Musk’s Attack On Media Matters Could Become ‘Playbook’ Under Trump II

Posted on by Kate Riga

Donald Trump’s antagonism towards the press has become so well-established as to be unremarkable. 

In a recurring bit, he gripes about some reporter or coverage he doesn’t like, gestures to the press pen at the back of his rallies and encourages his followers to boo the journalists. He sends out all-caps screeds about reporters who have wronged him, assigns them dehumanizing nicknames (see: Maggot Haberman), vows to jail those who don’t disclose their sources, threatens to revoke cable news stations’ broadcast licenses. 

Continue reading “Musk’s Attack On Media Matters Could Become ‘Playbook’ Under Trump II” → 

Uncertain, But Not Necessarily Close

Posted on by Josh Marshall

I’ve made this point a few times in recent weeks, here and on the podcast. I’m going to make the point again because I think it’s critical for understanding this election nine days out. We keep hearing that this is the closest election in decades. Polls say that’s right. At least 5 of the 7 swing states are within a single percentage point — fairly meaningless margins statistically. National poll averages are between one and two points — right on the cusp of where most believe a Democratic Electoral College victory becomes possible. But I don’t think that’s the right way to look at it. What we have is a high uncertainty election. That’s not the same thing. There’s every chance that most or every race that looks close will veer more or less uniformly in one direction. And that wouldn’t necessarily be because of one late-breaking story, some great decision by one of the candidates or even undecideds all “breaking” in one way. It could simply be because the dominant understanding of the race and the electorate was just a bit off and had been all along.

Continue reading “Uncertain, But Not Necessarily Close” → 

Trust, Bewilderment and Billionairedom: Understanding the Backlash Against Bezos

Posted on by Josh Marshall

It’s part of the stock in trade of liberal American discourse: threatening or claiming to cancel a subscription to this or that once-revered journalistic institution in response to bad behavior, bad reporting, failing to rise to this or that civic moment. But the rash of cancelations of The Washington Post, in response to the Bezos-driven non-endorsement seems very different, much more sizable in its scope. I should say here I’m not telling anyone to do that. I don’t like telling or pushing people to do things in general. On this whole push I’m genuinely agnostic, neither for or against it. And most importantly, I write in this case simply as an observer, not a cheerleader. But I think the brand damage to the Post may be greater even than people realize and go beyond whatever near-term hit they take on subscriptions. I want to share some thoughts on why I think that is.

A big slice of American is living in a climate of deepening bewilderment. That’s basically Blue America, civic America and the more politicized part of the group I’m describing. This bewilderment is tied to the role of billionaires in public life, the role of Donald Trump in our public life, but it goes beyond both.

Continue reading “Trust, Bewilderment and Billionairedom: Understanding the Backlash Against Bezos” → 

Putin’s Little Finger

Posted on by Josh Kovensky

Hello. It’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️

The Wall Street Journal provided inside details on Thursday about Elon Musk’s ongoing phone calls with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

There’s an obvious national security issue here, as the piece notes: Through SpaceX, Musk is a top defense contractor for the U.S. government. He gives the DoD access to space, where some of the country’s most sensitive technologies are employed. The vulnerabilities of that arrangement are, to some extent, already known: Federal intelligence agencies warned last year that Russian and Chinese spies are targeting SpaceX in an effort to steal sensitive technology.

But focusing on the narrow national security, espionage-related angles here somewhat undersells the story.

Musk has spent the past several years building out his place as a sine qua non right-wing apparatchik. Conservative movement influencers praise his acquisition of Twitter because they see it as having seized the public forum where journalists, politicians, think tankers, and others discuss and form ideas, tilting the platform far to the right. (Take a look at your “For You” tab if you disagree with that diagnosis.) Others, on the even further right, have floated Musk as a supposed “man of destiny,” a figure capable of action that would rout the left once and for all.

