At 6:58 pm, Donald Trump slowly made his way across the stage in Wichita, Kansas, just after a deeply disturbing video was played for the audience explaining all of the reasons that “God made Trump.” The reasons for his holy creation included his friendships with the authoritarian leaders of China and North Korea, his love of kissing the American flag, and that one time Melania slipped and Donald Trump didn’t let her fall. While images of his supposed greatness played on the screen, a narrator said, “God had to have somebody willing to go into the den of vipers and call out the fake news… So God made Trump.”
That was just the start of one of the most racist and un-American 1 hour and 37 minutes our country has ever seen, where Donald Trump laid out his dangerous plan for how he intends to completely dismantle the United States. But when he finally launched into his prepared remarks, he wasn’t the only one with something to say. Throughout his speech, he was interrupted by protesters six times, including one woman screaming ‘I f*cking hate you!’ directly at him, while others caused lengthy disruptions that left Donald Trump growing more annoyed with each one.
In between these brave protests, the president was grappling for something coherent to say, at one point telling his gathered loyalists that he was “Sharper now than he was 20 years ago” but also adding that he “doesn’t know why.” He spent time complaining that “nobody appreciates how great a president I am,” just as a member of his radicalized followers screamed, “I do!” He bragged that Venezuela was the “greatest probably military maneuver ever,” forgetting all that went into WW2, the Civil War, and the American Revolution, just to name a few.
His ramblings didn’t stay focused on the states, either. He also went after our friends and neighbors to the north, threatening Canada once again when he said, “I do like their national anthem and I promise them if they become a 51st state, which is actually what they should do. I said, I will let you keep ice hockey and I will let you keep your O Canada national anthem. I like it. So, they can have it as a state anthem.” But when the laughter he apparently expected never came, he added, “nah, we’re only kidding. We’re having a good time.”
In normal times, that all would have been bad enough, but these are Donald Trump times, so it got darker from there when he turned his attention to another past ally of ours, France, and immigrants from emerging countries, or as Donald Trump describes them, from “third world” places where “low IQ” people come from. He told the audience, trying to connect protests by teenagers over their education to our midterms, “If you want to see what is at stake in this election, just look at what’s happening in France. A once great nation that is being conquered, luttered (he meant looted), and burned to the ground by migrants, jihadists, and communists who hate Christianity. They hate, frankly, the Western civilization itself.” He then tried to make the connection even clearer between Democrats here and liberal-leaning politicians in France, accusing them of having “treasonously imported millions and millions of third world migrants who are totally incompatible with Western values,” insisting that they “despise everything about France and they’re destroying that country.”
He didn’t stop there. He also called these made-up immigrants “vandals who could have never built it themselves,” people who “refuse to assimilate into their society but only want to enter the welfare state paid for by hardworking citizens of France.” After that, he decided to bring the whole of Europe into his rant, going on about how it was a widespread problem and that “They’re losing their country. They’re losing Europe.” He had just been talking about multiple European nations, and then referred to them as though they were all a single country.
Donald Trump doesn’t like facts, but they still matter. The protests in France started back in late September with high school and university students taking to the streets over severe teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms, school days that can stretch to ten hours, crumbling infrastructure, and years of underfunding. It has since grown to address other concerns as well, but there has been no credible reporting establishing that this has anything to do with immigration. Even Marine Le Pen’s French far-right party has not made this claim.
Trump got even more specific about dehumanizing immigrants back home when he went after specific Americans by name. He attacked Congresswoman Ilhan Omar by saying, “She comes from maybe the worst country in the entire world, Somalia,” and that all they do “is shoot each other.” He called Congresswoman Maxine Waters a “low IQ person,” a term he often reserves for Black folks. He told what he considered a joke that if you call someone “from that part of the world” Muhammad, “you’re about 65% sure to get it right.”
Every time I hear him say something deplorable about migrants, I think about the people who have been there in some of our most vulnerable moments and how many of them have been immigrants. I think about how, in the spring of 2020, I had emergency surgery when nobody was allowed to be with me. I think about how my husband had to leave me at the door to the emergency department, not knowing if I would survive. And I think about the people who took care of me throughout that entire ordeal, who helped me heal and made me feel human again, and how so many of them were immigrants and the children and grandchildren of immigrants.
I think about the Vietnamese nurse who gently made sure I got up and started walking after surgery. I think about the Hispanic nurse who went above and beyond by washing and braiding my hair when they heard me say how much I just wanted to feel normal again. I think about the Black nurse who promised to be right beside me through my entire surgery and afterward, because he told me he could only imagine how horrible it would be to go through something like that with no family by my side. I think about the nurse with the thick European accent who, once I was finally allowed to have coffee, went downstairs on her break and used her own money to buy me a coffee from the coffee shop because she thought it would taste better than what I was being served. In the moment, I didn’t think about their country of origin or the country their ancestors had come from. I just thought about how lucky I was to have all of them caring for me. Those are the people he is describing when he calls immigrants “vandals” and who he wants us to see as our enemies. He wants us to look at each other and instantly think “threat” instead of “fellow human being.”
