On Monday afternoon, Donald Trump published the latest in a series of complaints about what news organizations cover. “In Minnesota, there is too much media attention on ICE,” the president wrote online, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
It was a missive rooted in the apparent realization that much of the public has turned sharply against ICE and the agency’s tactics that continue to terrorize communities, especially in Minnesota — creating, among other things, a public relations challenge for the White House.
But in the same online message, the Republican president added that journalists shouldn’t just downplay ICE, they should also start focusing more on “the staggering sums of money stolen” as part of Minnesota’s welfare fraud controversy.
To be sure, the aid fraud story out of Minnesota is legitimate, and it has received quite a bit of media attention. But there’s an element to the bigger picture that Trump keeps ignoring: He only seems to have a problem when certain people are caught taking advantage of social aid programs. As the editorial board of The New York Times explained:
The Minnesota fraud is real, and the people who perpetrated it deserve to face charges. Many already have. … But Mr. Trump’s interest in fraud is selective, applying exclusively in jurisdictions that have opposed him. As KFF Health News reported, he gave pardons or commutations to at least 68 people convicted of fraud-related crimes during his first and second terms. And he fired or demoted more than 20 inspectors general responsible for rooting out fraud.
The editorial dovetailed with a related Times report, which noted Trump’s latest round of clemency for those who committed fraud and took advantage of social insurance programs. This, the Times said, struck “a discordant note with the Trump administration’s announcement that it was suspending federal funding for programs intended to serve poor people in Minnesota in order to root out fraud.”
“Discordant note” seems like a polite way of saying Trump is a brazen hypocrite, only investing time and energy into condemning fraud when it’s committed by Black immigrants. Indeed, over the past several weeks, the president has focused obsessively on the Minnesota controversy, which involves Somali Americans. Journalist Paul Waldman recently made the case in an MS NOW piece that the issue fits nicely into Trump’s desire “to foment racist and anti-immigrant hatred.” Simultaneously, however, Trump has expressed no interest whatsoever in corporations accused of milking a different welfare program. Put another way, the president cares deeply about fraud in social aid programs — except when he doesn’t.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
Latest Post
Recommended
