Conservatives Politicians and Media Are Pretending the Martha’s Vineyard Gambit Worked

It’s arduous to seek out something price praying for in our politics today, however that is one entreaty I’ll mild the sacred fires for: I hope Javier Salazar, the sheriff down there in Bexar County, Texas, is as a lot of a bulldog as he gave the impression to be on Monday.

Monday afternoon, Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar mentioned he has opened up a prison investigation towards the person or people who “lured below false pretenses” 48 newly arrived migrants in San Antonio to fly to Martha’s Winery final week. “Right here we’ve got 48 individuals who had been already on arduous occasions, and so they had been right here legally in our nation at that time … and I consider they had been preyed upon,” mentioned Salazar in a information convention. “They had been simply made fools of and had been subjected to a video op, a photograph op.” Salazar mentioned they’ve the names of suspects, however he didn’t disclose them. The migrants have mentioned they had been promised jobs, housing and meals. However Salazar mentioned they had been used “for nothing greater than political posturing.”

I spent all weekend in cockeyed surprise at how easily the wingnut propaganda machine kicked into excessive gear. Clearly, the governors of Texas and Florida concocted this inhumane scheme to site visitors asylum seekers from San Antonio to Martha’s Winery in a transcontinental semi-kidnapping “Personal the Libs” stunt. ({That a} video crew was invited alongside for the trip was form of the giveaway.) When the folks on the Winery killed it with kindness in entrance of god and the world, that the entire thing had flopped did not current a lot as a pace bump to the MAGAmind.

When the migrants had been moved to an current Massachusetts emergency facility at Joint Base Cape Cod—on a directive from the state’s Republican Governor, Charlie Baker—where they would be more comfortable and would have entry to immigration legal professionals and an ICE workplace, the puke funnel went into overdrive. From WBUR:

The bottom, which the state has beforehand designated an emergency shelter, will supply dormitory-style areas, with separate spots to accommodate households or people. The administration mentioned households is not going to be separated. The bottom will even function house for migrants to seek out different assets like authorized providers, well being care, disaster counseling and translators. “We’re grateful to the suppliers, volunteers and native officers that stepped up on Martha’s Winery over the previous few days to supply rapid providers to those people,” Gov. Charlie Baker mentioned within the assertion. “Our Administration has been working throughout state authorities to develop a plan to make sure these people could have entry to the providers they want going ahead, and Joint Base Cape Cod is nicely outfitted to serve these wants.”

“Desires do come true,” Peter Pan warned us, “if solely we want arduous sufficient.” Confronted by the plain indisputable fact that the libs had not been owned in any method, and that the stunt had not labored, the keepers of the puke funnel pivoted immediately to pretending that it had. To take heed to them and to comply with them on the electrical Twitter machine, you’d have thought the Jap Elite Militia had rounded up the migrants at bayonet-point and hustled them off the island as shortly as potential quite than home them for longer than 24 hours, and HYPOCRISY!!!!!! Checkmate, libs!

It was utterly bananas. There was precise video that confirmed that none of what the funnel was promoting was remotely linked to the truth of the occasions in query.

No one labored more durable at promoting the fantasy than Tailgunner Ted Cruz who, at this level, has taken to trolling regardless of having completely no reward for the self-discipline. He had to pull down one tweet as a result of he mistook Republican Gov. Charlie Baker for a Democrat. However the remainder of his contributions to the discourse was taken instantly from the film operating inside his mind. Right here’s a pattern:

They weren’t “unlawful immigrants”; they had been asylum seekers with an ideal proper to be right here. Second, the Guard was mobilized to arrange the ability at Joint Base Cape Cod; none of them had been on the island. Cruz even quote tweeted an NBC Information video that exhibits the migrants boarding the buses, hugging their momentary hosts on the Winery with no soldier in sight. However Cruz was assured that his most popular viewers would see what he wished them to see.

Javier Salazar, nevertheless, sees issues a bit in a different way.