Racism Is The Only Campaign Promise Trump Has Kept | EUROtoday

When Donald Trump most just lately ran for president, he made scores of guarantees to the American individuals — however he’s solely stored one.

In 2024, political pundits and operatives noticed affordability as the important thing subject of the presidential marketing campaign. Trump definitely performed it up: On the marketing campaign path, he pledged that he would deliver down inflation and make groceries cheaper once more, and when he received, observers credited that technique for his victory.

But that’s as a result of the president’s actual marketing campaign promise wasn’t in regards to the financial system. Instead, it was all about racism.

He spouted dehumanizing lies about immigrants, dabbled in eugenics and pledged to conduct mass deportations. “When I win on November 5, the migrant invasion ends, and the restoration of our country begins,” Trump mentioned at a rally in October 2024.

When he received again to the White House, he instantly started delivering on each the specific guarantees and the tacit implications.

In the final yr, Trump has deported immigrants with out a lot as a trial, defunded authorities packages devoted to range and inclusion, and deployed 1000’s of federal brokers to blue cities to wreak havoc on individuals of colour and their allies.

“This is the government weaponizing the social and political views of the president,” William Roberts, the senior vp for rights and justice on the Center for American Progress, a suppose tank that promotes liberal insurance policies, advised HuffPost.

“It’s not just ‘Donald Trump is a racist,’” Roberts mentioned. “It’s Trump’s government engaging in policy-making to harm certain people.”

There has been a transparent through-line between Trump’s marketing campaign rhetoric and the worst excesses of his second time period: During the 2024 presidential marketing campaign, a viral declare about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio — the place roughly 10,000 Haitians had arrived in recent times — additionally caught Trump’s consideration. He repeated the racist rumor throughout a presidential debate along with his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” Trump mentioned. “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Trump’s operating mate, JD Vance, repeated the rumor and added claims of his personal, together with saying Haitians have been bringing ailments to Ohio. But Vance additionally basically admitted that he was mendacity.

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“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” he mentioned in a September 2024 interview with CNN.

Suddenly, Haitian immigrants throughout the U.S. have been targets. Springfield, Ohio, faculty kids have been subjected to bomb threats, and in small cities in Pennsylvania and Alabama with important Haitian populations, residents fearful for his or her security.

The incontrovertible fact that Trump confronted no penalties and as a substitute was rewarded with one other shot on the presidency has enabled much more blatant lies about marginalized, usually immigrant, populations — with lethal outcomes.

In December 2025, a viral video alleging fraud at Somali-run day cares within the Minneapolis space caught the eye of the Trump administration. Nick Shirley, the right-wing agitator who made the video, claimed that he had uncovered $100 million price of fraud. (Minnesota officers investigated his claims and, throughout shock inspections, discovered that each one the day cares featured in his movies have been working as anticipated.) But nonetheless, Trump despatched federal officers to “investigate.”

Before the surge of federal brokers into Minnesota, Trump had been referring to Somalis, together with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), as “garbage.”

“We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” he mentioned at a Cabinet assembly final November.

But as president, Trump doesn’t merely must pay lip service to racist web rumors. He can use the complete power of the federal authorities.

The Department of Homeland Security deployed 1000’s of immigration brokers to Minneapolis, which has the biggest Somali inhabitants within the U.S. Just two days into what DHS known as its largest immigration operation ever, 37-year-old Renee Good, a white mom of three who seemed to be participating in protest, was shot and killed by Jonathan Ross, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, whereas sitting in her automotive.

She was solely the most recent individual to be shot by federal officers — becoming a member of individuals like Kevin Porter, who was fatally shot in Los Angeles, and Marimar Martinez, who survived a capturing in Chicago — however her demise sparked widespread protests in Minneapolis and past.

ICE doubled down after Good was killed. Federal brokers have been noticed throughout Minneapolis, concentrating on individuals, dragging them from their vehicles and utilizing pepper spray and different chemical irritants. The metropolis’s public faculty system shut down for 2 days and is now providing distant studying for any households who’re too fearful to ship their kids to high school.

And the federal government doesn’t make any secret of the philosophy behind the crackdown. The official X account of the Department of Homeland Security repeatedly posts memes and songs fashionable with white nationalists and Nazis.

“Calling everything you dislike ‘Nazi propaganda’ is tiresome,” a DHS spokesperson advised HuffPost in an emailed assertion. “DHS will continue to use all tools to communicate with the American people and keep them informed on our historic effort to Make America Safe Again.”

