President Obama threw a bucket of cold water on Donald Trump and his racist plan for a "deportation force."
Speaking to ABC News, Obama pointed out the practical challenges first before turning to the morality of such a thing.
“The notion that we’re gonna deport 11, 12 million people from this country -- first of all, I have no idea where Mr. Trump thinks the money’s gonna come from. It would cost us hundreds of billions of dollars to execute that,” the president told Stephanopoulos in an interview at the White House.
“Imagine the images on the screen flashed around the world as we were dragging parents away from their children, and putting them in what, detention centers, and then systematically sending them out,” the president said. “Nobody thinks that that is realistic. But more importantly, that’s not who we are as Americans.”
He also delivered a not-so-subtle smack upside the head to the nativist nabobs out there rumbling for mass deportations:
Asked why he thinks some Americans are attracted to Trump’s mass deportation plan, the president said “there has always been a strain of anti-immigrant sentiment in America -- ironically from folks who themselves two generations back or even one generation back were immigrants themselves.”
“It’s the job of leaders not to play into that sentiment,” he added. “We don’t want, I think, a president or any person in a position of leadership to play on those kinds of fears.”
For a minority of white people who also happen to be Fox News viewers, that last statement isn't true. For the rest of us, it goes without saying.
