Opinion | Donald Trump’s racist vitriol appeals to his base. Expect more of it

Robert Delaney says by targeting the ‘other’, whether illegal immigrants from Latin America or graduate students from China, the US president has let loose a race-based hostility that is horrifying coming from a White House in the 21st century

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Children climb up the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border fence on June 24 in Sunland Park, New Mexico. Photo: Getty Images / AFP

Published: 3:30pm, 25 Jun 2018Updated: 8:24pm, 25 Jun 2018

The latest spectacle in the US government’s illegal immigration drama featured President Donald Trump with family members of Americans killed by undocumented newcomers.

Standing in front of “angel families”– the PR-engineered moniker given to these unfortunate folks – Trump railed against his critics by highlighting the “death and destruction caused by people that shouldn’t be here”.

It was the most dramatic iteration yet of a familiar production: the framing of illegal immigrants from Latin America as dangerous criminals. It was also, as usual, a performance at odds with all available crime data, and that’s why Trump will only deliver anecdotes instead of numbers in his long-running campaign to portray Latinos as criminals.

Trump’s base can’t get enough of his show. Hearing racist rhetoric from their top leader, thinly veiled and fully blatant, enraptures them.

Watch: Trump denounces illegal immigration while hosting ‘angel families’

His most ardent supporters have inured themselves to the facts about immigration, starting with the reality that America was built on the backs of those arriving with nothing but a desire for a better life and a willingness to work for it.

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