Them Damned Poster Boys

You too may be declared an enemy of the American people.

The first thing guys like Putin and Khamenei do is launch a war on the free press. Hitler did it. Stalin did it. Three generations of Kims have done it.

And now comes our own Donald Trump. This past week he whipped a rally in Tampa into a frenzy against those journalists he can’t control.

Our Founding Fathers were criticized as sharply as any officeholder today but they refused to ratify the constitution until it included an amendment to protect the very voices that challenged them.

Donald Trump has claimed the entire U.S. intelligence community, our courts, respected war heroes and broad sections of our population are conspiring to undermine his authority.

It’s possible that one day Donald Trump will accuse even his followers of being enemies of the people. They’ll realize that he’s coming for them. And that the Freedom of the Press helps protect all of us from thugs and tyrants.

Vladimir Putin did to Donald Trump what Donald Trump did to Stormy Daniels.

He lured Forty Five up to a room in Helsinki and had his way with him behind closed doors.

The Russian must have been so dominant that the U.S. president stood In front of the world media and betrayed his own U.S. intelligence community, embracing the lies of a guy who invaded, murdered, poisoned, shot down and rigged our elections.

“…adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

That’s how Article III of our Constitution defines treason. No president has gotten closer to that description than Donald Trump did with Vladimir Putin.

Our country is not “infested” by people fleeing across our border, as Donald Trump describes it.

It’s infested by the things that slither out of Donald Trump’s mouth

The president systematically associates HIspanics with drug dealers, rapists and murderers but never mentions that immigrants commit fewer crimes than other Americans. He dehumanizes tens of millions of our fellow citizens in the process.

He holds Hitler-style rallies where he rails against his target, as if they were insects and vermin, as if we should call in the exterminators to make America great again.

Few of us were alive in the 1930s, but there are letters in the attic and books in the library. We may want to read them again.

His lies are more dangerous than what he’s lying about.Donald Trump uses his lies as jokes and his jokes as threats.

He scrambles facts and walks back his statements as a raw exercise of power. He tries to destroy anyone who confronts him with the truth.

LIE: On June 16 the president blamed Democrats for a law that separates migrant parents from their children — there is not such law. The policy is his. Republicans have controlled the House for eight years, the Senate for four.

Joseph (Jose) wasn’t a carpenter, he was a bookkeeper.

And Mary (María) wasn’t a virgin, she conceived and gave birth in the normal way.

Their son Jesus (Jesús) is not the Son of God. Their family was sacred, but only in the way all families are sacred.

Their lives were put at risk when Joseph discovered rigged bids and money laundering at the Honduran branch of a Japanese construction firm where he worked.

After going missing for three days, he was found dead.

Mary decided she and her child had to flee. They made their way north through Mexico to the southern U.S. border.

“A shining city on a hill” is how Ronald Reagan described America. “If there had to be city walls,” he said during his farewell speech, “the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”

But Jesus and Mary came to the America of Donald Trump. He had decided to repel legal asylum seekers by following through on his threats to take away their children. Mary and baby Jesus were caught in his crosshairs.

Asylum seekers don’t sneak unseen across the border. They risk dangerous journeys in order to petition U.S. immigration authorities under a rigorous judicial process defined by Congress. Their fates can go either way.

What Ronald Reagan understood — and the Donald Trumps don’t — is that our neighbors don’t come to harm us.

They pick our vegetables, clean our buildings, bathe our kids and pay taxes. Later they start businesses, run for office and serve in the military just as generations of refugees fleeing violence and persecution have done before them.