Politics

Ignore Trump’s tale of a gang taking over this apartment building and hear the residents

Published

1 year ago

November 12, 2024

Ignore Trump’s tale of a gang taking over this apartment building and hear the residents

We might expect former President Donald Trump, in Tuesday night’s debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, to claim that Tren de Aragua, a gang based in Venezuela, has taken over an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado. That’s not true, as firsthand accounts from residents of the apartment complex, the Aurora Police and an editorial in The Denver Post attest.

But the truth doesn’t matter to Trump.

Trump and the Republican Party are determined to scare us all, and they intend to do all they can do to conjure up images of marauding brown invaders who are here to destroy the United States.

“If you look at Aurora, Colorado, they’re taking over the place; they took over buildings,” he said last Friday. “This is just the beginning.”

“Getting them out will be a bloody story,” he said this weekend at a rally in Wisconsin. “They should never have been allowed to come into our country. Nobody checked them.”

Trump and the Republican Party are determined to scare us all, and they intend to do all they can do to conjure up images of marauding brown invaders who are here to destroy the United States.

The idea that members of Tren de Aragua, TdA, are taking over an apartment complex in Aurora originated with a video posted by a Denver news station that went viral. The images of gun-toting Venezuelans was confirmed by Aurora Police. Nobody is disputing the fear that residents are facing from the violence they are seeing. However, interim Aurora Police Chief Heather Morris visited the complex and saidcontrary to reports and even a statement from Aurora’s mayor, that members of the gang had not taken over and weren’t forcing residents there to pay rent to them.

After residents of the building held a news conference to dispute the claims of a gang takeover, Republican Mayor Mike Coffman, a former congressman, acknowledged that he was “not sure where the truth is in all of this” and he said that reports that Aurora is unsafe are not true.

But despite that fuller context, the video suggesting a TdA takeover was picked up by Trump-friendly outletsand Republicans amplified it.

“Kamala Harris has managed to import the worst of Latin American gangs right in Colorado,” Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Col., said on X. “And we’re not even a border state. This is pure insanity. I was raised in Aurora. This is something that we never had before. How are children supposed to grow up with this mess around them?”

“Colorado is under violent attack,” the Colorado Republican Party said in a fundraising email about the news, noting that “Tren de Aragua, or TdA, a transnational gang based out of Venezuela, is terrorizing Aurora residents.”

“The gang, which boasts about 5,000 members, has a motto of ‘real until death.’’ Law enforcement is largely allowing TdA terrorists to do whatever they want,” the email added.

Republicans want us to believe that Venezuelans are taking over. Republicans want us to believe that the United States isn’t safe. That is the narrative Trump wants. It is the narrative his supporters want to hear, and the right-wing media distribution network has helped make that narrative go mainstream.

But here’s what The Denver Post argued in a Sept 3. editorial: “The Denver Post and other mainstream news outlets have covered the emergence of this gang in America, but also have maintained perspective on the size, threat and activities of the gang, unlike some who are using incidents in Aurora and Denver to fuel fear of other Venezuelans and asylum seekers.”

The owners of an apartment beset with crime in Aurora are using the gang as a scapegoat for the unsanitary, unsafe and unhealthy conditions of their apartments that were condemned by the city this month

editorial in the denver post

The editorial continues: “Others, like the owners of an apartment beset with crime in Aurora, are using the gang as a scapegoat for the unsanitary, unsafe and unhealthy conditions of their apartments that were condemned by the city this month.”

It’s all coordinated. Whipping up fear about a Venezuelan gang taking over is a campaign strategy, and the Aurora example is not just an isolated incident. Days after the Venezuelan gang video got millions of views, there was a similar misrepresentation, from Libs of TikTok, that TdA had taken over a building in Chicago. That lie caught Elon Musk’s attention, who responded on X with two exclamation points. Though there have been reports that members of the gang are in Chicago, police say there was no attempted takeover of a building and that police responded to a “call of service” at the building that was logged as a noise disturbance with “no police service necessary.”

With less than two months before the presidential election, such narratives must be confronted. As much as Republicans want you to believe the opposite, rampant migrant crime is a myth. Homicides and violent crime in the U.S. continue to decrease.

Still, no matter how many facts are presented to counter Republican hysteria, the online push has already convinced people to accept falsehoods as truth. Stories get picked up. Then we have to prove why a falsehood is a falsehood.

Oscar Rojas, a Venezuelan tenant in the Aurora apartment complex in question, told local Denver7 last week that he “was scared to go out” because “they’re accusing all of us at the complex of being in gangs, and this is completely false.”

“It’s completely false. There are good people here, families. There’s always going to be crime everywhere,” Rojas said.

“There weren’t 32 armed people here last night. That’s a lie. Look, there’s no one outside,” a resident from Venezuela told the Chicago Tribune about the building in question there. “We all know each other. No one is hurting anyone.”

No matter how many facts are presented to counter Republican hysteria, the online push has already convinced people to accept falsehoods as truth.

Who are you going to believe? A right-wing media machine known to share misinformation to prop a Republican presidential candidate who continues to say that immigrants have “poisoned” the countryor actual brown and Black people who live in the places that are allegedly being “overrun?”

The right-wing media machine knows that fear of a changing country is an outrage winner. That machine will keep manufacturing and amplifying it in hopes of electing Trump.

If Trump repeats the lie about Aurora or Chicago tonight, then Harris needs to be ready to counter with the facts and demonstrate that we can never let such lies become accepted truths.

