Left-wing conspiracy theorists will view the announcement that Mollie Tibbetts’ killer was an ‘illegal alien’ with deep suspicion. Coming on the day when two of Trump’s lieutenants left court as convicted felons it gave the right-wing media a useful distraction — a headline story that shoved the conniving Manafort and Cohen below the fold.

Predictably it was what the talking heads on Fox News talked about and it was the lead story on Breitbart.

And Conservative intellectual (self-anointed) Newt Gingrich was quick to pounce — politicizing the killing.

“If Mollie Tibbetts is a household name by October, Democrats will be in deep trouble,”

Then he added something that made perfect sense to him but left English speakers wondering what he meant. To wit:

“We are living in two alternative political universes,” Gingrich explained to Axios. “In one, Manafort-Cohen is dispositive. In the other, illegal immigrants killing Mollie Tibbetts is dispositive.”  

Gingrich is the dumb man’s idea of a smart man. But if you listen to truly smart people they cast sophisticated thinking in plain language. Obscure words serve no purpose except to convince the intellectually nervous that the speaker has uttered some incisive truth, even if they have no idea what he said.

Speaking in West Virginia last night Trump — to no one’s no surprise — referred to the tragedy. He was predictable.

“You heard about today with the illegal alien coming in, very sadly, from Mexico, and you saw what happened to that incredible, beautiful young woman. Should’ve never happened. Illegally in our country,” he said at a rally in Charleston, West Virginia.

“We’ve had a huge impact but the laws are so bad,” he continued. “The immigration laws are such a disgrace. We’re getting them changed, but we have to get more Republicans.”

The last sentence is bitterly ironic. For it turns out that the suspected killer was employed for the last four years by a prominent local Republican family. And therein lies the rub.

The reason that undocumented aliens come to the US is for jobs. If there were no jobs, there would be no undocumented aliens. So let’s throw anyone who hires an undocumented worker in jail. That should clear things up in a week.

I suppose we could exempt the homeowner who hires an itinerant laborer to mow the lawn. But let the CEOS and human resource executives spend some time bars and I guarantee that the job market for the foreign worker will dry up.

I’m sure that corporate apologists will whine how the e-verify system is too flawed or that other issues will preclude holding corporations responsible for their hires. But that is unacceptable. Conservatives warn that ‘illegal aliens’ are an existential threat. That the very idea of America is at risk.

And surely, if the peril of these foreigners is that acute, the government should drop all other business and ensure that only Americans can get jobs.

But the Republican rhetoric on illegal immigration is only to rile up the base and send it fearfully to the ballot box. Xenophobia is a useful tool to keep a conservative hand on the tiller. But there is no interest among business-friendly Republicans to stem the flow of cheap labor that will do the jobs that Americans won’t.

But nevertheless, every night ill-educated white men go to bed thinking the conservative powers-that-be actually give a damn.  

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