Hey Mike Pence – you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Even as America continues to get dragged to sometimes unpredictable new lows by Donald Trump, some things remain as predictable as ever. For instance, after Trump makes up a ridiculous lie, usually involving race, Mike Pence steps to the plate and defends that lie. It’s as if, after Trump sells the lie to his racist base, Pence has to assure that his own faux-Christian extremist base that that lie is indeed acceptable. Pence has done it again – but and this time in laughable fashion.
The caravan working its was through Central America is not a remotely relevant story to the United States, particularly with all the very real and Trump-created or Trump-worsened problems we’re facing. Nonetheless, Donald Trump has consistently mischaracterized the caravan in every way possible, in the hope of firing up his racist base and scaring paranoid suburban white people in general.
Not only is Trump falsely claiming that the caravan is full of immigrant criminals, he’s upping the racist ante by insisting that the caravan includes “Unknown Middle Easterners.” No one even knows what that lie is supposed to mean, but Mike Pence has decided to go ahead and defend it anyway. Pence announced at a Washington Post event today that “It’s inconceivable that there are not people of Middle Eastern descent in a crowd of more than 7,000 people advancing toward our border.”
This doesn’t even make sense. If Mike Pence is arguing that any given gathering of seven thousand people is bound to randomly have at least a few Middle Eastern people in it, then why should we be worried that the caravan might randomly have a few Middle Eastern people at it? Oh right, racism. What’s surreal here is that Pence is using such an oft-lampooned word like “inconceivable.” One character in the Princess Bride kept using that word incorrectly, prompting Inigo Montoya to say “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Mike Pence is out of his element. Perhaps he should stick to “Lodestar.”
