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PaperclipPerfector  23hr ago (text post)   3047 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 9, 2026

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Let's get this thread rolling with something interesting. I happened to come across this clip on Twitter of a post-midterm interview with Trump, posted by America First Post. I'm just gonna transcribe the whole thing here:

Narrator: Whether it was the message, or the record, the Republican collapse will give Democrats in Congress new powers over budgets, hearings, and subpoenas.

Interviewer: You came out after the midterms, you congratulated the Democrats, you said you were open to working with them. What is one thing you would like to work with a Democratic majority on?

Trump: I'd love to do something on immigration.

Interviewer: What? Do you think immigration hurt you in the midterms? Do you think the crackdown hurt you?

Trump: I think it both helped and hurt. I got an A+ for closing up the border. I get very high marks for getting the bad ones out, but I get hurt because we also took people that had good jobs, that created one violation or breaking of the law and that was that they came into the country illegally. Now, there is a large part of the country that think they should be put out and there is a large part of the country that think they should be allowed to stay if they're good people working in a landscaping company or working in a hotel or doing something right? And in some cases paying taxes. And there's a large group of people think that they should be allowed to stay.

Interviewer: So you think your deportation policy went too far? It was too tough.

Trump: I think it was too tough. I think it might be too tough yea.

Interviewer: What would happen? What does the deal look like with the Democrats?

Trump: Well, the deal would be we would work something out and I think it's something, I think that's something that's actually doable.

Interviewer: Doable to create some kind of legal status for the landscapers and the -?

Trump: Yea. When you go into a hotel and you have a woman that's worked there as a, you know, as a maid, as a cleaner, as a this, as a that, as a waitress, a lot of good things, great jobs, and all of a sudden they're being taken out of the country it's tough. It's a tough thing. But there's a group of people that I would say on the sort of pretty far right that would like everybody to connect.

Interviewer: Do any of those people work in your administration? Are they in the building with us right now?

Trump: No, no. Well, there are a lot of those people. Then there's also people that are more modified on that. In other words get the killers out, get all the rough ones out, get the drug dealers out but let the people that are here, and in some cases here for 10 and 15 years, work a deal for them.

Interviewer: Do you think, the Democratic party right now, has people in it that are interested in this kind of deal?

Trump: I think so, yeah. People have already called me.

Interviewer: So I'll say, I saw James Talarico, the new Democratic senator from Texas. I saw him on Fox News and he said immigration was one of the things he wanted to work with the audience.

Trump: Others too, South Carolina said. Numerous people.

Interviewer: You did, in the course of the campaign, you did occasionally call him Talafreako.

Trump: Yea, I did.

Trump is Trump of course so take everything with a massive grain of salt, especially since he announced Stephen Miller would be taking over as his chief of staff, but this is crazy? Perhaps Trump's "Only Nixon can go to China" moment will be an Eisenhower-esque amnesty for illegals. I have heard other commentators suggest that Trump would be open to adding Puerto Rico and D.C. as states from a self-glorifying kind of way. "President Trump, you could be remembered as the first President to add states to the union since 1950! What a legacy!"

Immigration was a winning issue. You need to deport the most sympathetic cases in order to instill a strong deterrence effect, because lawfare prevents enforcement in large numbers. This means rounding up grandmas here for 20, 30, 40 years and keeping them in jail for a month before deporting them so that no illegal ever feels safe. If you fail to deport abeulita, 10 chicas will plan to vamanos on over with the expectation that if they just have uno chico and wait 10 years they’ll get to remain safely forever. It’s just that good to live in America compared to South and Central America.

There’s no way America will survive with an eternal unrelenting flood of 80-90iq foreigners from below. Either it balkanizes into competing racial groups or we become just another Brazil, with world history being played out by nation states like China and Japan until the end of time. There’s no coming back from this.

If I were dictator of America, I would deport the illegal abuelitas out of a sense of duty, justice, and fairness. Every single one of them goes back. However, I am not, you are not, and Trump is not a dictator, and never will be. In a realistic sense it is necessary to coalition build and compromise. The abuelitas are less damaging to our culture and economy than the average illegal, and they are more sympathetic and emotionally salient than the average illegal. If you deport the abuelitas the normies will get mad at you, even ones who lean right. If you make it your message to deport the abuelitas people will call you an evil racist and the normies will believe them and not vote for you, your policies, or politicians you like (and also won't listen to you on other issues). If you group the abuelitas and the rapists together and say "deport them all", the normies will see the abuelitas and say "no, give amnesty to them all". Therefore in pragmatic terms, promoting the message "deport the abuelitas" counterproductively causes fewer illegals to be deported.

I would like them all deported, but at this point I will take what I can get. If amnesty for anyone here for 20+ years is the cost we have to pay to establish an efficient machine that speedily catches and deports new illegals, I would suck it up and pay that cost. Now, they aren't offering that deal so there's no point paying the cost without getting that permission in exchange. I definitely do not want to give amnesty without getting a LOT in exchange for it. The incentives you point out are important, but they're not everything. I think it's a bargaining chip I think we should keep on the table IF we can more than we lose in exchange for it.

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