Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What’s a bigger talking point in propagandistic conservative media right now: trans issues or immigration?

Rick Rosner: Trans comes up a lot, and it’s a bullshit issue in that it doesn’t affect—well, both issues you mentioned, trans and immigration, neither of them significantly affect most Americans’ lives. Trans people are less than 1% of the population, and people who are nonbinary are just a few percent. But who fucking cares?

It’s something conservatives bring up to show how “crazy” liberals have gotten. But it’s bullshit. A Pew Research study from 2022 shows that Republicans in government have drifted four times as far to the right as Democrats have drifted left. The only reason trans issues are even in the spotlight is that people are more aware of trans folks now than they were ten years ago when most trans people were in the closet.

Rosner: When you’re aware of trans people, and they’re out of the closet, you have to develop policies around things like bathrooms and sports. But these are trivial issues—maybe not for trans people, but in terms of the impact on most Americans’ lives. Conservatives try to weaponize it in the culture war. In terms of fear-mongering, I hear more about immigration, but that’s also a bullshit issue, especially compared to Europe.

In the U.S. a hundred years ago, about 14% of Americans were foreign-born. Today, that number is still 14%. Our replacement rate for births is slightly over two children per woman, which is necessary to maintain a stable population. But now, we’re at 1.62. People have fewer babies per capita than at any other point in American history, so the only reason our population is stable or slightly growing, at less than half a percent per year, is immigration. We’re not being overrun. Europe is dealing with a far greater number of immigrants and refugees, especially because it’s geographically closer to Africa.

Take the U.K., for example. In the past decade, the percentage of Muslims in England has gone from 4.9% to 6.9%, largely due to immigration. Compare that to the U.S., where the Muslim population is around 1%. So if you’re going to freak out about that—like Lance does—it’s a much smaller issue here. If you’re one of those scared-of-Muslims types, we have a much lower percentage, and we’re not being overrun.

Then there’s this ridiculous claim some Republicans have been spreading recently—that Haitians are kidnapping and eating people’s pets. It’s 100% not true, but it gets attention. We’ve heard that nonsense a ton lately.

But again, that is a complete lie. So much of the stuff about immigration is a lie, like the claim that crime is out of control. Crime is way down in the U.S. Year over year, murder in the U.S. has dropped 11.6%, the biggest drop in 20 years. Overall, crime is down 50% over the past 30 years. As I’ve said before, one reason is that when fewer people are on the streets, it’s hard to have street crime.

Over the past 30 years, we’ve spent more time at home because we can do so much through the Internet and our devices. Plus, nobody carries cash anymore. So crime is not exploding. Immigrants have a lower crime rate than native-born Americans. There’s just so much fear-mongering and lies being spread.

As discussed over the past week, MAGA supporters are willingly gullible. They believe all kinds of nonsense. One of the craziest things they believe is that Trump is a good person and that anything bad you hear about him is just made-up stuff from liberals, which is pure bullshit. Trump has been a bad guy his entire life. The first time the FBI investigated him was in 1972 for racial discrimination in renting out Trump properties.

They sent in undercover testers—Black people and white people. The Black people were told there were no apartments available, while the white people were told there were apartments for rent. This investigation led to the Department of Justice suing Trump and his dad, and they settled. He’s been involved in sketchy, criminal, and just plain bad behaviour for over 50 years. He’s been involved in over 4,900 lawsuits.

One of the ways he gets out of paying his legitimate bills is by saying, “Sue me.” People take him to court, and then he sends his lawyers in, who say, “This will cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars in litigation, so just take a third of what we promised to pay.” People settle because they can’t afford the legal fight. Many of the lawsuits he was involved in were from when he owned casinos, where he sued deadbeat gamblers who had gambled on credit and didn’t want to pay up. But still, the number of lawsuits he’s been involved in, outside of that, is more than the next four most litigious real estate developers combined. He’s a piece of shit, and he proves it every day.

I just saw on SNL that during their opening episode—celebrating the 50th anniversary—they noted that just 2 or 3 hours earlier, at a rally, Trump said that Kamala Harris is mentally disabled. He constantly says crazy, shitty stuff. He barely spends time running for president; instead, he focuses on scams like selling overpriced merchandise. He just launched a new Trump watch—the fanciest one sells for $100,000 but only contains about $13,000 worth of gold and diamonds.

He also launched a coin and a cryptocurrency, and his wife is selling a $600 gold-plated medallion, which contains almost no actual gold. It’s all huckster crap, but MAGA supporters don’t care. He doesn’t lose votes among them. I started ranting about MAGAs again, but it’s because they believe so much nonsense.

Rick Rosner, American Comedy Writer, www.rickrosner.org

Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, www.in-sightpublishing.com

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