As his influence grew in American domestic politics, Musk began to play a larger role internationally. He supplied Starlink terminals to Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion, providing what soldiers there have described as a vital communications link for the military. But as the war went on in its first year, reports started to emerge that Musk had begun to speak with senior Kremlin officials. Late in 2022, Musk began to restrict access to Starlink for Ukrainian troops, and began to make pro-Russian statements online. He complained that SpaceX couldn’t afford the expense of running Starlink for Ukraine; geopolitical analyst Ian Bremmer said at the time on Twitter that Musk had told him that he spoke with Putin and other Kremlin officials. Since then, the WSJ reported, Musk has maintained contact with top Russians; at one point, the paper reported, Musk declined to activate Starlink in Taiwan. The Kremlin had asked for it as a favor to the Chinese regime.

There aren’t borders to political currents. You might, for good reason, think that Trump is an authoritarian at home; the facts suggest that Musk is engaging with its global axis. For him, the benefit is lower taxes, lax regulations, and (maybe) the chance to shape how the government treats his heavily regulated businesses. It’s an abdication in a way: he’s not acting as an independent businessman with interests apart from those of the government. Rather, he’s subordinating himself (and his interests) to those of a potential future leader. Be it for Trump or for Putin, the relationship is the same: the oligarch only gets to play so long as the king is happy.

— Josh Kovensky

Here’s what else TPM has on tap this weekend:

  • Khaya Himmelman details how state election administrators are already debunking a wave of election misinformation, some spread by members of Congress, as early voting gets underway. 
  • Emine Yücel, meanwhile, takes note of the election violence we’re already seeing, and the violence law enforcement is readying itself for. 
  • New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu acknowledges that when you support Trump, supporting authoritarianism is already kind of “baked in,” Emine Yücel writes.

Let’s dig in. 

Election Officials Are Already Working Hard To Get Out Ahead Of MAGA Conspiracy Theories …

Still reeling from the dangerous aftermath of 2020, election officials across the country are bracing for an onslaught of election misinformation and conspiracy theories as Election Day draws nearer.

In Georgia, GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has been working to dispel conspiracy theories about Dominion voting machines, freshly spread by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and far-right broadcaster Alex Jones. As my colleague Nicole Lafond pointed out this week, Greene appeared on Jones’ show to spread a false story about Dominion voting machines “flipping” votes during early voting in her state. Raffensperger, however, pointed out in a segment for CBS’s “Face the Nation” that it was the voter who accidentally filled out the wrong selection on a ballot and that the issue was quickly resolved while the voter was still on-site. 

Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is also preparing for another election misinformation battle. In 2020, the state was ground zero for conspiracy theories, and, in turn, for dangerous threats against election officials across the state. Fontes is trying to get out ahead of any potential damage that could be done at the hands of election deniers this cycle. In an interview for POLITICO’S Tech podcast, Fontes said: “We are the center of the storm when it comes to election denialism.” 

He added: “Everybody’s just gotten a little more sophisticated, I guess, in this battle for the truth. But luckily, we’ve got the truth on our side, so those guys will lose eventually.”

And in Colorado state officials are educating voters on how to spot election misinformation and election intimidation ahead of time. Democratic Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold recently publicized information on a new Colorado law requiring political candidates to label content that is generated by AI, according to reporting from the Durango Herald. 

But, for months now, well before the almost two-week lead up to Election Day, election officials have been preparing to prevent threats to election workers motivated by baseless conspiracy theories about the election system. Election offices have implemented mental health training, stronger partnerships for law enforcement, new security training, increased security measures around election facilities, and even, in some counties, the installation of panic buttons.

— Khaya Himmelman

… While Law Enforcement Braces For Potential Violence

Federal and local law enforcement and other officials in Washington, D.C., are ramping up preparations to ensure a safe and peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2025, and on Inauguration Day.

Although officials said there are no specific threats to the city at this time, they are planning ahead, including for problems that may grow out of the misinformation and disinformation that will flood social media about the outcome and the security of the election.

Officials, this week, announced that fencing will be erected around the U.S. Capitol building from Jan. 5 through Jan. 21 for security purposes.

“I think that the United States Capitol Police are prepared to ensure a peaceful transfer of power at the Capitol, regardless of the victor,” D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said.

This election has already seen some violent incidents.

Earlier this week, police arrested a 60-year-old man suspected of shooting at a Tempe, Arizona Democratic National Convention office that organizes and campaigns for Vice President Kamala Harris as well as state House and Senate candidates.

