Jane Coaston: POTUS's Racism Notches Another Win

The Bulwark Podcast

In this episode of The Bulwark Podcast, Jane Coaston dissects the Supreme Court’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status for over 300,000 Haitian immigrants, linking it directly to the dehumanizing rhetoric of Donald Trump and the broader conservative media ecosystem. She critiques the normalization of anti-Black and anti-immigrant sentiment, highlighting the hypocrisy in how different forms o

Key takeaways

• The Supreme Court’s decision to end TPS for Haitians reflects a political strategy rooted in Trump’s long-standing dehumanizing rhetoric about Haitian immigrants.
• Justice Alito’s dismissal of concerns about the impact of Trump’s rhetoric—such as claiming Haitians bring AIDS or live in 'shit'—reveals a dangerous normalization of xenophobia.
• Justice Sotomayor’s dissent powerfully exposed how Trump’s comments, including comparing Haiti unfavorably to Norway and Sweden, were not incidental but part of a deliberate campaign to delegitimize Haitian immigrants.

Transcript preview

Hello, welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. I am delighted as you the audience is to welcome to the show. Host of Cook and Media is what a day podcast, which is now daily coming for me, but it's shorter. I am delighted, but it's shorter. I am delighted, but you can do both. And she's also, as a I mentioned yesterday, you people like her so much. He's the current record holder for most audio downloads of a single podcast and I think it's just because people wanted her Malania takes so bad it's Jane Coast. Hello, it's good to see you Tim. Jane, high bar feeder. I know, I know. I regrettably we don't have Malania Trump explaining how we should have just read her book but no one read her book. I'm so sorry I still haven't. I know I should have pulled a clip just for fun. We should have just done a flash of just done a flash but I had how I met my husband which I detailed in my book. And I'm like, no, we didn't read it. I did not do sex trafficking with Jeffrey Epstein. Okay? Anyway, we've got a grab bag of fun Tim and Jane topics at the end. We are going to have to talk about Chud Catholic Conver, JD, in the middle. At the beginning we have to start with some angry news. Is that okay? Can we do mad stuff first? I think, yeah, I think that that makes sense. There's a lot of angry news before we get into how Ushavants didn't have any issues growing up and she doesn't really get what JD's ordeal is, but that's not her here for there. We'll get back to us. I feel like I can call it that. We're kind of on that that's what a nickname level. I'm trying to say which thing I'm more upset about this morning. I think the thing I'm the most upset about is the Supreme Court ruling on the temporary protected status for the Haitians. We're going to do legal nerdy in and so I don't know that we need to go through the ruling of the fine tune but you know in short what the practical effect is is that over 300,000 Haitians who flood horrific conditions in their country and are in America under legal status have now been made illegal by the Supreme Court because of some Calvin Ball style decision and now they're subject to Mark Wayne Mullen and Stephen Miller and their goons and who knows what's going to have So I've got some rage on this and wonder what your reaction is. Yeah, I mean there are a couple things about this because it's not just folks from Haiti it's folks from Syria It's folks who are here on temporary protective status and there's a split screen which a couple of people have been sharing I did as well Which is Samuel Alito saying like Trump's comments you know you can say anything about someone's country you can just like dislike people's country like whatever it's fine like so it's And then you have, if I remember correctly, you have in her dissent, Alana Kagan being like, here is all of the things Trump said about Haitians and talking about how they're bringing AIDS, how they live in the shit whole country, how they're just terrible people, how you know, we should be able to get more people from Norway and Sweden. And it was interesting how Samuel Alito's whole thing was, doesn't look like anything to me. And this is someone who once decried the sopranos for promoting anti- Italian racism. So like there's this weird like it's interesting because I just keep thinking about how like the Supreme Court the conservative justices on the Supreme Court can see racism if it impacts them directly. Everybody else they're like oh what who like it's like if horse blinders worked like this and it's telling because I just keep thinking of moments in which people on the right have decried anti-white racism or what they believed to be anti-white racism, which really just makes it so clear that there is a swath of the American right that knows what racism is, but can only identify it if it is happening to them. Or I think maybe in the case of anti-Semitism, for example, like on Fox, they're like very keyed in on any signs of anti-Semitism if it comes from a DSA leftist. Right. But it just again, you go like, you know, anti-Semitism on the right. Who? What? I don't know what you're talking about. I got nothing. And I'm like, yeah, your hands are in front of your face and your eyes are closed and you've just been going, la, la, la, la, for the last several years. Or you've been saying, like, oh, it's okay, because I'll never forget the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro