Donald Trump: Capitalizing (Again) on Human Tragedy — The Mollie Tibbetts Case
Back to the future? Expect President Trump to once again trying to capitalize on a tragedy and for Molly Tibbetts to be mentioned repeatedly during the mid-term election season.
In 2015, Kate Steinle was shot and killed on the San Francisco waterfront; Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, an undocumented immigrant, was charged in the death. As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump tried to capitalize on the Steinle case in the 2016 presidential campaign. Later, Garcia was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges.
Another tragic case is in the news. Reuters reports on the arrest of a man, Cristhian Rivera, who authorities have said is undocumented on charges of murdering University of Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts. (For the record, Rivera’s attorney claims that Rivera is legally in the country.). The case already has become grist for the debate on immigration policy, with President Donald Trump blaming Tibbetts’ death on weak immigration laws.
True Crime Garage already has two podcasts focused on the Mollie Tibbetts’ case.
It should not be surprising that it did not take long for the Mollie Tibbetts’ tragedy to become political fodder. As Voice of America reports, President Donald Trump has repeatedly used immigration as a means of rallying voters, both during his campaign and his presidency and is returning to it as a wedge issue for the November elections. At a rally in West Virginia, shortly after news broke that his former campaign manager Paul Manafort was found guilty of financial fraud, and his former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations, the president railed against illegal immigration by citing the murder of Mollie Tibbetts.
The day after the arrest, President Trump released a video tying the killing to lax U.S. immigration policy and called for, among other things, congressional funding for the border wall.
The Tibbetts’ tragedy is reviving debate over immigration. It is sad that President Trump will try to capitalize politically on the death of Mollie Tibbetts, while the family mourns and has thanked the world for the support during the time that she was missing. What is very likely to get lost in the rhetoric is that the data clearly shows that immigrants on the whole are less likely to commit crimes than U.S. citizens. “There’s 100 years of data from all different sources that all point in the same direction,” said Walter Ewing, senior researcher at the American Immigration Council, which advocates on behalf of immigrants. “If you don’t believe one study, there’s 10 more behind it that say the same thing.”
KJ