During his first State of the Union, President Donald Trump called for unity. But the words he uttered did little to foster togetherness. Instead, he attacked immigrants and people of color, with some believing that he aimed to create division between black and brown communities.
As he spoke about MS-13 – an international street gang that originated in Los Angeles – he used the painful stories of Afro-Latino and African-American families who lost their teen daughters to put a target on Central Americans, many of whom fled their native countries because of gang violence. “These two precious girls were brutally murdered while walking together in their hometown,” he said. “Six members of the savage gang MS-13 have been charged with Kayla and Nisa’s murders. Many of these gang members took advantage of glaring loopholes in our laws to enter the country as unaccompanied alien minors – and wound up in Kayla and Nisa’s high school.”
He also once again reiterated his plan to use young undocumented immigrants as bargaining chips. In order to provide protection to this group – many of whom are Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients – he wants Congress to approve a bill that funds the border wall, ends the visa lottery in favor of a system that only invites immigrants with means into the country, and stops family reunification – a process by which immigrants can bring close family members to the United States. Trump, who calls it “chain migration,” erroneously stated that through reunification “a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives.”
With offensive statement after offensive statement, we know we’re not the only ones who felt enraged during the State of the Union. Below, we gathered eight tweets that sum up why the State of the Union was so frustrating: