Sunday School 1/14/18

Today, I listened in on the conversation on NBC's Meet The Press, where Kentucky's Senator Rand Paul was one of Chuck Todd's guests; from the other side of the aisle, Colorado's Senator Michael Bennett joined. Immigration and racism and salty language were on tap for the conversations - no surprise there. Similar conversations were held on the other shows as well.

Rand Paul was up first, and he told a story of when he went to Haiti and Central America to perform eye surgeries, using that to frame Trump's most recent incredible comments in a different context for us.

You know, I don't think the comments were constructive at all. But I also think that to be fair, we shouldn't draw conclusions that he didn't intend. I know personally about his feelings towards Haiti and towards Central America... I did about 200 cataract surgeries with a group of surgeons in Haiti and the same in Central America. And when we asked Donald J. Trump as a private citizen to support those trips, he was a large financial backer of both medical mission trips. So I think it's a unfair to sort of draw conclusions from a remark that I think wasn't constructive, is the least we can say. 

And I think it's unfair then to sort of all the sudden paint him, "Oh well, he's a racist," when I know for a fact that he cares very deeply about the people in Haiti because he helped finance a trip where we were able to get vision back for 200 people in Haiti. 

Um -- "sort of all the sudden" talk about Trump being a racist? Where has Rand Paul been hiding? There have been more than ample opportunities, some of which were mentioned on the show.

For some reason, the comments that get skipped are the ones about Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the American judge with the funny sounding name and who, according to Trump

happens to be, we believe, Mexican... I have a Mexican judge. He is of Mexican heritage and should have recused himself...

So, no, Senator Paul -- there's NOTHING sudden about calling Trump a racist.

And, if you change the word 'shithole' to 'economically-deprived' and actually used the term in a nuanced sentence such as the two you suggest, we would be having a completely different conversation than the one Trump decided to have.

Let's take the whole scenario and put different words in there and let's say, "We'd rather have people from economically-prosperous countries than economically-deprived countries." Or, "We realize there are more problems in economically-deprived countries, therefore there's a bigger impetus for them to want to come." Then it wouldn't have been so controversial. 

We do need a "valid, legitimate debate over immigration" and we need it to be bipartisan and we need it to address a number of issues, not the least of which is the DACA issue, and also not the least of it is the crush of illegal immigration.

And you can't have an immigration compromise if everybody's out there calling the president a racist. They're actually destroying the setting. And he's a little bit of it, but both sides now are destroying the setting in which anything meaningful can happen on immigration.

Sounds sort of like the president talking about Charlottesville, doesn't it? "Good people on both sides"? I also think I'd say that the president is more than "a little bit of it."

Senator Bennett, when Todd asked him about whether concluding that Trump is a racist was fair, did his best to provide context as well.

I was raised not to call people racist on the theory that it was hard for them to be rehabilitated once you said that. But there's no question what he said was racist. There's no question  what he said was un-American and completely unmoored from the facts.

He seems to have this impression that immigrants to the United States, like my mom and her parents who were Polish Jews who came here after the Holocaust, somehow, you know, come to the United States and are just lazy and, and the truth is exactly the opposite. You spend any time in neighborhoods across Colorado, what you find is immigrants here striving to make this country better and provide for their families and for the next generation. So I think he has no idea what he's talking about.

And - and on the question of what's in his heart, do you have any idea - thought, Chuck, that he would've called into question Barack Obama's birth certificate if Barack Obama were white?

That's a pretty basic question that no one -- Trump nor any of his minions, have answered. And, as far as I'm concerned, don't need to actually speak to - we know the answer is no.

See you around campus.