This article originally appeared on AlterNet.
Among his other crimes against humanity, Donald Trump has normalized and legitimized an assortment of nutjobs we thought had been safely sidelined forever. Suddenly, kooks like Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Alex Jones and Pat Buchanan have all deemed it safe to flap their lips again, and spread their by turns vile, by turns flat-out bonkers (and often both) theories.
Here are some who crawled out of the crazy patch this week.
1. Michele Bachmann resurfaces, sings, celebrates, predicts end of the world again.
Michele Bachmann, who has been elevated from the dustheap of history by none other than the Trump campaign which she advises, had a mixed week. On the one hand, she was “on her feet” cheering Trump’s horrific immigration speech in Phoenix, Ariz. He “hit a total grand slam,” she told Family Research Council’s rabid homophobe Tony Perkins. Trump’s policies of mass deportation, building a border wall and reducing even legal immigration will keep America from “turning against God,” she actually said out loud. She recommended that America abandon immigration policies that “prefer those who do not hold a Christian worldview.”
This raises the question of whether she is at all aware that Mexicans are overwhelmingly Catholic. It also raises the question of why a Republican nominee, or any sane person, would be consulting this ignoramus about foreign policy. But there you have it.
Bachmann did not spend all of her time “on her feet” cheering this week, for the end times are always nigh. Many things portend doom, such as gay marriage, Barack Obama’s election and peace breaking out anywhere. Curiously, the fact that the earth is baking at a record rate does not seem to perturb her, only when people of color and different sexualities gain ground.
“I don't want to be melodramatic but I do want to be truthful,” Bachmann evangelized in an interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network. “I believe without a shadow of a doubt this is the last election. This is it. This is the last election.”
Why would that be, well, it’s all those brown people, apparently, and the fact that they probably won’t vote Republican. “It's a math problem of demographics and a changing United States,” Bachmann said, and luckily math was her best subject in evangelical school. “If you look at the numbers of people who vote and who live in the country and who Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton want to bring in to the country, this is the last election when we even have a chance to vote for somebody who will stand up for godly moral principles. This is it.”
Here’s how the Armageddon of no more elections would go down, according to Bachmann: If Clinton wins, she’ll grant wholesale amnesty to undocumented immigrants, and no Republican will ever be able to carry Florida or Texas again.
From her lips to god’s ears.
2. Mike Huckabee and Tucker Carlson suggest maybe liberals should be deported.
During a meeting of two great minds, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and Mike Huckabee discussed l’Affaire Kaepernick Thursday night. They thought perhaps the protesting pro quarterback and all the liberals supporting him should be deported, maybe by that Gestapo-like police force Trump promises to convene on day one of his presidency.
Huckabee just doesn’t understand “people on the left who don’t like America very much and resent when a candidate for the American presidency lifts up the country and says ‘I’ll put America first.’” Jeepers, he continued, “I kind of thought that was what he was supposed to do.”
Oh, so that’s what Trump is doing with all that hateful, violence-inciting rhetoric. He’s lifting up the country!
Carlson was less golly jeepers about it and happy just to jump on the fear-mongering bandwagon. “Trump is making a case for America and that infuriates a certain kind of liberal. I believe he is making a case for democracy,” he began nonsensically. “People move refugees into your neighborhood, it makes, you know, politicians feel virtuous, but you have no say in the matter.”
Bizarrely, Huckabee took this as a signal to pivot to Colin Kaepernick. Why? No one knows, since Kaepernick is neither a refugee nor an immigrant.
“I think we ought to take a certain NFL quarterback, ask him where he’d like to go and send him there with all these liberals who somehow resent the country,” the Huckster suggested.
Nothing more Amurrican than deporting people for exercising their freedom of expression in ways you don’t like.
3. Pat Buchanan thinks he is relevant again!
The former far-right presidential candidate Pat Buchanan is convinced that Donald Trump has ripped a page out of his playbook, actually many pages. After Trump’s frightening immigration speech on Wedesday, Buchanan described himself as “elated.”
What had Patty so darn joyous was that Trump seemed to have, well, practically plagiarized Buchanan’s opening "statement” when he announced his first run for the presidency in 1991.
“When you heard, you know, Trump get up and say unapologetically, ‘We’re going to have to put America first.’ And many of these lines came right out of my opening statement first announcing in 1991 against George Bush Sr.,” Buchanan told conservative radio host Mike Gallagher Thursday. “I was elated!”
The day before, Buchanan had penned a column calling Trump a “Conquistador” for going to meet Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto. Apparently, Buchanan thinks being a conquistador is a good thing. When Trump returned and promised that Mexico would pay for the wall “even if they don’t know it yet,” and that the mass deportations will proceed as promised, Buchanan thought Trump had never seemed more presidential.
4. Pond scum speaks, says vile scummy things.
If there is a more despicable piece of shower mold than Breitbart.com’s Milo Yiannopoulos, then we do not know it.
In a mediascape that has normalized Trump’s demagogic drunk uncle candidacy, this creature from a hateful lagoon was granted a hearing on ABC “Nightline” with Terry Moran.
Yiannopoulos has been banned from Twitter for leading a harassment campaign of deeply disgusting misogynist and racist abuse of the comedian Leslie Jones, something of which he is apparently proud.
“I like to think of myself as a virtuous troll,” Yiannopoulos bizarrely self-aggrandized in a recent interview.
Moran thought maybe he could pull some decency out of this cockroach, and asked if Yiannopoulos would tell Leslie Jones “she looks like a dude” in person.
“Yeah, probably,” Yiannopoulos replied. ”I probably would.”
“Then you’re an idiot, really,” Moran said.
Moran again tried to reason with this moron. “You’re going to go after somebody’s body to denigrate their ideas? What grade are you in? Seriously. Are you a 13-year-old boy? Because somebody doesn’t have a weight that you think is proper? That’s revolting.”
Revolting is a word Yiannopoulos can relate to.
“I’ll tell you what’s revolting,” Yiannopoulos responded. “What’s revolting is the body positivity movement. What’s revolting is this idea now that you can tell women that they’ll be healthy at any size.”
5. Fox Newsian Eric Bolling is visited by deeply bizarre immigration vision.
After Trump’s deeply disturbing immigration speech in Arizona, a vision apparently emerged from the fertile (or is it febrile?) mind of Fox Newsian Eric Bolling.
“When you're in a foreign country and you go to the U.S. Embassy in a foreign country, you're on U.S. land,” Bolling began during a panel discussion. “You're not on foreign country land anymore. You're in U.S. territory, right? So, if you set up, let's call them Mexican deportation stations within the United States, and an illegal who's here with a family says, you know what, I've been here for five years, I'm paying my taxes, I just want to be a United States citizen, they go to this island within the United States, you're technically on Mexican land again, right? You've been deported, and you go back into society. I mean, that's a way, and why is that so bad? That's a very friendly way and nice way to do it, isn't it, no?”
Yeah, that’s right. He said “Mexican deportation stations,” and suggested that people might go to such a place willingly.
Co-host Juan Williams was nonplussed. “I love it when you make these things up,” he said. “I don't hear this from the candidate.”
Maybe, as Mitt Romney once suggested, Eric Bolling could engage in a little self-deportation.
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