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This guest column originally appeared [ [link removed] ] at the Substack of journalist Jonathan Larsen, a veteran of ABC, CNN, and MSNBC, who served as executive producer of Up with Chris Hayes. You can check out and subscribe to Jonathan's Substack here [ [link removed] ]
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Two German high-school girls were strip-searched upon arriving in the U.S. last month, denied entry because they hadn’t booked a hotel yet, detained for several days alongside actual criminals, and finally sent to Japan in a story you will not find on the U.S. Travel Association website [ [link removed] ] so you’ll just have to read it at The Fucking News.
Here’s how dumb the border regimen of Pres. Donald Trump’s regime is: Because the girls didn’t have a hotel, immigration officials suspected [ [link removed] ] them of going to Hawaii to seek unauthorized work.
Y’know how in all the World War II movies the German guys…like, literal Nazis…catch our heroes and demand, “Papers, please!” Well, these girls were here legally, visas and travel documents all set and it still wasn’t enough for Trump’s border guards.
That’s right, because of the lack of hotel reservation, U.S. officials decided that two German high-school girls — rich enough to fly to Hawaii as part of a world tour including free countries like New Zealand and Thailand1 [ [link removed] ] — came to Hawaii for … the mannual labor.
This, in a state where only 4% of jobs are unfilled [ [link removed] ], lower than the national average. Where there just might be activities of interest to high-school girls other than labor. And, hell, even the Nazis said that work would set you free.
Three other German nationals have also been detained despite “German” being a solid match for Trump’s Nordophilic profile of desirable immigrants. (You know his non-platonic ideal visitors are German high-school girls.)
As a result of all this, Germany has now issued a travel advisory [ [link removed] ] warning Germans about visiting Trump’s third-world hellhole.
And if you hadn’t heard this story yet, you can bet they know about it in Germany, [ [link removed] ]where, even as we sprechen, German dads are telling their kids, “Deutschmark my words, I won’t pay for you to visit a country unless I know they won’t touch one herr on your head!” (I got all my German puns out of my system now. You’re welcome.)
In a related-like-incestuous-spouses story, travel to the U.S. last month was down [ [link removed] ] almost 12% from March of last year. And people are unflocking to the U.S. from almost everywhere, so much so that the Washington Post charted [ [link removed] ] the monthly changes in travel numbers starting in January 2024. See if you can spot the Trump administration’s months!
Travel from Mexico is down, too, and not just the undocumented, lower-our-crime-rate, boost-our-economy kind of travel; legal tourism, too! Canadian travel by air is down 13.5%, by car is down almost 32%, and Canadian fentanyl smugglers have virtually disappeared.
All told, we could be looking at almost $10 billion in lost revenue this year just for the U.S. tourism industry if these trends continue. So let’s check in on America’s biggest hotel chain…!
Hilton CEO Chris Nassetta was already on record defending his company’s diversity initiatives back in January. Diversity, he said, “is a business imperative.”
Nevertheless, he’s booked himself passage on the Trump train. Just two weeks into the second Trump presidency, Nassetta proclaimed [ [link removed] ] that “when you lift up above all the noise, this is going to be good for the U.S. economy.” Unfortunately, Nassetta doesn’t seem to have anticipated the risks of a Trump White House [ [link removed] ], despite his job being to do that thing.
In Hilton’s annual report [ [link removed] ] from earlier this month, the company warned that risks to the company from the new administration include — I swear to both loving and vengeful Jesus — regulatory changes. That’s right, Hilton warned about the specter of tough new federal regulations. Under Trump.
Such changes, the report says (tongue-in-cheek, I assume) that regulatory changes “often accompany… new U.S. presidential administrations.” As if Trump hadn’t promised to clean out federal regulations like he was raiding a free hotel mini-bar.
Here’s the closest Hilton gets to warning investors of the business risks from handing the borders [ [link removed] ] to a U.S. president with the brains, impulse control, [ [link removed] ] and strategic skills of an inflatable tube man [ [link removed] ] with the blower set to 11:
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Blue Amp just launched our weekly show, “Amped Up w/ Cliff Schecter.” To celebrate, we’re offering paid subscriptions for only $1.50 per week! Amplify Good, become a paid subscriber!
Macroeconomic conditions, geopolitical activity, public health concerns and other factors beyond our control can reduce demand for hospitality products [ [link removed] ] and services, including demand for rooms at our hotels. These factors include…
geopolitical activity, political and social unrest and governmental action and uncertainty resulting from U.S. and global political and social trends and policies, including potential barriers to travel, trade and immigration.
Oh, potential barriers like the ones Trump vowed to throw up on the border? Those potential barriers beyond your control despite Hilton spending a million dollars on lobbying [ [link removed] ] the federal government last year?
And is Trump [ [link removed] ]really [ [link removed] ]beyond control [ [link removed] ]? Or is it possible that Nassetta is hoping for Senate Republicans to control him?
Because that might explain why Nassetta’s only campaign donations [ [link removed] ] this year totaled $55,000 to two committees tied to Sen. John Thune (R-SD). Which probably has more to do with the fact that Thune is the Senate Republican leader than the thriving tourism industry in South Dakota, home to a whopping 23 Hilton hotels [ [link removed] ], where not even German high-school girls wanted to go.
Ed Note: We added this video on demand section, something we always include in our missives. This was not in Jonathan’s original column. The video exposes the capacity for violence of Gone With The Wind extra & professional half-ass, Marjorie Taylor Green.
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