He is Inconsistent and Troubling

A Trump characteristic is to make offensive remarks in a cool tone. Without stiffening his face or raising his voice or waving his arms, he called the people of Somalia “garbage.” He said the Somalis were “garbage” not once but half a dozen times, all within a few sentences. 

We’re talking, let’s remind ourselves, not of a street-corner urchin in a lawless third-world country, but of the president of the United States of America, speaking from the White House. 

Like it or not, the remarks of an American president are a template for imitation by young and old, by the established and the aspirational, in the US and beyond its shores. 

Across the world, and almost daily, parents and teachers warn children against generalizing. If one man makes an obnoxious conduct, children are told, that doesn’t mean that all men are horrible. If someone from India once swindled you, it doesn’t follow that all Indians are crooks. 

From his prestigious desk, an American president is reversing centuries of global teaching and parenting. If a few individuals have done horrible things, it may be OK, he implies, to paint with the same abusive brush all of their kind, be they Canadian, Chinese or Israelis, or Hindus, Buddhists, Jews or Muslims, or anything else. 

If, as Trump once said, New York’s Jeffrey Epstein was “creepy,” is everyone creepy who may be connected with Epstein by nationality or race or religion? Should the world return to those primitive times, unspoiled by reason or conscience, when “outsiders” or “natives” were seen as barbarians? One has a hunch that a post-Trump America would want a mammoth program of re-education. 

LIKABLE & DISTURBING 

I must concede there was something likable in Trump’s unconcealed keenness on a Nobel Peace Prize. The zest with which he has sought to de-escalate our world’s wars can also be approved. However, there is something ominously disturbing in the comfort with which he maligns whole communities and nations. 

On December 8, CNN aired the following report on the reaction to his words in Minnesota, the state where the Somali diaspora live in noticeable numbers, and from where a woman of Somali origin, Ilhan Omar, has been elected to the US House of Representatives from 2019 onwards. Prior to that, from 2017 to 2019, Omar was a member of the Minnesota legislature. 

“People of Somali descent in Minnesota have endured a dizzying week. On December 2, President Donald Trump called them ‘garbage’ and sent immigration enforcement agents into the state, which is home to the nation’s largest Somali diaspora. By December 4, officials in the Department of Homeland Security were touting the arrest of a handful of Somali men, whom the agency called the ‘worst of the worst.’ Throughout, hate mail poured into inboxes at mosques and advocacy groups. 

“And yet, the wave of vitriol during the Trump administration’s continued nationwide immigration crackdown has been met with an opposing wave of solidarity in Minnesota. State leaders have been quick to publicly embrace the community. And some of those emails flooding the inboxes of organizers were expressions of kindness. 

“Salman Fiqy, a Somali small business owner who supported Trump and ran for state representative as a Republican last year, said the president’s latest comments were the straw that broke the camel’s back when it comes to his backing of the Minnesota GOP. 

“‘It’s very unpresidential coming from the commander in chief of the United States to dehumanize … a whole entire community by calling them garbage,’ he told CNN. ‘This is not acceptable.’ 

MIGRANTS MUST CONDEMN 

It is equally obvious, I say, that immigrant communities must confront, condemn, and clearly separate themselves from fraud or violence committed from within their ranks. Even a fleeting glance at online comments by Americans on allegations of fraud by some Somali immigrants shows the deep resentment triggered by the allegations. The challenge before Minnesota’s Somali community is not small. 

CNN has summarized the story of Somali settlement in Minnesota: “Prior to the 1990s, there were very few Somalis living in Minnesota. The early part of that decade saw the Somali government collapse as the country descended into violence. Millions of residents were displaced or ultimately fled, seeking refuge and asylum.

“‘People had nowhere to go,’ said Abdi Ismail Samatar, a distinguished University of Minnesota geography professor, researcher and author who left Somalia 34 years ago. ‘The schools, the hospitals, the security systems, everything, collapsed like nowhere else in the world at that point in time. Somalis fled to nearly every continent on the planet, but Minnesota became an epicenter.’

“‘The immigrants were drawn to the North Star State by job opportunities at meatpacking plants in rural areas where demand for workers far outstripped the supply,’ said Ahmed Ismail Yusuf, a Minnesota author, writer and playwright.

‘They found out that there were other jobs no one was taking, like janitors or in the hospitality industry, car rental agencies, taxi driving,’ he said in an interview with CNN. The state’s generous offering of social services was another magnet.

‘That helped the elderly people who had fallen between the cracks, and young people who didn’t have anything were able to sustain themselves and put families together,’ Samatar said. ‘The kids who came here in their early teens... became lawyers, doctors, nurses, schoolteachers.’

“Over the decades, a snowball effect took hold as the Somali diaspora reached a critical mass in Minnesota, pulling in still more friends and relatives from abroad and other US states.

“Today, with around 84,000 of the state’s roughly 108,000 Somali Americans concentrated in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul), the contingent has become a potent voting bloc in the region – so much so that it powered the rise of Ilhan Omar, a progressive Democrat. 