“The administration wants this country to be more white,” Seth Levi, the chief technique officer on the Southern Poverty Law Center, advised HuffPost. “These are white nationalist beliefs that we’ve seen in the fringes going back decades but it’s becoming mainstream thought by the administration.”

In Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Charlotte, immigrant communities and their allies have additionally been subjected to an unprecedented blitz, all previewed by Trump on the marketing campaign path.

In 2024, Trump mentioned that Aurora, Colorado, a Denver suburb, was a “war zone” being run by members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuela-based legal group. But even Republican officers within the metropolis mentioned that the claims have been false and that Aurora was protected for households.

“It’s like an invasion from within, and we’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country,” Trump mentioned in September of that yr. “And we’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora.”

Trump continued on with the fiction in his second time period by concentrating on Latino males throughout the nation and accusing them of being gang members, even when the proof was skinny. In March, the Department of Homeland Security despatched a whole lot of principally Venezuelan males to a jail in El Salvador identified for its human rights abuses. The males had not obtained trials or sentences, and lots of had no legal data.

When advocates filed a lawsuit accusing immigration officers of illegally concentrating on individuals based mostly on their race, the Supreme Court — the place a full one-third of the justices have been appointed by Trump — dominated 6-3 to permit it. Ethnicity, wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh in his opinion, “can be a ‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors.”

Beyond the violence that Trump has the facility to allow as president, there are trickle-down results.

“It does create a permission structure to say these things out in the open,” Levi mentioned. “These aren’t new feelings or beliefs, but people used to recognize them as taboo and kept them to themselves.”

There’s proof that racist rhetoric from the higher echelons of presidency can affect the common American as nicely. Hateful and bigoted rhetoric on-line elevated after the 2024 electionand a December 2025 Gallup ballot discovered that the majority Americans imagine that political rhetoric has gone too far.

As Trump ramps up his deportation efforts, on a regular basis persons are attempting to assist him. There have been a number of cases of individuals publicly serving to deportation officers, together with by directing them towards immigrants.

“Jim Crow wasn’t held up only with policy but also by regular people,” Roberts mentioned, referring to the set of racially discriminatory legal guidelines, violence and social constructions that oppressed Black individuals within the U.S. South for almost 100 years after the abolition of slavery.

In some ways, it might be too late to place this genie again within the bottle. Immigration enforcement is simply probably the most seen and most up-to-date manifestation of the administration’s agenda.

During his first days in workplace, Trump signed an government order banning range, fairness and inclusion within the federal authorities. The administration shortly went to work to fireside workers who did range work and dismantle packages that didn’t align with their worldview.

Although the chief order didn’t apply to personal corporations, leaders within the sector adopted swimsuit and started pulling again from their DEI pledges as nicely.

The assault on the federal government dealt an particularly large blow to Black staffwho’re overrepresented as federal workers as a result of public sector jobs have been historically extra welcoming to individuals of colour.

Trump additionally signed orders that dismantled DEI in Okay-12 public colleges and better training institutes, whereas demanding elite faculties flip over their race and admissions information. The administration has been utilizing allegations of antisemitism or claims race is being illegally used as an admissions issue to stress colleges into favoring a extra right-wing agenda, even because it places related pressures on college students themselves. Thousands of worldwide college students have misplaced their skill to check within the U.S.

And DHS officers started concentrating on faculty college students with opinions it didn’t like, together with Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate pupil who led pro-Palestinian protests on campus and was arrested over his beliefs final March.

It’s all taking place with at the very least the excuse, if not real perception, that Trump has a mandate from the individuals. He made it very clear all through his marketing campaign that mass deportations, demonizing the opposite and accepting bigotry would dominate his second time period.

This is what they voted for. And that’s what has occurred.

“It’s really emboldening people to treat folks however they want to,” Roberts mentioned. “[His policies] will resurrect a lot of the racial animus that has always lived in America.”

Despite his lofty guarantees in regards to the financial system, reasonably priced groceries and ushering in a brand new golden age, there seems to be just one true fixed of the Trump administration.

“People sometimes have a tendency to overthink and overanalyze because we don’t want to accept the most obvious explanation that’s right in front of us,” Levi mentioned.

“But when the administration is tweeting out Nazi memes and songs, I don’t really think there’s a nuanced hot take on that,” he continued. “They’re being pretty clear about what some of their beliefs are.”