As we noted earlier today, President Trump’s first State of the Union address was full of talking points and policies lifted directly from anti-immigrant activists. That fact did not escape former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo, who told a Denver radio host today that he “never thought” he would “live to see the day when a president of the United States would actually say these things about immigration in a State of the Union message.”
Tancredo told radio host Peter Boyles that he watched the State of the Union last night at an event he held for his supporters after dropping out of the Colorado gubernatorial race, and that he “loved it.”
“I thought it was great,” Tancredo said. “I thought it was a great speech, I really did. I mean, I told somebody who was sitting there watching it, I said, ‘You know, I actually never thought I would live to see the day when a president of the United States would actually say these things about immigration in a State of the Union message—or any time, but especially now. ‘End chain migration’? I never thought I’d ever even see anybody mention those words, yet alone actually push it. Oh my gosh, it was really, I thought it was inspiring in many ways.”
Tancredo was one of the staunchest anti-immigration members of Congress when he served in the House and went on to a career of anti-immigration activism tinged with white nationalism, such as when he declared that multiculturalism is a “dagger pointed at the heart of western civilization.” According to Media Matters, “Tancredo once said that undocumented immigrants are ‘coming here to kill you and to kill me and our families’ and proposed legislation that would have temporarily barred legal immigration. In 2007, Tancredo suggested that the United States bomb ‘the holy sites in Mecca and Medina’ in Saudi Arabia. And during his laughable presidential campaign in 2007, he aired campaign ads that claimed ‘open borders’ were responsible for ‘vicious central American gangs’ and ‘jihadists who froth with hate’ coming to the United States.”
Tancredo decided to run for governor in part in response to a Colorado resort cancelling a planned conference of the white nationalist group VDARE that he was scheduled to speak at.