The suspect, identified as Jeffrey Michael Kelly, was arrested late Tuesday and charged with unlawful discharge of a firearm, shooting at a nonresidential structure, committing an act of terrorism and misdemeanor criminal damage.

The arrest comes after local police responded to shots fired at the DNC office on three separate occasions over the course of three weeks. Kelly is also suspected of hanging suspicious bags of white powder from political signs in a nearby village.

When arrested, Kelly was found with over 120 guns and over 250,000 rounds of ammunition in his home, prosecutors said.

“The state and law enforcement believes that this person was preparing to commit an act of mass casualty with the guns he had,” Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Neha Bhatia said at Kelly’s initial appearance in Superior Court.

Bhatia detailed that investigators found multiple machine guns, loaded firearms, silencers, long-range scopes and body armor in his home.

In light of the events, Tempe Police Chief Kenneth McCoy acknowledged the threat of political violence is heightened with the 2024 election just around the corner.

“I want to speak directly to those who would consider using political violence or intimidation to disrupt our upcoming election: We will hold you accountable and use every resource available to us to bring you to justice,” McCoy said.

— Emine Yücel

Words of Wisdom

“No … Look, we’ve heard a lot of extreme things about Donald Trump, from Donald Trump. It’s kind of par for the course. Unfortunately, with a guy like that, it’s kinda baked into the vote.”

That’s New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) answering a question from CNN about whether Trump praising Hitler is making him reconsider his support for the former president.

It’s quite a rationalization for continuing to support a man who was described as an “an authoritarian” and someone who fits the “general definition of fascist” by his own chief of staff.

On top of that, the dismissal and downplaying from Sununu — who was so reluctant to support Trump in the first place — is a striking political performance that reveals the current state of the Republican Party.

If someone praising Hitler isn’t making you reconsider your support for them, you need to take a long, hard look at yourself. And maybe ask yourself, what does that say about me?

— Emine Yücel

On the Newspaper Non-Endorsements

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Let me share a few quick thoughts on newspaper endorsements. This comes after we learned that first the LA Times and now the Washington Post will break with tradition and not endorse a presidential candidate this year.

First, I’m not sure there’s any point these days in newspapers endorsing political candidates, especially presidential candidates. I don’t think much about it either way. But, especially in the case of the Post, this is a bad and cowardly development. We can’t know for certain what went into these decisions. But the most obvious explanation is that they have billionaire owners who, especially in the case of Jeff Bezos, have other business interests which are vulnerable to adverse regulatory and contracting decisions as well as government harassment of other kinds. Those are very real threats and ones that a lawless president has a lot of latitude to exact without much if any real prospect of redress. It’s not a habeas situation. These are just discretionary decisions in most cases.

Continue reading “On the Newspaper Non-Endorsements” → 

Fantasies of Control

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Axios this morning leads with the email subject line: “Dems’ private panic.” And then inside the email “1 big thing: Dems fear they’re blowing it.” In this case I’m not really writing to criticize Axios, which I admittedly, and rightly, often do. Because what they’re describing here is real. This post is agnostic on what the result of the election is going to be. And for what it’s worth, I keep in close touch with numerous high level campaign operatives in the swing states and I do not sense panic or pessimism from them. They all know it could go either way but I don’t think they think they’re losing. My topic is this blame feature of Democrats’ mass psychology, which is strongly echoed in the press, and their tendency to panic and almost always think they’re going to lose unless the available evidence to the contrary is simply overwhelming. But it’s not the “bedwetting” that interests me most. It’s the second version of the headline, that blame feature: “Dems fear they’re blowing it.”

Continue reading “Fantasies of Control” → 

Trump Is Not A Fascist, Insists Man Who Called Him ‘America’s Hitler’

Posted on by Emine Yücel

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (OH) on Thursday pushed back against John Kelly’s remarks describing former President Donald Trump as “an authoritarian” and someone who fits the “general definition of fascist.”

Vance in 2016 wrote in a Facebook group that he feared Trump might be “America’s Hitler.” But this week he defended his running mate, saying Kelly’s accusations are the words of a “disgruntled ex-employee.”

