hombres,” and trying to do everything he can to keep people with Middle Eastern roots out of this country. His infamous border wall has been a failure and in some ways, this has fueled even more racists to come out from the primordial slime. They fail to see that the U.S. is a true melting pot of many cultures including indigenous ones that were nearly eradicated by encroaching Europeans.
Joy Reid, agreeing with O’Donnell’s remarks also noted: “And the bottom line is, you know, as much as we, you know, we want to respect and it’s been interesting listening to these voters, you must understand that the Republican base is overwhelmingly those people.”
“it’s white evangelicals for whom supporting trump is a matter of faith. it is a matter of their religion. it is a religion. and therefore nikki haley is unacceptable for the reasons lawrence has just said. she is one of the people poisoning the blood of the country.”
Reid noted that Vivek Ramaswamy’s wife traveled to Iowa in the hopes of convincing people to vote for her husband but when she arrived back home, people were saying “Well you know, um where are you from again? Were you born in the, you know, wasn’t was your husband born in the United States? Because, you know, what religion are you again? Oh, you were Hindu. I don’t know if that’s acceptable to me.”
“and saying that to her face and he suddenly discovered at the end that, i do’t know, he went sideways with trump somehow. and trump started attacking him and saying he actually went birther on him, you know, and any moment those voters could do the same thing.”
I think O’Donnell is probably correct in saying that this is the hurdle Haley will face. And this is sad. People aren’t objecting to her because of her obvious anti-trans agenda or her continuing support of the NRA over the safety of our children. No, for these people the fact her parents are from Amritsar, Punjab, India, is what they are worried about the most.
This is what Donald Trump has wrought. He’s brought racism back from the 1960s without the good music.
It’s clearly a V.P. pageant to trump who will look for the usual
sucker to balance out the entire GQP ticket.
Ahh yes – the ‘poisoned blood’ – from someone whose father was the offspring of two immigrants, his mother was an immigrant and 4 of his 5 offspring are also the children of an immigrant.
But then he’s too stupid to actually realise that (I wonder if Baby Donny, Earache and Iwanna know they have ‘poisoned blood’)
Actually, Trump is (and has talked about) being fine with immigrants who are WHITE and from western European countries. “England” (to him the UK is all England) and Scandinavia. I recall him publicly encouraging them to come here and live. The funny part is that people from those places Trump extolled as being where we should seek and only accept immigrants from aren’t interested! By large margins they prefer to stay right where they are and are a combination of bewildered and amused by Trump’s entreaties because they look at the U.S. and say (with justification via any number of metrics) they’ve got it much better in their own countries. People are happier in those countries.
True Denis, but it’s also true that the majority of his brood had a mother from a former Communist country.
Poisoned blood? Hell, that is the least of it although the ‘pube party is where you will find that kind of filthy belief. She has an even worse problem with them: wrong genitalia.
I would like to see a poll of indigenous Indians here. Even though they have been driven off their lands, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t poll 81% that immigrants poisoned the blood of the country, even though in their case it did. Probably because they would have trouble with rug pulls and rope cutters.