Stoking division may be a winning campaign strategy, but it comes at a cost

One Republican president, George W. Bush, honored Dikembe Mutombo at his 2007 State of the Union address at the Capitol, saying, “Dikembe became a star in the NBA and a citizen of the United States, but he never forgot the land of his birth, or his duty to share his blessings with others.”

It wasn’t just the sports world that mourned the death of Mutombo this week at the age of 58. Mutombo, who had become a U.S. citizen the year before Bush’s public praise, was known for both his unique basketball skills and his humanitarian and philanthropic efforts in this country, and especially in his native Democratic Republic of the Congo. Through the efforts of the NBA’s first global ambassador, a hospital and school were built there.

His obituary in The New York Times recounted that moment when a president recognized the sports star. Mutombo was awarded an academic scholarship to Georgetown, where he double majored in linguistics and diplomacy instead of his original pre-med dream; he spoke French, English, Spanish, Portuguese and five African languages.

What a full life, in just 58 years.

I wonder, though, if another former Republican president gave that stellar American’s death a second thought.

Instead, the current GOP nominee for the office was using Mutombo’s birthplace and the people who hail from that African country as villains at campaign stops on the Donald Trump hate tour. I doubt Trump knows much about any country in Africa, but he’s canny enough to realize conjuring up lurid images he seems to have gleaned from a Tarzan movie would scare up a few votes by stoking fear of the other, particularly if that other consists of nameless hordes of Black people, invading a white, suburban haven.

“They come from, from the Congo in Africa,” Trump said at a campaign stop in Wisconsin this week, repeating what has become a familiar refrain. “Many people from the Congo. I don’t know what that is.” It’s always Scandinavian countries such as Norway and Denmark that draw his admiration, while he heaps insults on the Middle East, Asia, Central and South America and Africa.

What’s Biden Doing With the Border? To beat Trump, must Biden imitate him?

Joe Biden’s new executive order severely limits migrants from seeking asylum at the border. It’s a far cry from his campaign rhetoric and the New York Times called it the most restrictive immigration policy issued by any modern Democrat. What is he trying to accomplish?

Guest: Jonathan Blitzer, staff writer for the New Yorker and author of “Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America and the Making of a Crisis.”

You can’t ‘pivot away’ from sick stunts and cruelty

It’s called the “pivot.” It’s that moment when a politician who has been playing at the fringes for primary purposes tacks to the center, just in time for the general election, the better to appeal to independents and moderates who might be turned off by red-meat rhetoric.

A particularly clumsy execution of what should be a deft move could be observed after New Hampshire Republican Don Bolduc won his primary fight and the right to run for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Democrat Maggie Hassan.

After running as a true Trump devotee, swallower of the election lie that Donald Trump was denied the presidency because of fraud, and signing a letter saying Trump won, Bolduc had a come-to-truth conversion as soon as the primary votes were counted. “I’ve done a lot of research on this,” he said to explain his about-face. “The election was not stolen.”

Did he forget that videotape exists and social media is forever?

In politics, there are actually all kinds of pivots.

One that erases the lived experiences of human beings is underway right now, as buses and planes crisscross the United States, courtesy of governors competing to see who can score the most political points on the backs of brown people.

Who are these men, women and children? Where exactly are they from? Are many in the country legally, stuck in an immigration system that is overloaded, unwieldy and in need of reform? What’s going to happen to them now? Who is paying for this stunt?

Before all these questions are deeply explored, notice how quickly conversation about GOP Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida transporting asylum-seekers northward segued from the details about the people on those buses and planes to analysis of how these politicians’ cynical moves will play among voters.

Eventually, those details dangerously lose their power to shock, the names and faces blurring.

Consider how little has been reported on the fate of a 1-month-old baby dropped off in front of the Washington, D.C., residence of Vice President Kamala Harris, courtesy of Abbott.

Put yourself in the place of desperate parents trying to give your infant a better life; wonder what kind of despair and hope would lead to a trek into the unknown.

Oh, that’s right. In Donald Trump’s recent ominous and threatening Ohio speech, the one in which he labeled anyone opposing the MAGA movement as “thugs and tyrants” with “no idea of the sleeping giant they have awoken,” he could not pass up the chance to refer to some immigrants as “murderers” and “rapists.”

The clear message was that “these” people are not like you, smoothing the way for a pivot from people to threats to political pawns, good only for the opportunity to “own the libs” and bank a few votes.

