New McCabe Book Shows The Danger of Putting Racists in Power
Former FBI Assistant Director Andrew McCabe has recently rocked the political world with revelations from his new book “The Threat.” But exposes about the chaotic Trump White House are nothing new. There’s a new book almost every month. Last year, I read two of the best books about the Trump administration, Bob Woodward’s “Fear,” and Michael Wolf’s “Fire and Fury.”
McCabe’s book has its shocking moments too. He compares President Donald Trump to a Russian mobster and also talks about the plan to invoke the 25th amendment on the president, but what I found insightful were his comments about former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
McCabe says Sessions regularly made racist comments such as “the FBI was better when you only hired Irish men.” Sessions also said, “They were drunks but they could be trusted. Not like all those new people with nose rings and tattoos — who knows what they’re doing?” He also claimed Sessions said Islam was incompatible with the West and was obsessed about criminals’ ethnic backgrounds. McCabe added that Sessions was in over his head, refused to read intelligence reports and couldn’t figure out new technology.
For astute political observers, these damning revelations aren’t that surprising. It’s easy to stereotype, Sessions as a racist because he’s an elderly Southerner with a Confederate name. But there’s an element of truth in every stereotype.
Sessions has also been an advocate of limiting both illegal and legal immigration. According to a New Yorker article, Sessions saw the country’s increasing non-white population as a direct threat to the GOP’s future.
Sessions was one of the first people who endorsed Trump, prominent racist Rep. Steve King. (R-Nazi) was also an early supporter. A Neo-Nazi and a Neo-Confederate both endorsing Trump should have been a warning of what was to come. Sessions became an early fellow traveler with Trump because he bought into two of his platforms, white nationalism and Law and Order (aka locking up non-whites.)
Sessions has also been an advocate of limiting both illegal and legal immigration. According to a New Yorker article, Sessions saw the country’s increasing non-white population as a direct threat to the GOP’s future.
“In 2015, after the Republicans took control of the Senate, he circulated a memo titled ‘Immigration Handbook for a New Republican Majority,’ in which he argued that the G.O.P. had lost the Presidency in 2012 partly because it failed to curtail legal immigration to the U.S.” said New Yorker writer Jonathan Blitzer.
In his article, Blitzer also blames Sessions for instituting draconian immigration policies such as setting a quota for immigration judges of 700 cases a day. He also established a new policy that took away domestic violence as a reason to apply for asylum. There have been cases of women who have been denied asylum over this issue and have been sent back to their deaths.
However, McCabe’s book shows Sessions’ animosity towards immigrants and people of color wasn’t about political expediency, he generally didn’t like them. He thought they were more prone to violence and crime, just because of their ethnic background. That’s called racism. And considering he was once the nation’s top cop, I shudder to think of the decisions he made in the criminal justice system that already has problems with racial imbalance.
No wonder he wanted to restart the disastrous War on Drugs. He probably thought we could have solved the drug problem if we only threw more black and brown people in jail. Forget about the fact that black and white people actually consume drugs at roughly the same ratio. Drugs will keep flowing into our country as long as there’s a demand for them. How about we fix that problem first, instead of locking up the brothers on the street corner?
It’s easy to point the finger at Trump for reinvigorating white nationalism, but it wasn’t just him. It was also people such as Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and Sessions — racists with real power and the ability to affect people’s lives.