The Daily Background
| Does Fred Thompson hate immigrants, or is he just senile?
by Arlen Parsa
Fred Thompson, a potential Republican presidential candidate, suggested that the 1986 immigration law signed by President Reagan is to blame for the country’s illegal immigrants and he bemoaned a nation beset by “suicidal maniacs.”
“Twelve million illegal immigrants later, we are now living in a nation that is beset by people who are suicidal maniacs and want to kill countless innocent men, women and children around the world,” the former Tennessee senator said. “We’re sitting here now with essentially open borders.”
[…]
Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Thompson, said he was not calling immigrants “suicidal maniacs” but, rather was referring to terrorists who seek to enter the United States through borders that have lax security.
What does that even mean? It’s all too easy to say “oh he wasn’t talking about immigrants, he was talking about terrorists,” but the fact is, none of the 9/11 hijackers came over our “open borders”– they came on commercial flights to the US on Visas that were valid at the time (some of them expired during their stay in the US, but that still has absolutely nothing to do with “open borders”).
By talking about immigrants and 9/11 hijackers in virtually the same sentence, and doging in and out of when you’re referring to one and then the other, to the point where your spokesperson has to explain that you didn’t mean that immigrants were “suicidal maniacs” is not acceptable. It’s obvious what Thompson is doing: he’s conflating hijackers with immigrants. Which is absolutely outrageous and he ought to be called on it.
Thompson’s statements were so confusing that some people originally thought he was talking about the Virginia Tech Massacre, which- if the case- would frankly be just as bad because the person who was responsible for that did not come over an “open border” and was not an illegal immigrant.
Either Thompson is senile and doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he’s wandering in and out of various topics, or he’s purposefully conflating immigrants with terrorists. Either way, he’s unfit to lead the country.
Also, and this is just a P.S.- Veteran followers of the PlameGate scandal will recognize that Corallo has done lots of work for Karl Rove in the past… (word is, he’s volunteering to do media relations work for Thompson for free).
