I had just turned off MSNBC when the doorbell rang.
A dark-skinned man stood outside. He pointed a menacing weapon at my head (later Googled as a laser-sighted bazooka).
“Salir de su casa,” he ordered.
Venezuelan for, “Get outta your house.”
We exited onto barren streets, hands aloft.
“So, Trump was right,” I said.
We didn’t believe him. He said Venezuelans had taken over Aurora, Colo., with weapons “never imagined” even by our military. “Ultimate guns,” he said.
Indeed he said “large sections of an area of Colorado” had already been taken over by the Venezuelans. Well, heck. I thought, “Oh, maybe Commerce City or Broomfield. Possibly Hugo or Holyoke.” He wasn’t talking about my section of Colorado, surely.
Well, as the ball caps say, “Trump was right.” And how gullible was I?
When he talked about an immigrant takeover of my state, I shouldn’t have listened to Colorado officials like our governor who said the tale about Venezuelans taking over Aurora (as opposed to causing problems at one run-down apartment complex there) was just another insane claim from a man desperate to monopolize the conversation.
It all sounded improbable. Aurora, after all, is a Greater Denver community of 400,000. City officials said the Venezuelan gang that sparked stories Trump exploited was, maybe, 10 young men. Eight were in jail.
I had trouble understanding therefore how two Venezuelans could subjugate 400,000 Aurora-ans.
Some people think big. That’s not me. That’s Donald Trump.
I should have ignored comments in The New York Times by Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman, a former long-serving member of Congress and a Republican.
Coffman said Trump’s warnings about Venezuelan gangs were “overstated claims fueled by social media and through select news organizations.”
Apparently, I should have selected news organizations better. Sean Hannity would have told me straight. Then I’d have had my Louisville Slugger ready when the doorbell rang.
Instead, we didn’t listen to Donald Trump. While we slept, those two Venezuelans took over our state. Your state is next.
Don’t laugh. Look at what the Haitians have done to Springfield, Ohio.
Hundreds of thousands of dark-skinned Haitians! Illegal Haitians! Dogs and cats for dinner! (Well, there are only a few hundred. And they’re all legal residents. No pets eaten. None. Details. Details.) Trump does have one pertinent fact correctly. The Haitians are dark-skinned.
JD Vance first sounded the alarm for all that which had pinged through the social media vine.
The mainstream media did the expected – asking city officials who might have known pets were on the grill.
This affirms Trump’s “enemy of the people” assertion. The mainstream media are wholly incapable of sheer hysteria when a sagging political campaign needs it.
Fortunately, people like Vance will hear what people in authority – Springfield police, Springfield mayor, Ohio governor – say about the claims in question and simply disregard it. And so, hysteria can be ours.
Knowing how two Venezuelans took over a whole state – Colorado, ski resorts and all — and left me homeless, I take offense at Ohio Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan’s statement that Trump and Vance “don’t give a damn about who they use, what bodies they step over to gain power.”
Listen, Trump and Vance are just trying to warn us.
In the news: Haitians in Springfield have filed a criminal affidavit against Trump-Vance for causing panic and deathly recriminations based on wholly baseless and criminally reckless claims.
Why, sure: What Trump-Vance did in Springfield is like shouting “botulism!” in a crowded pizza parlor. It’s unconscionable. But isn’t that what the First Amendment is for?
Meanwhile, in Colorado . . .
How I wish I had listened to Trump when he warned what the Venezuelans – all two of them — would do.
I miss my backyard. I miss my bed. Two pieces of cold pizza have my name on them in what used to be my fridge.
They even confiscated my baseball bat.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: [email protected].
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