Continue reading “Trump Is Not A Fascist, Insists Man Who Called Him ‘America’s Hitler’” → 

A Detail in the Data

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Wednesday I mentioned Michael McDonald, the professor at the Univeristy of Florida who is an election data guru. Something I noticed in the first days of early voting was that most of the swing states that surfaced gender breakdowns for early voting showed around a ten point spread between men (~45) and woman (~55). There are more women than men and women vote more than men. So the difference didn’t surprise me. But that spread still seemed pretty big. So I asked McDonald whether that was a signal of any sort. He said, no, that’s roughly the spread you see in early voting.

But over the last couple days, both in my exchanges with him and in a few of his tweet updates, something else has come out of this. That ~10 point spread is about what we should expect from other cycles. But we’re also seeing a lot more Republican early voting. All things being equal that high rate of Republican early voting should be compressing that gender divide. But it’s not.

Continue reading “A Detail in the Data” → 

Jan. 6 Never Ended And Is Still Ongoing To This Day

Posted on by David Kurtz

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

The Insurrection Playbook

Morning Memo had the chance to attend director Nick Quested’s screening of his Jan. 6 documentary “64 Days” last night in DC. It draws mostly on footage Quested shot while he was embedded with the Proud Boys in the run-up to Jan. 6 and during that day’s attack on Capitol.

Quested’s footage — which revealed the clandestine meeting between Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and and Oath Keepers top dog Stewart Rhodes, both of whom were subsequently convicted of seditious conspiracy — was turned over to law enforcement and Quested testified publicly to the House Jan. 6 committee about his experience. So the gist of what Quested had shot was already known.

But seeing him compile his exclusive, up-close footage into a 64-day narrative that builds from Election Day 2020 to Jan. 6 was a good reminder of how intentionally orchestrated, blatant, and obvious the planning and preparation was for the effort to overturn the election results that culminated with the attack on the Capitol.

In the post-screening Q&A moderated by former TPMer Ryan Reilly, Quested was joined by Jan. 6 committee Chief Investigative Counsel Timothy Heaphy and one of his staff counsel, Jacob Glick. The documentary and the subsequent discussion reminded me of something I’ve written in various ways a few times before: If only we could be so lucky as to have Jan. 6 be the end of the story. It is not. Jan. 6 never stopped. It is ongoing.

The items below in today’s Morning Memo demonstrate that Jan. 6 was not an end point but a way station on a treacherous path toward something even darker and more dangerous:

  • Trump’s new threat to fire Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting him for his alleged Jan. 6 crimes;
  • The virulent and conspiracy-addled attacks on immigrants by Trump, Elon Musk and others combined with false claims about non-citizen voting to create a pretext for challenging the 2024 election results as fraudulent;
  • The army of election deniers installed at the state and local level in the years since 2020 and now actually in charge of elections in many places.

From the get-go, the Jan. 6 attack was part of a larger conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election. But the effort to subvert the election was itself part of a larger Trump-driven fascistic movement to use violence and the threat of violence to tear down democracy, undermine the institutions of civil society, and eliminate other power centers as threats to far-right hegemony — all in pursuit of creating a new paternalistic American authoritarianism.

The historical perspective we can’t yet have with much clarity is unlikely to see Jan. 6 as a distinct point in time or a discrete event but as the loudest, most glaring warning sign we had on the road to American fascism.

Trump Threatens To Fire Jack Smith Immediately

In an interview Thursday with Hugh Hewitt, Donald Trump plainly said he would fire Special Counsel Jack Smith as soon as he is sworn in to a second term. “Oh, it’s so easy. It’s so easy … I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump said.

Smith is prosecuting Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 attack and for absconding to Mar-a-Lago post-presidency with classified documents.

Trump has promised repeatedly and in myriad ways to weaponize the Justice Department against anyone who opposes him, revoke its independence, and use the powers of the presidency recently enhanced by the Supreme Court to protect himself from criminal prosecution and accountability to the rule of law.

What Fascism Looks Like, Part 3,631

WaPo:

Former president Donald Trump painted a dark picture of the United States under the Biden administration at a campaign rally here Thursday, comparing the country to “a garbage can for the world” because of illegal border crossings.

