The holiday season is upon us, and so is the time for miracles. For Salon, an unabashedly liberal site, Christmas may have come early with a column by a liberal history professor from Austin, Texas, who says he’s had enough of the media’s lies about President-elect Donald J. Trump. Okay — maybe it’s not a real Christmas miracle, but a broken clock tells the right time twice a day. Al Martinez focused on one of Trump’s statements that has been distorted in the press: that Mexicans are rapists. He juxtaposed what Trump said and then what the media reported, along with the idea that yes, maybe illegal immigrants killing people is actually a problem that deserves attention. Furthermore, he later explains how Trump’s position is actually more in line with rolling back federal immigration laws (how awful!) and that while the left has tried to paint the president-elect as a racist, listing this, that, and the other; they should count the times he’s praised Mexicans. Hell, he praised them in the statement that got him in trouble with the media in the first place, back in 2015.
Here’s what Trump said:
“When will we defeat Mexico on the border? They laugh at us, at our stupidity. […] When Mexico sends its people, they don’t send their best. They don’t send you; they don’t send you. They send people who have a lot of problems and they bring those problems with us. They bring drugs. They bring crime. They are rapists, and some of them, I assume, are good people. But I talk to the border guards and they tell us what we get.
You may not like what Trump said. I didn’t. But let’s not make it worse. He didn’t say that all Mexicans are rapists. And yet many commentators did. Politico, for example, misquoted Trump, leaving out his “good people” line. They said he was “demonizing Mexicans as rapists.” They claimed that Mexicans don’t actually commit more rapes in the U.S. than whites. But Trump didn’t claim otherwise.
[…]
No wonder many people think the media is blatantly dishonest. No wonder Mr. Trump’s criticism of the media brings joy to his supporters.
Trump discussed crimes committed by illegal immigrants. Is it true that some people who cross the Mexican border illegally are good? Yes. Is it true that others commit crimes? Yes. Is that a problem? People disagree. Some assume that illegal immigrants do not commit more crimes than U.S. citizens. But the crimes committed by illegal immigrants, even murder, would not have occurred if these people had not entered the U.S.
[…]
The Texas Department of Public Safety identified 207,076 aliens who were incarcerated in Texas county jails from October 2008 through August 1, 2014. The term “aliens” includes both aliens who were in Texas legally and those who entered illegally. They were charged with 357,884 crimes during that 70-month period, including: 4,413 terroristic threats, 60,973 robberies and larceny, 6,636 motor vehicle thefts, 78,682 assaults, 12,869 assaults and sexual offenses, 1,113 kidnappings, and 3,089 homicides.
This includes an average of 1,383 sexual assault allegations per year in Texas alone. The actual number of rapes and sexual assaults is higher because many victims do not report these crimes. According to the 2008-2012 National Crime and Victimization Survey, about 68% of sex crimes are unreported. So I estimate that foreign nationals commit about 4,000 sexual assaults in Texas each year.
In Texas, about 529 foreign nationals are charged with murder each year. Additionally, the FBI reports that 36% of homicides nationwide remain unsolved.
These crime rates are staggering and insulting. None of the women and men killed by illegal immigrants in Texas would have died if the murderers had not entered the U.S. illegally.
These are not just words. Stop for a moment and think about the woman in Texas whose husband was murdered one night. Think about the parents who never saw their son again because he was murdered. Think about the thousands of families standing in the cemeteries.
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Trump says that all those who did not enter the U.S. legally should return to their home countries. “They have to leave.” We may disagree. But his view is closer to immigration law. If you prefer amnesty, then lawmakers need to create a law to that effect. Trump insists: “I want people to come, but they have to come legally.”
Regardless, countless people believe Trump is racist towards Mexicans. I suggest anyone who thinks so counts the number of times Trump has praised Mexicans.
Martinez said he was a fan of Warren and Sanders, but that these were liberals we could talk to without fear of being attacked or smeared as bigots in the conversation. Salon also appeared to have removed some parts of his article, which he reposted in Salon’s comments section. It referred to a time when Trump praised Mexicans.
“He [Trump] he says these things over and over again, to tens of thousands of people at rallies in Texas, Ohio, New Hampshire, Iowa, Oklahoma, Arizona, North Carolina, South Carolina, Nevada, Florida, California, Virginia, Tennessee, Illinois, etc. Trump says, “I love Mexicans,” they are “wonderful people,” he wrote. “People don’t know he says these things because the press doesn’t report it,” he added.
I may have been a little nervous about Trump. No, I was very nervous about Trump because I wanted to see a solid Republican approach to Hillary Clinton, I still think if Rubio had won the nomination, we would have won anyway, but Trump won the nomination. The election was over. My people lost, and the only principle that mattered was taking away the keys to the White House from Hillary Clinton. Period. Yes, I criticized Trump during the campaign, just because even with him as our candidate, although deeply flawed, I thought he could still beat her because Clinton was worse. Regardless, looking back, let’s be candid, Trump endured the mother of all media attacks on him.
Still, even as the media attacked him from all sides, the points that Martinez made, the way the media distorted or refused to report, led rural voters to ignore them. In fact, some might say they strengthened his support among his supporters. For them, Trump fueled the media elite, which in turn served the interests of the cosmopolitan elite. Now, some on the left might attack Professor Martinez for simply saying that the media shouldn’t lie, that there are statistics showing that illegal immigrants commit crimes, and that Trump may not be the radical on immigration that some in the press claim. But his argument focuses primarily on the first part, that the media has been caught lying this cycle. Perhaps that was the kick that allowed Trump not only to beat Clinton but also to bring more Republicans into the fold. There were many Republicans who were wary of Trump, even though 90 percent of them ended up voting for him. You may not think of Trump as a Republican, but the attacks on him were ridiculous. In fact, every attack on Republican candidates since the beginning of time has been ridiculous. Have we forgotten that Mitt Romney was a bully or something in college? That he would ban contraception? That he was the devil incarnate? Those attacks were made; no one listens to them now.
So bravo, Mr. Martinez, for writing this for Salon, even though a leftist publication published in August that the Iran deal is a mess and it’s all Obama’s fault. Again, broken clocks tell the right time twice a day. As annoying as they are, this is why you should read leftist news outlets, because it’s good to know the other side of the story, and sometimes you might be surprised by what gets published.
