Former game show host and president Donald Trump leads a Saturday afternoon mutual admiration session/Trump worship service, courtesy of Elon. (C-SPAN screengrab)
As you may have noticed, media organizations in the U.S. and maybe the world over have developed a huge crush lately on headlines that have a numeral followed by the word “takeaways” – “3 takeaways from Melania’s chapter on White House Christmas decorations” – that sort of thing.
So in the spirit of getting on the bandwagon before mockery and scorn of the industry fad becomes as trite as the fad itself (if it hasn’t already), here are … hmm … looks like six … takeaways from Trump’s “roundtable” with Hispanic voters in North Las Vegas Saturday (as witnessed on C-SPAN).
Brought to you by Elon. The event was organized and hosted by Building America’s Future. It’s a dark money group, which means we’re not supposed to know where the group’s money comes from. But thanks to Reuters, we know that some (if not most or all) of it comes from the nation’s second weirdest freak show, Elon Musk, who during this 2024 presidential race has become an ardent fan boy of the first weirdest.
Won’t someone think of the children (and specifically, their school boards)? While responding to remarks made by Clark County School Board candidate Lydia Dominguez, a Moms for Liberty alum who is very worried about the sort of things Moms for Liberty are very worried about, Trump said the following: “You look at the school boards, what’s happening, they’re being treated like terrorists. I’ve never seen anything like it.” No one has.
“We have the worst border in the history of the world,” Trump said. Some say the first “country” in world history was Egypt, others say Iran. Both came into being as what we might loosely call “countries” about 6,000 years ago. There have been many, many borders for many, many countries and peoples since then. But none – none! – have been worse than the United States is right now, according to the world’s greatest and most profound student of History, Donald J. Trump, speaking in a Las Vegas construction contractor’s warehouse Saturday. (The Mexican border that white settlers illegally poured over in the 1830s in what is now the state of Texas could not be reached for comment.)
“Those were the days, my friend,” said/sang Goya Foods CEO and gushing Trump worshiper Bob Unanue, describing how much more prosperous Latino households were when Trump was president. Yes, everything was practically perfect in every way, Trump agreed. Alas, the Pew Research Center was not at Saturday’s event. If it had been, it likely would have pointed out that by several metrics Latino household economic performance was quite similar under both administrations, and despite the high inflation that marked much of Biden’s presidency, “inflation-adjusted wages are higher than under Donald Trump.”
Lousy with Texans. Republican Sam Brown, who moved to Nevada from Texas in 2018 and is now running for a U.S. Senate seat, got to sit a couple chairs away from Trump and say a few words Saturday. Among them was a thank you and shout out to Texas Republican U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, who was in attendance. The event was moderated by Texas Republican Mayra Flores, who was elected to Congress from Texas in a special election in 2022, got beat in the general election a few months later, and is now running for Congress again, as well as hosting Trump events organized by a dark money PAC funded by Elon Musk. Who is also a Texan, or at least fancies himself to be one.
Immigrants are stealing your jobs. Well, maybe not your job. “African-Americans and Hispanic Americans, people are pouring in and taking your jobs,” Trump said, like he always does. By the “millions,” he added, like he always does. None of this is true, which makes them the same as prior assertions Trump has made on the subject that were not even mathematically possible. But at least someone in the Trump campaign trained him to stop saying “Black jobs.”