Boston Herald Columnist Says Donald Trump Doesn’t Go Far Enough with Muslim Immigrant Ban

Wait, what?

Photo via AP

Photo via AP

In what seems like a cry for attention or a move to score pageviews, Boston Herald columnist Adriana Cohen, in her latest piece, not only cheered Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, but called for him to ban all immigration from everywhere.

Cohen—like Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Mark Levin and others in the Conservative Outrage!™ Complex—has taken to Trump because of his anti-immigration talk. Many Americans, including some in Trump’s own party, believe he’s beginning to exhibit the hallmarks of a fascist, but Cohen sees, in those same signs, a “real leader.”

Here’s what Cohen had to say:

What a real leader does at a time of war is take decisive action — even if it’s unpopular or politically incorrect.

Donald Trump’s calling for a ban on any Muslims being allowed in the U.S. “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on” is that brand of leadership.

But he should take his immigration stance one step further.

We should temporarily halt all immigration from every country across the board. Why? Our immigration system is broken, 
presenting a serious national security threat during a time when we’re at war with a very dangerous and capable enemy — ISIS.

In an age of terror, we simply cannot continue on the current course — when ISIS is vowing to level the White House and Iran is violating U.N. 
security council resolutions by launching ballistic missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

Trump sees the big picture, President Obama does not.

This is standard fare for Cohen, a regular morning host on Boston Herald Radio.

She’s railed against immigrants with regularity since she started writing for the Boston Herald, trotting out the same nativist tropes that anti-immigrant advocates have long been floating—including attempts to demonize those already in the country.

Calls for closing the border, or for barring people from entering the United States based on their religion, are as vile as they are impractical. It’s unclear if Cohen simply doesn’t understand how difficult it would be to actually close the country off from the rest of the world. The free exchange of goods and people is the lifeblood of what makes the United States function in the most basic sense. If Cohen is going to propose something more draconian than Trump on immigration, she should at least attempt to quantify what it would take to accomplish.

Of course, this is part of Trump’s appeal. His policy blurts are based in emotion, not facts. It doesn’t matter that most immigrants in the country illegally actually pay taxes or commit crimes at rates below those of native born Americans. Who cares that immigration is overwhelmingly a good thing for the American economy?  Trump’s debunked outbursts about how Mexicans are coming here to take our jobs and rape Americans are nearly identical in their histrionics to his claim that President Obama wants to allow a secret army of 250,000 Muslims terrorists into the country. It doesn’t matter that these claims have been repeatedly proven false—Trump sycophants such as Cohen and others embrace them in an effort boost their profile in the lucrative Conservative Outrage!™ Complex.

Cohen is not alone in her hero worship of Trump. Longtime conservative pundit Ann Coulter came out and said the same thing Cohen did, but on social media. It’s the 21st century version of Know-Nothingism.

These kinds of comments make for great talk radio fodder in between ads about gold and reverse mortgage scams, but they are empty ideas that have no place in a serious discussion about American immigration policy. These people need to get a grip.