DONALD Trump, the Republican candidate for president, thrives on controversy. Thus far, his campaign has been anchored on making outrageous statements that spark controversy and generate news coverage that can be aptly described as indecent exposure.
In announcing his candidacy last year, Trump described Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals, and has since called for building a 2,000-mile wall along the border with Mexico to keep out undesirable—illegal immigrants, drug traffickers and terrorists.
He has said he wants to stop all foreign Muslims from entering the United States, and last month belittled the parents of a slain Muslim US serviceman who had strongly denounced Trump during the Democratic National Convention. The soldier’s father, Trump suggested, delivered the whole speech because his mother was not allowed to speak.
Up until this month, Trump’s bigoted statements were merely a source of amusement—a cause for the occasional double-take—as we followed the progress of the US presidential campaign from the comfort of our armchairs here in Manila, thousands of kilometers away from Washington DC.
But this month, Trump’s attacks hit closer to home.
Speaking last week about his proposal to ban immigrants from “areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism” against the United States and its allies, Trump lumped the Philippines with 39 other countries that included Afghanistan, Iraq, Morocco, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Uzbekistan and Yemen.
“We are letting people come in from terrorist nations that shouldn’t be allowed because you can’t vet them,” Trump said at a rally in Portland, Maine.
“You have no idea who they are. This could be the great Trojan horse of all time,” he said.
As proof that even legal immigrants were a danger, Trump said an immigrant from Afghanistan who became a US citizen and a legal permanent resident from the Philippines were convicted last year of “plotting to join Al Qaida and the Taliban… to kill as many Americans as possible.”
“We’re dealing with animals,” he said, using a broad brush to smear some four million Filipinos who live and work in the United States.
Ironically, many of the Filipinos whom Trump has chosen to smear in his anti-immigrant screeds are more likely to be conservative supporters of the Republican Party than the Democratic Party.
Trump’s anti-Filipino remarks drew only a muted response from the Palace, where a presidential spokesman reminded the Republican candidate that he had praised Filipinos once when he was promoting a real estate project here in the Philippines.
More on point was the reaction from Senator Brian Shatz of Hawaii, where Filipinos made up 23 percent of the state’s population in the year 2000, according to the US Census Bureau.
“Donald Trump’s latest rant suggesting we ban immigration from countries like the Philippines that are helping us fight terrorism is another example of his reckless rhetoric that’s based on fear and division and further proves he is unfit to lead our country,” Shatz said in a statement.
“For generations, Filipinos have made the United States their home. It is their vibrant culture, hard work, and strong values that have enriched our communities and made this country great, not the ignorant, racist bigotry of Donald Trump.”
