House Democrat Gutiérrez skewers Trump for immigration remarks at State of the Union

"Whoever translated it for him from Russian did a good job"

Published January 31, 2018 9:46AM (EST)

 (AP/Evan Vucci)
(AP/Evan Vucci)

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

AlterNet

Rep. Luis Gutiérrez, D-Ill., issued a blistering statement following President Donald Trump's State of the Union address.

Gutiérrez, chair of the Immigration Task Force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, ripped Trump's immigration plan. "The White House agenda is to gut legal immigration in exchange for allowing some of the Dreamers to live here," he wrote.

The congressman doesn't believe the president will find an agreement with Congress, because his anti-immigrant views are too extreme. "For those of us who support legal immigration, and that’s most Democrats and many Republicans, it won’t fly," he explained.

Gutiérrez blasted the president for not apologizing to Puerto Rico.

"Puerto Rico is a metaphor for how this President sees all Latinos and people of color: he does not see us as his equals and he does not see us as fellow human beings," the congressman wrote, before suggesting Trump "probably thinks of Puerto Rico as just another shithole country."

"I was hoping to get through my life without having to witness an outwardly, explicitly racist American President, but my luck ran out," Gutiérrez concluded.

The congressman did have one compliment for the president in the statement text. But it came with a major caveat.

"Even though I disagreed with almost everything he said, for Trump, the speech was clear and well-delivered," Gutiérrez conceded.  "Whoever translated it for him from Russian did a good job."


By AlterNet

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