My illustration above: Republicans have always wanted Americans to consider those trying to cross the border as dangerous aliens.

I wonder if the Republicans described in this New York Times column …

Republicans Use Israel Attack to Stoke Fears About U.S.-Mexico Border

G.O.P. lawmakers and candidates regularly invoke record-high border crossings to address a range of issues, including crime and jobs.

… will succeed in terrify Americans.

They want you to believe what Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nikki Haley, and none other than Donald Trump want you to believe:

“What happened to Israel could happen to America because our country has been invaded by millions of people from over 160 different countries,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said on Fox News more than 24 hours after the attack.

“We know that there’s an open border, and I know that the biggest national security threat is if those terrorists come into America, and we have another 9/11,” Nikki Haley, a former United Nations ambassador under former President Donald J. Trump, told reporters last week in Concord, N.H.

“You cannot forget that the same people that attacked Israel are right now pouring at levels that nobody can believe into our beautiful U.S.A. through our totally open border,” Mr. Trump said on Monday, a baseless claim that was met with applause at a campaign event in Clive, Iowa, a Des Moines suburb.

NY Times

They have good reason to play on the gullibility of a large segment of the American public. It doesn’t matter to them that in order for a hoard of Hamas militants to make it across the border carrying weapons they’d have to manage to not only get from Israel to Mexico and make their way to the border, but they’d have to get the kinds of weapons required to mount an invasion.

I doubt very many residents of MAGA World are going to read the column in the Times and if they did believe where it says the following:

Homeland Security officials have said they have found no specific or credible threat to the United States tied to Hamas. Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, responded to Republicans in part by saying there is “strict national security vetting to determine whether individuals coming from anywhere in the world have ties to terrorist organizations.” Immigration experts said that the government cannot screen people who enter undetected but that the large numbers of migrants turning themselves in at the border are subjected to screening processes.

Since the southern border was drawn, American politicians have sought to wring political advantage by tapping into xenophobic fears, at times aimed at Chinese laborers, or young German men believed to be spies, or Jews and Catholics, historians and political analysts said.

NY Times

The Republicans already been somewhat successful in stoking the fears of people being in personal danger from immigrant thugs and rapists. It remains to be seen whether this will work with the totally absurd claim that the nation is at risk because of what they want people to believe about an imminent Hamas attack they want to blame on President Biden and the Democrats.

The most likely violence in the United States will come from a homegrown MAGA terrorist. Of course there’s no way the GOP will admit this even though we’ve already experienced an historic attack in the January 6th assault on the U.S. Capital when it was literally overrun by a bloodthirsty hoard intent on keeping a losing candidate in power.

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