REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Donald Trump is a man of many talents, and the greatest of them is his uncanny ability to get his opponents to overreach.
For nearly a decade now, the president-elect has benefited from the left’s Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf syndrome.
Their wailing over even the most unobjectionable of his words and deeds has rendered many a casual observer deaf to his very real faults.
The latest, but far from the last, manifestation of this phenomenon is the hand-wringing over Trump’s promise to carry out “mass deportations.”
After four years of neglect at the southern border, Trump ran for the White House on a pledge not only to reinstate order there, but to remove those the Biden administration allowed to stay in the country illegally.
Polls suggest that his supposedly hard-line stance on this question is not just popular, but enormously so.
A CBS News/YouGov survey of registered voters over the summer found that 62% of Americans supported “a new national program to deport all undocumented immigrants currently living in the US illegally.”
That number included 53% of Hispanic voters, with whom Trump made historic electoral gains just a couple of weeks ago.
Most Americans recognize that there is nothing at all offensive about the idea of removing those who break the law to enter the country.
After all, what’s the alternative?
If the penalty for illegal entry doesn’t match the crime, there’s no incentive not to skip the line; anything less than deportation constitutes a de facto reward.
An immigration system that rewards bad actors for cheating it, while punishing good ones for adhering to it, is no system at all.
Moreover, the costs of runaway illegal immigration are just far too high to continue to pay.
The heinous crimes committed by people who never should have been here in the first place stand out, of course.
That’s why even Barack Obama, the father of DACA, boasted about deporting such monsters.
But all illegal immigration drives down wages for citizens, while providing opportunities for drug cartels and human traffickers to capitalize on.
Despite the logical holes in their objections, Trump’s most shrill detractors have persisted in shouting them.
CNN’s Julie Roginsky fantasized about leading a double life as a heroine and having the military open fire on her as she shielded illegal immigrants from authorities.
Her colleague Maria Cardona insisted that her Hispanic “community . . . is going to go through pain” and “cruelty.”
MSNBC’s Joy Reid suggested that “there will be American citizens who will end up being deported because they’re not going to do this with precision.”
“If you’re brown, you may not stick around,” she warned.
Sanctuary-city mayors like Boston’s Michelle Wu have already pledged to “make sure that we are doing our part to protect our residents” and not to cooperate “with those efforts that actually threaten the safety of everyone by causing widespread fear.”
In a particularly ignorant, ugly moment, Sunny Hostin of “The View” asserted that “Latino men voted in favor of someone” who plans to “deport a majority” of their community.
That would of course come as news to the actual vast majority of Hispanics in the United States — who, as legal citizens, are every bit as invested in a sensible immigration policy as their fellow Americans.
There are good arguments for not expending resources on deporting every last person in the country illegally.
But there are none for issuing what would be, in effect, a blanket amnesty by not doing anything at all.
And besides, Trump and his incoming team have made it clear they will prioritize criminals — and especially violent criminals — once they get to work.
Of course, the leftist panic extends well past this particular issue.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, has argued that “we are poised to enter” an era “of fascism and authoritarianism” due to Trump’s victory.
The congresswoman has never been the brightest of lights, but shouldn’t she realize that Trump just delivered Democrats their most embarrassing presidential loss since 1984 — despite having the fascism charge lobbed at him over and over again in the final weeks of the race?
When will the hysterics learn?
If this month has been any indication, not anytime soon.
There may be tantalizing short-term personal incentives to engage in this sort of strident rhetoric.
Ultimately, though, it not only backfires on the Democrats, but degrades our political culture by distorting vitally important issues.
So they can speak in hushed tones, shout in angry ones, or turn on the tear factory all they want.
As long as their meltdowns come in reaction to policies that most Americans regard as simple common sense, their antics will only redound to Trump’s benefit.
Isaac Schorr is a staff writer at Mediaite.