In the past few days, President Donald Trump has taken to Twitter once again to go on a tirade against illegal immigration and the Mexican people as a whole. It should come as no surprise that Trump spent his Easter Sunday ranting on Twitter, but it still makes me cringe.
I wish the president would stop using Twitter as his main means of communication to the American people. Yes, social media is a great way to gain a larger following and feel closer to the public, but it seems like this is Trump’s main way to announce his goals and plans.
Frankly, it’s unprofessional and unpresidential. The American people deserve to be addressed beyond social media. It’s even more unprofessional when you look at the content of his tweets. He really sounds like a middle schooler in a Twitter fight against Democrats and Mexico.
This recent string of tweets from Trump was specifically about illegal immigrants and Mexicans. He returned to his election rhetoric, promoting the building of a wall and implying Mexicans are bringing in “a massive inflow of Drugs and People.” He also blamed Democrats for killing DACA.
First of all, migration across the southern border has decreased, so they are not in fact bringing in massive amounts of people. I know to take everything he says with a grain of salt, but some of his devout followers believe everything he says, so fact-checking is necessary.
Secondly, this drug rhetoric is really starting to get old. He constantly reverts to this strategy as a way to demonize Mexican people — not like we have our own major opioid crisis going on right now.
In fact, statistics show that few Mexicans are migrating to America, and it’s mostly refugees fleeing violence and political instability in countries such as Honduras and El Salvador. As Americans, we should welcome people fleeing violence; after all, it’s what our country was built on.
So maybe it is time he drops the whole act before more people start fact-checking him. But the facts do not mean much to him or his followers — they just see them as “alternative facts.”
Another thing Trump needs to end is the idea of the wall. When I first heard him mention it during the campaign, I thought it had to be some stupid metaphor or joke. But alas, he is still stuck on the idea of building a wall.
I want to know where he is planning on getting the money to build this so-called wall, and why we have not seen much happening in constructing it, when he’s been president for well over a year now. To be fair, not much at all has happened, so why would I expect the wall to be anywhere near completion? But I digress.
Furthermore, I want to know why he thinks it’s a good idea to take money and build this wall, when our country literally has bridges falling apart and killing people. We could use some money building bridges that will stay standing as opposed to building a wall that people will inevitably go over or around anyways.
And that brings me to my final point, which is how this wall is the opposite of what we should be doing. If Trump is so concerned about illegal immigrants destroying our country, maybe he should focus his time on the current illegal immigrants in America — not the potential ones.
Our immigration system is broken, and it is so unimaginably difficult to obtain citizenship in this country. We need to create an easier, more effective path to citizenship and grant amnesty to the people who want that citizenship.
This anti-Mexican rhetoric in Twitter rants needs to end. It’s embarrassing, and I am sick of seeing these ridiculous tweets all across the internet, knowing they are coming from the man who supposedly runs this country.