“First time I’ve ever said ‘garbage can,’” Trump said. “But you know what? It’s a very accurate description.”

We’ve Known For A Long Time Now

This was making the rounds again yesterday, a 2018 video by Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley on Trump’s fascism:

Quote Of The Day

“Donald Trump is running to be an American tyrant.”

–Bruce Springsteen, at a Georgia campaign rally for Kamala Harris

The Menace Of Elon Musk

Important Read

The 4 big takeaways from the NYT Mag article on “How a Pro-Trump Army Built a Movement to Reject Elections“:

  1. Conspiracy theories are working. People believe the election system is rigged.
  2. Deniers are taking over county and state boards that oversee elections. 
  3. They are trying to change the rules.
  4. Some administrators are willing to face consequences for their efforts

Election Threat Watch

  • NBC News: ‘Big lie’ 2.0: How Trump’s false claims about noncitizens voting lay the groundwork to undermine the election
  • Joyce Vance: What DOJ is doing to protect the election
  • CNN: In a defeat for the RNC, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that voters will be allowed to cast provisional ballots in person at their polling place if their mail ballots are rejected because of certain defects.

By The Numbers

  • *FINAL* NYT/Siena College poll: Among likely voters nationwide, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are tied at 48% apiece.
  • Harris trounced Trump in fundraising in the first half of October: $97 million to $16 million. The final FEC reports due before the election show both campaigns spent half a billion dollars over just 16 days in October
  • The Bulwark: “In the past five weeks, Trump’s operation has spent more than $29 million on TV ads criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris for supporting transgender surgeries for inmates and illegal immigrants in detention, according to data from the media tracking firm AdImpact. That makes the topic, by far, the biggest focal point when it comes to Trump’s ad spending.”

2024 Ephemera

  • WaPo: How Trump talks: Abrupt shifts, profane insults, confusing sentences
  • MT-Sen: In “a sign of confidence” that Sen. Jon Tester (D) will lose, the GOP super PAC American Crossroads is moving money out of the Montana Senate race, Semafor reports.
  • Bloomberg: The election-betting site Polymarket has identified a French national as the source of more than $45 million in pro-Trump wagers via four different accounts. Contrary to initial speculation, Polymarket says the person has “extensive trading experience and a financial services background” and that it has not found any evidence to suggest the bets were made to manipulate or attempt to manipulate the market.

What Trump II Portends

  • ProPublica: Trump Says He’ll Move Thousands of Federal Workers Out of Washington. Here’s What Happened the First Time He Tried.
  • NYT: The right-wing think tank America First Policy Institute is poised to be more influential in a Trump II presidency than Project 2025.

Harris’ Short List For Attorney General

NBC News reports that the three main contenders for attorney general in a Harris administration are:

  • North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper
  • former Biden DOJ No. 3 Vanita Gupta
  • U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams

Not Bold Enough Or Fast Enough

Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!

Trump And The American Tradition Of Channeling The Book Of Revelation To Describe Immigrants

Posted on by John Light

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.

During a campaign speech in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 19, 2024, Donald Trump promised to save the country from immigrants: “I will rescue every town across America that has been invaded and conquered, and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in a jail or kick them out of our country.”

Depicting immigrants as a threat has been a pillar of Trump’s message since 2015. And the types of terms he uses aren’t just disparaging. It might not seem like it, but Trump is continuing a long tradition in American politics: using language shaped by the Bible.

When the former president says those at the border are “poisoning the blood of our country,” “animals” and “rapists,” his vocabulary mirrors verses from the New Testament. The Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, says those kept out of the city of God are “filthy”; they are “dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.”

In fact, Americans have been using the Bible for centuries to talk about immigrants, especially those they want to keep out. As a scholar of the Bible and politics, I’ve studied how language from Revelation shaped American ideas about who belongs in the United States — the focus of my book, “Immigration and Apocalypse.”

The shining city

The Book of Revelation describes a vision of the end of the world, when the wicked are punished and the good rewarded. It tells the story of God’s enemies, who worship the evil Beast of the Sea, bear his mark on their body and threaten God’s people. Because of their wickedness, they suffer diseases, catastrophes and war until they are finally destroyed in the lake of fire.