basically saying like, Ann Coulter, maybe anti-Semitic, but she likes Israel so it's cool. Don't worry about it's totally fine. You know, you know, no need to worry about that. old Jew, that's fine. But conservative Jew, no. Mm-mm, not allowed. Here's the thing, and like I said, we'll get more into the court stuff next week, but this is what people voted for. And like this is what we're going to get when Donald Trump came back in. And it's a heinous, disgusting, un-American, like fundamentally on American policy. But I mean, it's what they campaigned on this was not, they did not hide the ball. I mean they campaigned on these people being kicked out of the country. they made lies about them. They ate cats and dogs. They wanted to pay a bounty. You know, Christopher Rufo offered a bounty for proof that Haitian immigrants eat cats and or dogs. This was a thing that actually happened. Did he ever get that? Did he pay out the bounty? Unclear. I'm guessing, no. I will also note that there's very specific groups that apparently were very mad about animal cruelty and that group is uh... does not include... white people who apparently can do animal cruelty all day long. There's kind of this overarching thing I have where it's like, oh, you know, you had on CNN last night somebody ranting about a Haitian immigrant who, you know, hit and killed a child in a truck or something like that and basically just... Yeah, yeah, which I mean, one, the parents of the child went to a city council meeting if I remember correctly and begged people to not use their child's name as a political country. also it's so obvious this idea of like one person did something that was terrible and horrible and awful and evil and that's just a one person did something and then it's like obviously this is an you know endemic across this entire large community which is just like such obvious bog standard evil racism that's just that's just how it is like there's a temptation to want to do a tit for tat of just being like look like clearly we don't we don't care about criminality coming from any other group or any other number of people. But to your point, this is what they campaigned on. This is what they said they would do. And there really is something about like, there are people who can say in some ways that the Trump administration, you know, this isn't what I voted for. I didn't vote to go to war in Iran. I didn't vote for him to be obsessed with, I didn't vote for him to be obsessed with, I don't know, arches and be like if whatever the actual stereotype of Marie Antoinette who side note seems like she was a fine person it's fine we can get into that as another conversation but you know actual Marie Antoinette fine but like this you knew you knew the whole time you wanted it to be the economy of 2019 and you said this is also fine. in the factories and you have all these anecdotes and you shouldn't even have to say them with people that are going to work people who have been here for like 16 years at this point since the 2010 earthquake like... Send it back to what? Well also like the idea that this is somehow a good thing for us like it doesn't do anything good for us it doesn't add anything to remove people from this country. It just doesn't like like this, like it doesn't It detracts from us and it detracts from who we are, who I want us to be more accurately because this is actually who we are right now. I have to give you a counterpoint, Jane. Megan Kelly, who's usually writing around us in the podcast rankings, so people are listening to that show. She had a different take than you on the Haitian immigrants and I'd like to play that for you. Look, this has been going on for over a dozen years. Go home, get out. better than yours. That's because we filled it with our work ethic and our culture and our values. You being here only dilutes it for us, those who built it and live it. And half of you people more than half you won't assimilate. We don't want you. We don't care if you're offended. Get out. Go home. Go back to fucking Haiti. Sorry. I'm just, I'm thinking about our friends in Ohio who've been dealing with these TPS Haitians for years now who are drunk driving all over their towns, people, this is the whole cats and dogs thing. Like, they don't want to live like Americans live. You know, how Americans stand a thwart drunk driving. That is something Americans don't drunk drive. That's why there hasn't been a years long campaign to get people to stop drunk driving. And there isn't a little device that sometimes court officers will put in your car that you have to blow into before you can start your car. don't drunk drive. Like what she's doing there and this is kind of a wider thing is she is vice signaling. This is like yeah fuck you I hate everybody I'm a terrible person and I'm gonna perform that because oh I'm just standing up for our friends in Ohio like because you know Megan Kelly who is a extraordinarily wealthy woman who has been an extraordinarily wealthy woman for a very long time is also got her ear to the ground in Springfield, Ohio, Ohio. Because I am sure that she is spending a lot of time just with everyday folks in Springfield, Ohio. And I'm sure she's not just getting emails from people who are already mad about it, who are also listeners of the Megan Kelly show. You know, she's getting like real-deal contextual information from the good people of Springfield, Ohio. This is a woman who once complained about a trans woman appearing on Kim Petress, pop star, appearing in Springfield. Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue because she was upset because what if her sons wanted to masturbate to the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and they saw Kim Petras and they couldn't do it. Wouldn't that be sad? Wouldn't that be so sad? It would be very sad. I think you're kind of nice to Megan Kelly there because what Megan Kelly is doing is she's being a rancid bitch. That's what she's doing. I'm sorry. Like that is all she's doing. She's like you can call it by signaling. the Winnie the Pooh and the Tuxedo version of what she's doing but she's being a rancid bitch and she this notion it's a performance for an audience that is like this is what this is what we want to hear from you we want to hear from you yelling at Mark Levin about his micropenes what and it will benefit you financially to do this if it didn't she wouldn't be doing it and you recall I mean the thing with Megan Kelly specifically is that we have of all of this because do you remember when she was working for NBC? Yeah, it was a totally different character. Totally different character. Totally different things. She was like loving trans children. Very caring on the show. Yeah, this is like the soft morning mom after school drop-off. Yeah, lots of clapping talking about. Yeah, clapping. She did the wine dancing. But she is perpetrating a lie that like that is underscoring the tragedy that's happening to these people that are being sent back to Haiti for no reason for no reason for no reason. by our government for no reason to either in the country working hard going to church raising their families like that's what was happening but not most of the Haitians in Springfield Ohio and like this idea I'm gonna can I steal a line from Barack Obama the idea that like there's this great American culture and it's like we built this it's like Megan Kelly you didn't build shit like she has not built any lasting cultural touch-down. She's added nothing to the culture. she's trying to do is rip the country apart, undermine what made America special. Like the idea that Haitians haven't contributed anything to American culture. Like I am, as a New Orleans resident, I do have to object to this notion because New Orleans is Alabama without Haitians. That's what New Orleans does. Like the Creole culture is New Orleans. And like that I think has enriched the country quite a bit to add it a lot of you know a lot of spice to the gum belt you know there's been a lot of great Haitians Baskot Blake Griffin you know there was the Pierre Tucson she might be familiar she lives in New York she pretends to be a person a Catholic founder of Catholic charities it's just like this fucking idea that it's like oh we did that we did that you didn't she hasn't done anything she's just you sit on your basement in your mansion and you and you yell at people for money yeah no there's something I find, I mean, you know, you see it across different groups, but it's kind of like a stolen valor thing. And this is stolen white people valor. Yes, correct. It's like, you know, my ancestors, I'm like, did they? Maybe they did. I don't know who your great-grandmother is. She probably contributed more than Megan Kelly has to the culture. I don't know. You see this with kind of like, you know, like you get stolen penis valor, bag of rice at Costco. So like let's just you know let's simmer down a little bit on this one. But yeah no it's awful but it's awful it's awful and it's garbage and it's what we're doing right now and it's it's what we're performing again to the world and you know I mentioned this on my show yesterday that like we have this simultaneous like people are here for the World Cup and everybody's having a great time and people are like getting along and doing stuff and this is in a big stick for them right now. to that point including fans of Haiti's national soccer team which they've not been able to play at home in years and you have Haitian Americans who are here supporting their team they are you know they're celebrating they you know they're having dance-offs with Scottish fans like it's great and it's like that is and you have conservative media being like yeah everybody loves us it's so great but like you got to get the fuck out of here like it's a fascinating duality It is. Our mutual friend Larry. Patient descent was that one of those games. 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It's also like the way that they're in media, which is again, yeah, it's all you know, it's outrageous and especially because like one it's led to some of the most irritating people on earth gloating about it but also the degree to which so what we're talking about let me just give the breakdown we're actually talking about it sorry yeah our fucking dander is up okay listeners sometimes our dander gets up before we tell you what we're talking about fourth of July last year protesters went to the prairie land ice facility in Texas for protest, it was disruptive. It was not they were shooting fireworks, they were doing graffiti, they slashed some tires on the government van, you should not do that. They were asked to disperse, many of them did not comply. A federal agent alive pulled out a gun. One of the protesters who had taken a rifle to the protest, second amendment, hell yeah, shot and wounded but didn't kill the officer that pulled the gun. You should not do that. The government prosecuted then, though, 22 protesters, not,