The room he gave the speech in today was filled with his most radicalized super fans, but there were also people who see exactly what Trump is doing and decided they had to do more to stop him. Donald Trump was interrupted every few minutes by protesters, and each time the reaction from the crowd grew more ugly. As one protester, a nonviolent older gentleman, was being escorted out, a man sitting in the stands reached out and hit him while the crowd chanted “USA! USA!”
He also told a story about another rally he held where a Trump super fan attacked someone. “Two people were fighting, a MAGA guy and another guy,” he said. “The MAGA guy beat the crap out of him, by the way. But not that that matters.” Then he added, “The MAGA guy was pretty tough guy, good-looking guy.”
These Americans were exercising the most fundamental right this country has ever promised its people, the right to speak, dissent, and say this is not who we are or what we stand for. But Donald Trump doesn’t see it that way. He sees every person using their voices against what he is doing as a threat to his very survival. He told the crowd that the protesters were “paid,” that they receive “$250 bucks” and that they “ruin their whole lives because they get arrested.” Donald Trump is trying to portray political dissent as something criminal and something only a fool would do. He wanted every person watching to understand that if you speak up, you will be branded, discredited, and cast out from society, or worse. This is all part of his plan for what comes after the midterm elections.
He also let us in on what he plans to do with the media when he said, “Oh, I’d love to sue the media,” and then he gave his garbled thoughts on New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court decision that protects the press from defamation lawsuits brought by public officials who cannot prove actual malice. That ruling allows us to criticize the powerful without being financially destroyed by lawsuits. That is the protection Donald Trump wants gone so that he can sue anyone who speaks out against him. It is a shocking statement and a very concerning threat for those of us who write about Donald Trump’s corruption every single day.
But every time Donald Trump says something like this or takes action against the media, I launch what I call my economic protest. It is something that I made a promise to do every time he attacked the First Amendment and the right of the American people to speak out against his corruption. So tonight I am asking you to join me in getting louder against what he is doing. Write your own post denouncing his attack on migrants. Use my words if you need to. Let our community members know that they are safe with you. And join me in also putting our money where our voices are. When he attacks the First Amendment, we need to defend it and protect and support the people he wants to silence. This, and voting, are the most direct forms of resistance available to us right now. Independent media keeps the truth alive when every other system is captured and turned into state media. I have written every single night for a year and a half with no corporate backing or sponsorship money. I do not want anyone to be able to reach into what I write and change a word of it. Every post I write is free for everyone, because the truth should never be behind a paywall. But that is only possible because of the people who joined the resistance community with a paid membership, who understand what is at stake, and who choose to support it. Thank you to everyone who has made it possible for me to do this work. I never intended for this to be my life’s work, but in these trying times, we all have to step up when the opportunity presents itself, and I am thankful to be able to do it.
Tonight, as I say every time Donald Trump threatens the freedom of the press, don’t just think about my voice. Think about your other favorite writers, journalists, podcasters, social media content creators, and the independent outlets that you turn to every single day when you need to be able to trust what you are reading. The ones who are still standing with the truth, even when doing so comes at great cost and carries the risk of what Donald Trump will do next. They need your support so that they can keep doing this important work, and we need to make sure that they have the resources to defend themselves against threats, including those coming from the president of the United States.
I keep coming back to those protesters in Wichita, and how they walked into a room full of danger and protested anyway. I think about how concerning it is to speak out in any capacity against the Trump Regime, knowing full well how radicalized his followers have become from the emails and messages we receive, but also knowing how much more dangerous it would be if we all stopped resisting. How quickly our entire government and country could fall into an authoritarian hellscape. I think about how Donald Trump wants us to see each other as enemies and how we just see neighbors who are valued members of our community. He wants us to be afraid of each other. But we are not and never will be. Hate will never have a place in our hearts or homes. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.
Picture of the day: We went to the pumpkin patch today as a family. I was pinching myself that we all still do this together, while also acknowledging that there will come a day when the kids won’t all be in town to go with us. I’m just thankful this year wasn’t it. Today’s picture is exactly what I intended it to be when I started taking one every day back in 2020, when hope and small bits of joy were so hard to come by, when the TV and news showed death and suffering, including refrigerator trucks outside hospitals. I can’t believe that was six years ago. I remember taking a picture of my daughter’s favorite pasta shape one day because it was the thing that made me smile. As tough as those times were, they did make me realize that it really is the small things in life that have the biggest impact.
Links to sources used in writing this article:
Trump delivers remarks at rally in Kansas just weeks out from midterms: YouTube Video
https://www.thedailybeast.com/republicans-show-laughable-god-made-trump-video-at-maga-fyre-fest/
Where is that delegation of Republican congressional reps? The ones who will go to the whitehouse and say enough is enough. Cowering behind chairs, or sacks of cash? They will be remembered for their cowardice.
Thank you for sharing the story about the nurses who took care of you. That part really stood out—kindness and competence shouldn’t be reduced to someone’s background. Appreciate you putting that reminder out there.