Much energy and angst has been devoted to whether President Trump was referring only to MS-13 gang members or to undocumented immigrants more generally when he said last week, "You wouldn't believe how bad these people are. These aren't people. These are animals." The entire exercise was a waste of time.

Trump constantly conflates all immigrants with violent criminals, and never bothers to clarify that most in this group have committed no crime on American soil and are simply seeking honest work and a better life. (In fact, the undocumented are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans.) He never makes the distinction, because to him, there is no difference worth remarking on—or worse, he finds it politically fruitful to ignore it.

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Trump strikes a Hitlerian note about immigrants: "You wouldn't believe how bad these people are. These aren't people. These are animals." pic.twitter.com/LpmgDMZ9RV — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 16, 2018

For those in search of further evidence, The Washington Post popped up with a look at the state of Trump's immigration policy today. They included a passage, from a meeting he held with Stephen Miller and Son-in-Law-in-Chief Jared Kushner before his 2017 address to a Joint Session of Congress, that perfectly illustrates the president's attitude:

Trump reminded them the crowds loved his rhetoric on immigrants along the campaign trail. Acting as if he was at a rally, he then read aloud a few made up Hispanic names and described potential crimes they could have committed, like rape or murder. Then, he said, the crowds would roar when the criminals were thrown out of the country — as they did when he highlighted crimes by illegal immigrants at his rallies, according to a person present for the exchange and another briefed on it later. Miller and Kushner laughed.

A senior White House official said that while the president did discuss the “crowd enthusiasm for crackdowns on criminal aliens,” the official disputed that Trump used Hispanic names to illustrate the point.

Another one for the Annals of Presidential Behavior. Are you really even surprised to hear this is how Trump talks in the Oval Office? This is a man who dismissed all 54 countries of Africa as "shitholes" on the same hallowed ground. And are you really surprised to hear he thinks of it as a good bit of red meat for his adoring crowds? It is painfully obvious that when the president hears the word "immigrant," he sees someone of a certain complexion and assumes they are a violent criminal.

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As usual, those who chose to give this president the benefit of the doubt, or to play along with the bogus distinctions his loyalists draw to cover his hindquarters after yet another outrage, end up with egg on their face. Even if you grant that the context of his "animals" comment was exculpatory—it really wasn't—the larger context of his political career clearly is not.

This began with his very first speech as a candidate, when he characterized undocumented immigrants from Mexico as rapists and criminals. In a follow-up statement—written out, not spoken, to remove all doubt—he was similarly unequivocal:

What can be simpler or more accurately stated? The Mexican government is forcing their most unwanted people into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc.

"Et cetera." What a perfect window into his thinking: They're all criminals of some kind—no need to waste time on specifics. Pretending that Trump makes a distinction between violent and nonviolent illegal immigrants is like playing along with his (and the wider conservative) line that there's only a problem with illegal immigration. Except Trump's administration supports cutting legal immigration in half. It's almost like they don't want anyone coming in. Trump's non-distinction between immigrants who commit crimes and those who don't also shows up in his administration's policies, as Vox highlighted:

Arrests of immigrants without criminal records have also spiked. During President Obama’s last year, about 16 percent of ICE arrests were of noncriminal immigrants; each month since July 2017, between 32 and 40 percent of arrestees have been noncriminals."

The president's blanket vitriol for all people who come here without proper documentation—and even those who have it, unless they're from Norway—is right there for all to see. Why would anyone give him the benefit of the doubt? Why suggest he has a nuanced view of which group of people he is dehumanizing—the bluntest and most dangerous form of rhetoric for a national leader—when he hasn't got a nuanced view of anything, except whether good people can be found marching alongside Nazis?

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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