Trump Admin Has Stacked the Government with Bigoted, Extreme Individuals In High Ranking Positions – And that Will Have Real Consequences for Our Country
Almost a year ago, a man asked a simple question in an essay: “What good has Muslim immigration done for the United States and the American people?” In the same essay, he tries to pick apart America’s very essence. Diversity, he argued, is a weakness. America, he declared, is not a nation of immigrants. And Islam, according to him, inspires acts of terror. All completely false.
Today, the author has a place in President Donald Trump’s administration.
Michael Anton is working with the National Security Council, where he is shaping America’s policy with his own horrifying racist outlook. Sadly, this just the tip of a larger racist iceberg heading America’s way with Donald Trump as President. In reality, Donald Trump is stacking his administration full of people like Anton with views that are out of touch with mainstream America and downright racist. And he’s doing it with the goal of dragging our country backwards and implementing dangerous policies that will have serious consequences.
Jeff Sessions — a man who was notably deemed too racist to be a federal judge, but is now attorney general — will have the ability to change the very fabric of civil rights through the enforcement, or lack thereof, of law.
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, national security adviser and proponent of fake news, once called Islam a “malignant cancer” and Islamic ideology “sick” is shaping American foreign policy and defense. He may have already broken the law when he allegedly told the Russians that sanctions implemented after they engaged in cyberwarfare would be rolled back under a Trump administration.
Treasury pick Steve Mnuchin and his bank OneWest were accused of refusing to give loans to black customers, and could shape economic policy for all Americans.
And, of course, chief strategist Steve Bannon openly embraced the racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic alt-right and catapulted it, and Trump, into the national political sphere through the website Breitbart. He has the biggest power of all: the ear of the president and the ability to solicit Trump’s approval for Bannon’s bigoted agenda.
It’s from these minds that Trump’s Muslim ban, a blatant attempt to normalize mass-targeted religious discrimination that runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution and violates our core American values, was spawned. And that’s just the beginning.
The consequences of these actions are very real. The reality is that long-term economic growth has benefited from immigration while there was little effect on wages and the employment of natural born citizens. Muslim Americans in particular have played a critical role in our armed services, in our economy and in cultural life. Islamic scholar Nathan Lean has written about just a few of the contributions Muslims have made to America, including designing the Willis and Hancock towers in Chicago and developing a chemotherapy mechanism that allows brain tumors to be treated.
Thankfully, Trump’s Muslim ban is currently being challenged in the courts. But it’s unlikely to be the last time the administration bases a policy on racist ideas. What the administration fails to grasp is that America has long stood as a land of hope and possibility for those seeking refuge, equality and safety. And that its policies are the things that should no longer be welcome in it.
The Founding Fathers believed “all men are created equal” and included at the very top of the document launching the revolution. Though “all men” didn’t actually include everyone until much later, it has guided us toward a more just and equal nation for more than 240 years. Donald Trump is trying to roll back the very principles on which our country was founded and he’s doing it by stacking his administration with racist leaders who are pulling the levers across all levels of government. That’s a recipe for disaster, and he must be stopped.