When taken to task for not giving social services in Martha’s Vineyard advance notice, the better to make preparations, DeSantis press person Jeremy Redfern embraced the oversight, tweeting, “Do the cartels that smuggle humans call Florida or Texas before illegal immigrants wash up on our shores or cross over the border? No.”

Anyone who invites a comparison to human-smuggling, lawbreaking coyotes might want to examine his life choices.

It’s not even an original tactic.

The Migrants Texas Sent to New York City

As part of a stunt to protest the Biden administration’s immigration policies, the governors of Texas and Arizona have been sending bus-loads of migrants to DC and New York without any support. Immigrant advocate groups are scrambling to take care of these people, who were vulnerable well before being used as political props.

Guest: Murad Awawdeh, executive director at New York Immigration Coalition and NYIC Action

POLITICAL WRAP: Crisis at Border after Surge in Migrants and Unaccompanied Children

A crisis at the border as a major surge in migrants strains resources.

Nearly 9,300 unaccompanied children were detained last month.

Our political contributor, Mary C. Curtis, gives us her take in the video above.

Mooch FM: MARY C. CURTIS, JOHNNY TAYLOR JR. & MICHAEL ERIC DYSON

In this episode, Anthony talks with the award-winning political columnist, writer and speaker Mary C. Curtis about life after Trump, the values of the Republican party, and how their conservative principles have “crumbled.”

Johnny Taylor Jr. is chair of the President’s advisory board on Historically Black Colleges and Universities and chief executive of the Society for Human Resource Management, and talks through how we can all help HBCUs – and why “policy should trump politics.”

Finally, world-renowned professor, preacher and bestselling author Michael Eric Dyson chats with Anthony about his latest book ‘Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America.’

Black Issues Forum: Removing Confederate Monuments & “Defund the Police”

Mary C. Curtis, a columnist for “Roll Call” and host of the “Equal Time” podcast; Morrisville Town Councilman Steve Rao; and LA Whittington-Kaminski with Advance Carolina and the NC Black Alliance join Black Issues Forum to break down a new lawsuit against Donald Trump, the latest effort to remove Confederate monuments in NC, and a new law enforcement funding bill.

What’s next on immigration, an issue that’s personal, political — and complicated

Immigration policy is one of President Joe Biden’s top priorities. He has signed five executive orders and issued another four statements and proclamations — in less than two weeks — that include: upping the annual number of refugees allowed into the country nearly tenfold, seeking to reunify families that were separated at the border, stopping construction of the border wall, and looking at access to the legal system for immigrants.

Mary C. Curtis speaks to former immigration advocate and senior director for Obama’s White House Domestic Policy Council Cecilia Muñoz about the past, present and future.

What kind of country do Americans want? Voters definitely have a choice

OPINION — “This is the diverse party. We are a diverse country. I am from a majority-minority state, California. So as far as I’m concerned, if we aren’t talking about race, dealing with race and actually addressing the problems of America today forthrightly and strongly, we’re not going to get the support of people, and we don’t deserve the support of people.”

That was presidential hopeful Tom Steyer, when I spoke with him recently, during his second stop through North Carolina in two weeks.

Yes, there are primary and caucus states after Iowa and New Hampshire. And Democratic candidates are realizing success in those two states is not necessarily destiny. That means appealing to the diverse voters who will have to make peace with the candidates and one another by November, and realizing that as the primaries move South, West and beyond, inequality is an essential part of the debate.

When celebrity luster gives cover to how America judges its own

OPINION — I am not one of those folks who see celebrities as larger-than-life icons to be worshipped and admired. Usually. But the recent deaths of Jessye Norman and Diahann Carroll hit me in the gut because those two amazing women were at once larger than life and so very real. The reactions to their accomplishments also illustrate an American or perhaps universal trait — the ability to compartmentalize, to place certain citizens of color or underrepresented citizens on a pedestal, at once a part of and apart from others of their race or gender or religion or orientation.

It allows negative judgment of entire groups to exist alongside denials of any racist or discriminatory intent. There are a lot of problems with that way of thinking. It places an unfair burden on the icons, a need to be less a human being than a flawless symbol. And it uses them as a rebuke to others who never managed to overcome society’s obstacles.

Most destructively, it allows behavior that punishes those not so talented, fortunate or lucky.