(Screenshots via @WhiteHouse on X)
The Trump administration is churning out bait — and the Left is chowing down on it.
On Thursday, the White House posted pictures of the arrest of Virginia Basor-Gonzalez, “a previously deported alien felon convicted of fentanyl trafficking,” who was found in Philadelphia after “illegally reentering the U.S.”
“She wept when taken into custody,” added the White House, which subsequently quote-tweeted its original post with another image of Basor-Gonzalez crying — this time in an anime form.
The response was apoplectic.
“The reason why so many people think that nativists are cruel, stupid, and nasty is that they behave in cruel, stupid, and nasty ways,” declared Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute.
“A lot of the conservatives who think this shit is hilarious are gonna be really upset when there’s zero decency left in this country and conservative views are a politial [sic] and cultural minority again. Worse, there’ll be zero empathy from the left, and so it’ll just get uglier,” mused Isaac Saul.
“An official White House tweet. This is what we elected in America,” marveled Joe Walsh.
The outrage went on, and on, and on.
Perhaps these people forgot that Donald Trump just dispatched Kamala Harris with relative ease in large part because she had served as border czar in an open borders administration after having run for president on an even more radical immigration platform. But, if you’ll recall, he did. It was a few months ago.
There’s no disputing that the White House’s anime rendering of Basor-Gonzalez was in poor taste. The imagery itself was somewhat menacing and militaristic — and it distracted from both her sins and the administration’s success in bringing her to justice.
But how is is possible that even after their second defeat to Trump in three election cycles, that Democrats are able to muster more indignation over a juvenile picture than they are over a non-citizen sneaking into the country, being convicted of intent to distribute 40 or more grams of fentanyl (that’s at least enough to kill 20,000 Americans), and then sneaking back in?
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, more than 107,000 of our countrymen lost their lives after overdosing on drugs in 2023 — and somewhere in the neighborhood of 70% of those overdoses were on fentanyl.
Even if the political costs of their disproportionate response weren’t so obvious, how could their moral compasses malfunction so catastrophically?
The number of people who find themselves more incensed by the White House’s gauche celebration of Basor-Gonzalez’s arrest than they are by the fact that she was in the country in the first place is roughly equal to the number of people who have one of those non-sequitur laden “No human being is illegal…” signs in their front yards.
There was similar outrage over pictures of Kristi Noem, the tacky Secretary of Homeland Secretary, tackily posing in front of deported gang members at an El Salvadoran prison.
Noem should not have been in El Salvador. In fact, there’s a strong argument to be made that the administration shouldn’t be sending anyone to El Salvador. Compared to Democrats’ playing down the consequences of savage South and Central American gangs’ activity in the United States, though, the difference between Noem’s infraction and theirs is like that between slipping some gum into your pocket at the grocery store and shooting the security guard at the bank.
Of course, there is no shortage of reasonable — even righteous — criticism to be made of the Trump administration, including on the immigration issue. Indeed, it appears to be threatening due process rights in a haphazard, overzealous manner that should concern Americans of all persuasions.
But until the Left acknowledges the deadly havoc wrought by its own irresponsible policies, it will play directly into Trump’s hands by gnashing its teeth over his trolling of a drug-dealing illegal immigrant with no business being anywhere but prison for life.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