God’s followers, however, enter through the gates of the walls surrounding the New Jerusalem, a holy city that comes down from heaven. God’s chosen people enter through the gates and live in the shining city for eternity.

A black and white engraving of a huge tree in the middle of a shining, walled city, with a crowd outside.
18th century evangelists like the English preacher John Wesley urged sinners to take the path of righteousness, toward the New Jerusalem. Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Throughout American history, many of its Christian citizens have imagined themselves as God’s saints in the New Jerusalem. Puritan colonists believed they were establishing God’s kingdom, both metaphorically and literally. Ronald Reagan likened the nation to the New Jerusalem by describing America as a “shining city … built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace,” but with city walls and doors.

Reagan was specifically quoting Puritan John Winthrop, one of the founders of Massachusetts Bay Colony, whose use of the “city on a hill” phrase quotes Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. But Reagan’s detailed description closely matches that of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21. Like God’s heavenly city, Reagan’s picture of America also has strong foundations, walls and gates, and people from every nation bringing in tribute.

Barring the gates

If people imagine the U.S. as God’s city, then it’s easy also to imagine enemies who want to invade that city. And this is how unwanted immigrants have been depicted through American history: as enemies of God.

In the 19th century, when virtually all politicians were Protestant, anti-Catholic politicians accused Irish immigrants of bearing the “mark of the Beast” and being loyal to the “Antichrist”: the pope. They claimed that Irish immigrants could form an unholy army against the nation.

At the turn of the century, “yellow peril” novels against Chinese immigration imagined a heathen horde taking over the U.S. At the end of one such book, China itself is depicted as a satanic “Black Dragon,” forcing its way through “the Golden Gate” of America.

A faded green and yellow cartoon shows a menacing plague of insects with human faces.
‘Uncle Sam’s Farm in Danger’: an 1878 cartoon by G. F. Keller depicts Chinese emigrants fleeing famine. The Wasp via Wikimedia Commons

And all immigrant groups who were unwanted at one time or another have been accused of being “filthy” and diseased, like the enemies of God in Revelation. Italians, Jews, Irish, Chinese and Mexicans were all, at some point, targeted as unhealthy and carrying illness.

In political cartoons from the turn of the 20th century, Eastern European and Jewish immigrants were depicted as rats, while Chinese immigrants were portrayed as a horde of grasshoppers — echoing imagery from Revelation, where locusts with human faces swarm the Earth. During COVID-19, an event itself considered apocalyptic, xenophobic fear has focused on Asian Americans and migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

This constellation of labels from Revelation — plague-bearing, bestial, invading, sexually corrupt, murderous — has been reused and recycled throughout American history.

An Uncle Sam figure playing a pipe leads rats with human faces into the ocean, away from Europe's shores.
A 1909 political cartoon by S.D. Ehrhart. Library of Congress

‘Heaven has a wall’

Trump himself has described immigrants as diseased, “not human,” sexual assaulters, violent and those “who don’t like our religion.”

Others have more explicitly used images from Revelation to talk about immigration. Pastor Robert Jeffress, who preached at Trump’s 2017 inauguration church service, told viewers on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends,” “God is not against walls, walls are not ‘un-Christian,’ the Bible says even heaven is going to have a wall around it.” The Conservative Political Action Conference held a panel in 2017 titled “If Heaven Has a Gate, A Wall, and Extreme Vetting, Why Can’t America?” There are even bumper stickers that say, “Heaven Has A Wall and Strict Immigration Policy / Hell Has Open Borders.”

Revelation 21 indeed describes the heavenly New Jerusalem with a massive shining wall, “clear as crystal,” with pearls for gates. Trump, similarly, talks about his “big, beautiful door,” set in a “beautiful,” massive wall that also has to be “see-through.”

The city of God metaphor has long been a tool for American leaders — both to idealize the nation and to warn against immigration. But the concept of a walled-in city seems increasingly outdated in a digitally connected, global world.

As migration continues to rise around the world due to climate change and conflict, I’d argue that these metaphors and the attitudes they drive are not just obsolete, but exacerbating crisis.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Conversation