A FREQUENT FOIL 

“Omar also happens to be one of Trump’s most frequent foils – he has often targeted her over the years on social media and in public remarks. She was again on Trump’s mind days after a report in a journal published by a conservative think tank about the fraud scandal in Minnesota, which involved as much as $300 million and has led to charges against dozens of people, the vast majority of them of Somali descent.

“Trump had referenced the scandal (which diverted money meant to feed children during the pandemic to fraudsters) a week before [this year’s] Thanksgiving, calling Minnesota a ‘hub of fraudulent money laundering activity’ as he announced plans to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Somali residents in the state.

“On December 2, he disparaged Omar during a rambling monologue at a cabinet meeting. ‘Ilhan Omar is garbage,’ he said. ‘Her friends are garbage.’ 

“Around the same time, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation targeting undocumented Somali immigrants [was] launched in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota.

“The vast majority of Somalis are here legally.

“In a news release on December 4, the Department for Homeland Security said it had arrested 12 ‘criminal illegal aliens.’ Five of them are from Somalia, according to the statement.”

The CNN story adds:

“Meanwhile, public officials in Minnesota have taken pains to show their solidarity with the Somali community. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara joined an interfaith prayer circle. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey made the rounds at a mall that caters primarily to the Somali population.

“On December 5, US Senator Amy Klobuchar appeared at the same place – the Karmel Mall – to show her support; she was thronged by a small but enthusiastic crowd of onlookers, many of whom sought to have their photo taken with her.

“‘As a former prosecutor, I’m strongly in favor of prosecuting those fraud cases,’ she told CNN, walking down a corridor that included tailor shops, eateries, cellphone accessory stores and garment boutiques. ‘However, what the president has done here is indict an entire group of people. They’re businesses, police officers, and firefighters in our state, and we’ve got to stand there with them.’

“Mohamed Ali Hassan, the president of a nonprofit with an office at the mall, condemned Trump’s use of the term ‘garbage,’ adding that such dehumanizing terms should never be used to describe people. 

Somalis weren’t the only immigrants in Minnesota to receive hate mail in the wake of Trump’s comments. Taaha Sameru, a board member at the Tawfiq Islamic Center in Minneapolis, said he fled Ethiopia due to political repression. Sameru, who arrived in Minnesota in 2005, said he’d never received a xenophobic email until this week. 

“Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations, said he believes Trump’s attacks will ultimately make the state’s Somali community stronger.

“‘I think it’s giving a chance for many Americans to learn about the Somali community, and not only that, but also to see the resilience,’ he said.

“Abdi Samatar, the geography professor, echoed the sentiment: ‘That’s the future of the country – the civic bonds, people who say, “not on our watch.” While at the same time, every community looks inside itself and says, “We are not going to allow some of our members to do these kinds of things.”’ 

WHICH IS TOUGHER? 

Which is harder, we can ask ourselves. For a hard-working descendant of 18th- or 19th-century immigrants in the US to live with a new immigrant’s large-scale fraud when life in America seems to be getting more expensive by the week? Or for a 21st-century immigrant in the US to live with the fear of expulsion, and live also with calumny against all her people in their home country, who face mortal danger every hour?

Another question: Is it impossible to empathize with both?

On his Russia-Ukraine peacemaking front, Trump’s seems to blame European nations who are backing Ukraine for the failure so far of his effort. On December 9, he said in an interview with Politico that European nations were “weak” and “decaying” because of their immigration policies. He also argued that Russia has the “upper hand” in its war on Ukraine and that it was time for Ukrainian President Zelensky to “start accepting things.” 

According to CNN, Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of Russia’s Direct Investment Fund and an intermediary in negotiations between Washington and the Kremlin, has celebrated Trump’s castigation of European countries, particularly Trump’s warning that “Europe has to be very careful” and that it “is going in some bad directions.”

Trump made that warning while responding to a question about X being hit with a $140 million fine by EU regulators on December 5 for breaching European online content rules. In his response to the fine, X’s owner Elon Musk has called for the abolition of the EU!

PUTIN AND MODI 

Given Musk’s view of the EU, given Trump’s willingness to defame whole nations, and given the influence of people like Trump and Musk, we have to ask whether the world will be compelled to reverse the progress it has made in the last hundred years or so in trade, mingling, friendship, and equality.

Not that Trump has a clear or consistent policy. While appearing to side with Russia in the peace talks over Ukraine, he has supplied advanced weapons to Ukraine, and he has strongly criticized purchases of Russian oil by China and India.

After Putin and India’s Modi met in Delhi for their highly publicized talks on December 4 and 5, Putin declared: “Russia is a reliable supplier of energy resources and everything necessary for the development of India’s energy sector. We are ready to continue ensuring the uninterrupted supply of fuel for the rapidly growing Indian economy.”

Though effusive in his welcome to Putin, Modi did not publicly say that India would continue to buy Russian oil. He has to make a trade and tariffs deal with Trump.