Donald Trump’s friends at Breitbart have just published a guest op-ed from ex-congressman Tom Tancredo, a champion of the anti-immigration cause, singling out one group as potentially to blame for Trump’s impending defeat in November: Mormons.
The headline is, “Will the Mormon Church’s Support for Muslim Immigration Block Trump’s Victory?” He accuses LDS Church leaders of holding a secretive influence over American politics and undermining the nation’s security:
It is an open secret in Washington, D.C., that the Mormon church supports open borders and lax enforcement of immigration laws. Many Mormon politicians have been supporting amnesty and open borders for decades. When I was in Congress I had a confrontation with former Utah Senator Robert Bennett over his sponsorship of an amendment to exempt religious institutions from a Sanctuary City bill establishing penalties for harboring illegal aliens. It turned out he did it at the request of his church leaders. Mormon church support for John McCain in his Arizona Republican primary race is also due in large part to his open borders record and his challenger’s strong criticism of McCain’s hypocrisy on border security.
It’s interesting that, four years after the Republican Party nominated an actual Mormon for president, fear-mongering and scapegoating against this particular religious minority is now passing so easily through the de facto media arm of the party’s presidential candidate.
Combine this with Trump’s recent public complaints that he was doing badly in Utah, and Hillary Clinton’s own outreach to the Beehive State. Thanks to Trump’s demagoguery and sheer personal obnoxiousness, this rock-ribbed Republican state may be competitive for the first time since the LBJ landslide of 1964.