Trump Denies His Own Hiring Of Illegal Immigrants So His Followers Won’t Know He’s Part Of The Problem

Joseph Goebbels is credited with saying, “Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty.” Donald Trump embodies that philosophy to a tee. He rails against the illegal immigrants who are coming to take your jobs, sell you drugs and rape and kill your family — and then he turns right around and hires them. And always has done so. Washington Post:

Not only has The Post extensively documented (see here, here and here) that multiple clubs he owns have employed undocumented immigrants for years, similar practices have been a feature of his businesses since early in his career. A few highlights:

• Trump Tower in New York was built in part by undocumented Polish laborers who later sued Trump, citing “nightmare memories of backbreaking 12-hour shifts and of being cheated with 200 other undocumented Polish immigrants out of meager wages and fringe benefits.” As one put it, “We worked in horrid, terrible conditions. … We were frightened illegal immigrants and did not know enough about our rights.”

• Trump Model Management, the modeling agency Trump created, brought in foreign models and instructed them to lie to customs officials and claim they were tourists when in fact they were coming to work, according to a Mother Jones investigation. The models were housed in squalid apartments for which Trump charged them exorbitant rent, leaving them with minuscule pay for the work they were doing.

• At Mar-a-Lago, Trump regularly hires foreign workers to be cooks, waiters and housekeepers, claiming he simply can’t find Americans to do the work. But he seems to try as hard as possible not to find Americans, doing the bare minimum required by law to fill the positions before looking abroad. He takes out two small ads in the Palm Beach Post, to which an applicant can reply only by mail or fax, not in person, online or by phone.

Immigration is a system. Trump is part of that system. But he doesn’t want his followers to think too much about that — or about anything. What they love about him, and what he is grateful to them for, is that they swallow the simplistic visions he gives them of walls and deportation. They don’t want to know about policy and he couldn’t explain it to them anyhow, because it doesn’t exist. Trump’s political depth doesn’t go beyond talking points and sound bites. Trump certainly never would want to clue his followers into the larger picture of how immigrants, even the illegal ones, are intrinsic parts of an employment ecosystem in the larger ecosystem of the economy. And no way will he ever admit his willing participation in this system. When he was leaving the White House on Friday he was asked what he knew about undocumented workers employed at Mar-a-Lago and at his other properties, in light of the fact that many of his groundskeepers, maids, and waiters have come forward and revealed that they worked for the Trump organization as illegal aliens.

“Well, that I don’t know. Because I don’t run it,” Trump said. “But I would say this, probably every club in the United States has that, because it seems to me, from what I understand, a way that people did business.”

Right. It’s nothing personal, it’s just business. And now that Trump’s day job is impersonating a United States president, when he’s not busy golfing, of course, he’s going to deny that he himself is a key player in the system which he claims is irrevocably broken and which his political adversaries refuse to fix.

One can only wonder if the day will ever dawn when Trump’s minions and sycophants realize that he’s not only not the solution to any problem — but that he is, in fact, part of the problem; and has been his entire life. What sublime irony that Trump poses as the outsider, who is going to fix the system when he is, in fact, a representative of that which is the most corrupt in said system.