(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
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Trump’s Hateful New Rants at Rally Are Harshly Debunked by Town Leader [1]

['Greg Sargent', 'Hafiz Rashid', 'Paige Oamek', 'Parker Molloy', 'Michael Tomasky', 'Timothy Noah', 'Simon Lazarus']

Date: 2024-09-25

What about Trump’s claim that towns across Pennsylvania are being swamped by job-stealing immigrants? Well, the state’s unemployment rate is 3.4 percent, so it’s unclear how this represents a “war on workers,” as Trump says. As Paul Krugman explains, immigrants often boost employment for the native-born in such communities, because they spend money in them. As for Trump’s suggestion that immigrants are unleashing a crime wave in the state, asked whether there’s been any uptick in crime in Charleroi, Manning bluntly replied: “No.”

Obviously the facts can only go so far, because at bottom, Trump is telling an emotionally charged story. His deeper claim—reflected in the suggestion that the town is now a “totally different place”—is that this supposedly huge influx has changed its fundamental makeup beyond recognition. On this score, it’s worth reproducing a full Trump monologue from the rally:

Think of the cruelty Kamala Harris has inflicted on the people of Pennsylvania. You live in a small town your whole life. You pay your taxes. You really are exemplary. You pay everything. You do everything. You love your town. You love your country. You know the town so well. By name. You’re just so proud of it. And suddenly she flies in thousands and thousands of migrants from the most dangerous places on earth. And they deposit them right smack in the middle of your community.

Trump’s claim, at bottom, is that Haitian immigrants are stealing away people’s identity—the parts of their identity that are rooted in place, in shared local memory and custom, in blood and soil.

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[1] Url: https://newrepublic.com/article/186331/trump-hateful-rally-pennsylvania-debunked-town-leader

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