Trump’s Final Solution
Trump’s response to the question of bringing Kilmar Ábrego García back home was to joke about it with El Salvador dictator Nayib Bukele. García is a refugee who, despite living legally in the United States, was kidnapped and deported and caged in a horrific El Salvadorian prison without due process. Trump then said, “Home growns [i.e., natural born Americans] are next. You’ve gotta build about five more places [i.e., prisons].” Several ghouls present for the pronouncement in the Oval Office applauded.
It reminded me of what Hitler’s government did. Sort of. Hitler ordered dozens of concentration camps built in Poland to house — and eventually murder — Jews, Gypsies, gay people and political dissidents. SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler’s deputy, assembled the various heads of government at Wannsee to make sure they cooperated in the “Final Solution.”
The difference between what Hitler did and what Trump is doing is Hitler and his various minions didn’t boast about it. They kept it top secret. They understood it wouldn’t go over well with most of the German people, let alone the world community. Trump isn’t bothered with such niceties. Not only does Trump plot his atrocities out loud, he thinks they’re funny.
After ordering Trump and company to comply with the law and expedite Garcia’s release, US district judge Paula Xinis said that Donald Trump’s joking about Kilmar Ábrego García’s plight did not count as compliance. The judge ultimately said she would require the administration to produce details under oath about its attempts to return Ábrego García to US soil in two weeks. The British newspaper, The Guardian, calls this “an unusually expeditious timeline for discovery.”
I’m calling bullshit here. I don’t know about you, brothers and sisters, but I am sick to death of judges making “stern pronouncements.” I endured years of tough talk from judges toward Trump’s lawyers, and even Trump himself, that came to nothing stronger than a sternly-worded letter to the editor. We’re expected to believe that two weeks is “expeditious”? That means two more weeks for Kilmar Ábrego García in that human hell hole. It must seem more like two years.
I want real consequences for these outrages. I want lawyers thrown in prison for contempt. I want Trump threatened with imminent impeachment. The fact that we are not seeing these things is why Trump and his glassy-eyed claque of lickspittles are laughing. There are no consequences for Trump’s outrages against human freedom.
Wonder no more why Auschwitz was tolerated by Hitler’s upper echelon. Wonder no more why much of the German people enthusiastically endorsed Hitler. The fascist playbook of shock and awe works. It works despite the cautionary tale of the most evil instance of industrial-scale murder in history. We are seeing the beginning of Trump’s Final Solution, and we are forced to watch while journalists refer to tepid pushback as “unusually expeditious.” Unbelievable.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.