Beyond Belief: Leftists Trash Trump for Helping Bring Nazi Criminal to Justice
Sticking to leftist talking points must be very exhausting, at least if the liberal response to a recent announcement is any sign.
Ever since Donald Trump became a serious political contender, the far left has pushed the radical claim that he’s a Nazi sympathizer in some form or another.
Of course, anybody with half a working neuron knows how silly that accusation is, but protesters have continued to try to make it stick since the election.
The Nazi finger-pointing has also been used by liberals to attack Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with some Democrats even implying that detaining illegal aliens at the border was akin to running German concentration camps.
All of that means that upset liberals must be very confused by the news this week. On Tuesday, the Trump administration and ICE announced that they were deporting an actual Nazi — you know, one who actually had a hand in atrocities of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party in Germany, and didn’t just role-play for attention at sad rallies.
“A 95-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard who lived quietly in New York City for decades was carried out of his home on a stretcher by federal agents and flown to Germany early Tuesday in what could prove to be the last U.S. deportation of a World War II-era war-crimes suspect,” reported the Associated Press from Berlin.
“Jakiw Palij’s expulsion, at President Donald Trump’s urging, came 25 years after investigators first accused Palij of lying about his wartime past to get into the U.S.,” the news wire continued.
“Trump ‘made it very clear’ he wanted Palij out of the country, and a new German government that took office in March brought ‘new energy’ to expediting the matter, U.S. Ambassador Richard Grenell said,” the AP stated.
Yes, not only did Trump personally push for ICE — an agency ironically called “fascist” by the left — to deport this true Nazi, but the administration was also able to accomplish something that neither Barack Obama nor George W. Bush did in their combined decade and a half.
According to Fox News, the former prison camp guard obtained his U.S. citizenship based on falsehoods, but this was revoked in 2003 after an investigation. At the same time, a federal judge ordered Palij to be deported … but for 15 years and two administrations, bureaucratic red tape prevented this from happening.
You might think that the left, constantly up in arms about Nazis both real and imagined, would be overjoyed that Palij was finally facing some justice. But no.
A chorus of liberals were quick to either downplay the deportation or strangely turn it around to attack Trump and ICE.
“These ICE agents don’t realize that someone else will come for them when they turn 95,” Upworthy contributor Thom Dunn posted in a tweet that was later deleted, according to The Daily Wire.
The implication was clear: Deporting lawbreakers, including a Nazi who hid for decades, makes ICE agents in the United States just as bad as a Holocaust guard. Or something.
A bewildered Dunn also tried to claim that kicking out an actual Nazi collaborator was “elder abuse” and made Trump a “white nationalist,” despite the fact that German-born Palij is himself — you guessed it — both white and part of the most notorious nationalist groups in history.
https://twitter.com/PaterIndomitus/status/1031924150795952133
“PS deporting a 95-year-old Nazi guard is a really great way to use elder abuse as plausible deniability for your xenophobic white nationalist sympathies,” the progressive writer declared.
Even major outlets like The Washington Post suggested that the only reason Trump “played up” the deportation was for “political advantage,” as if seeking long-due retribution for a man who allegedly participated in the Holocaust wasn’t a noble goal in itself.
Seeking political advantage, GOP plays up role of ICE in deportation of Nazi collaborator https://t.co/rlqoCJXbKp
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) August 21, 2018
This is the problem with putting a narrative ahead of a sober assessment of reality. In their zeal to paint Trump and federal law enforcement as notional Nazis, the left has forgotten what real fascists look like.
They’re now tripping over themselves to attack the president at any cost, even if it means criticizing the removal of a likely war criminal in the process.
It is possible to be critical of Trump while still acknowledging the decisions he gets right … but that seems like too much to ask from the left in 2018.
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