Julio Ricardo Varela

Julio Ricardo Varela is an award-winning journalist and the founder of The Latino Newsletter.

Politics

Trump plays Texas hold ’em with Senate endorsement

Published

4 hours ago

March 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

As the MAGA faithful gather for another day of CPAC in Grapevine, Texas, they are openly celebrating what they believe is tantamount to a major midterms victory: keeping President Donald Trump from endorsing John Cornyn ahead of May’s GOP Senate primary runoff.

MAGA world is taking a victory lap — and fresh comfort — in the receipts: A lack of significant spending and polling so far by not only Cornyn’s campaign, but also the NRSC and One Nation, the Senate Leadership Fund-aligned nonprofit. It amounts to a pattern the MAGA cohort reads as Washington making peace with a matchup between Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, their anointed candidate, and Texas Democratic state Rep. James Talarico.

“The grassroots stood in the breach and said a resounding ‘NO’ to Cornyn,” Steve Bannon, who has framed Paxton’s bid for the nomination as a battle for MAGA’s soul, told Blue Light News. “Polling and spending indicates that the Republican DC establishment reluctantly concurs. This could be the victory that empowers MAGA through the midterms.”

Paxton, though, hasn’t rested his case. He traveled to Mar-a-Lago last Friday for a Palm Beach County GOP dinner, and was spotted speaking to Trump himself, according to three sources familiar.

Trump and Paxton were on the patio, one source added, with another saying the two discussed the runoff. “It was a positive meeting,” said yet another person. A Paxton spokesperson declined to comment on the meeting.

It’s the latest sign of a fierce and feverish effort to keep Trump from endorsing Cornyn.

Even when all signs pointed to a Cornyn endorsement following the longtime senator’s showing in the primary, MAGA faithful kept pressing for Paxton. Now they’re optimistic their guy can come out on top — and they’re still taking shots at Cornyn every chance they get.

“The Cornyn endorsement looks dead, but it’s Trump, so it’s never certain,” a person close to the White House said. “Cornyn sealed his fate by carrying Mitch [McConnell]’s water on that ridiculous gun grabbing bill. No one thought he would be dumb enough to run for reelection after that but here we are.”

Now, Trump may not give an endorsement at all. Or if he does, he may endorse Paxton after the SAVE Act debate in the Senate is over, three sources tell Blue Light News.

“Nothing is dead,” said a source familiar with the president’s thinking. “It’s all just stasis at the moment.”

“It’s looking like he may not endorse at all,” another White House official said. “But it doesn’t seem like he has made up his mind.”

But the endorsement equation in Texas amid the SAVE Act saga is still very much vexing Trump, according to five Republicans in and around the White House. The president, who will not be in attendance at this year’s CPAC, is “being patient” and “trying to exact” a policy win, another person said.

“Trump isn’t going to endorse against Cornyn while the Save America Act is still being debated,” one White House ally said. “So for now I think he stays out, but if Thune files cloture and Paxton continues to lead in every poll then I could see him endorsing Paxton. No question Paxton wins if Trump stays out though.”

Every Republican who spoke to Blue Light News cautioned that Trump could change his mind at any moment. It’s still early for the runoff, they said, with Election Day still nearly two months away. But the deadline for a candidate to drop off the ballot passed last week.

One person familiar told Blue Light News that the Senate Leadership Fund and NRSC aren’t spending in order to conserve resources. “Not cause they are throwing in the towel,” this person said.

The campaign will be spending soon, a Cornyn spokesperson said. “Ken Paxton said he needed $20M to win this primary and he’s barely raised a quarter of that,” said Cornyn campaign senior adviser Matt Mackowiak. “His professional failures and indefensible personal conduct make GOP donors and Texas primary voters deeply uncomfortable.” He added: “We have a plan to win this race and we are executing it. Ken Paxton is busy whining and hiding.”

Chris LaCivita, one of Trump’s top campaign hands who works as a senior adviser for the pro-Cornyn super PAC Texans for a Conservative Majority, said the runoff boils down to a resource equation. “The question remains the same,” LaCivita said. “Does the GOP want to spend $150-200 million holding what should be a safe seat and giving up other opportunities to gain advantage?”

Joanna Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the NRSC, said it’s “been very clear that the fight to protect President Trump’s Senate Majority should not be fought in Texas, and John Cornyn is the only candidate who ensures that does not happen.”

When it comes to money, Republicans are planning for MAGA Inc. to be “responsible for resources needed in a general election if it’s Ken Paxton,” according to two GOP operatives briefed on strategy (one cautioned that “planning is probably more hoping.”). A MAGA Inc. spokesperson declined to comment.

On the sidelines of CPAC, where bedazzled and sequined conservatives gathered for the base’s annual pep rally, the overwhelming feeling was that most Texas GOP primary voters had already made up their minds — and a Trump endorsement in either direction wouldn’t make much of a difference. Some attendees said they viewed Trump’s silence as a nudge toward Paxton.

“Texans — we’re done,” said Gregorio Heise, a Paxton supporter and Republican running for Congress in Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s Dallas district. “It’s already showing, even in the polling. Cornyn doesn’t do what Texans want, and [Paxton] does.”

On Friday night at CPAC, attendees will hear from Paxton, who’s headlining the conference’s Ronald Reagan dinner. Cornyn isn’t planning to attend.

“It’s an opportunity to be able to, you know, share your vision and basically sell yourself to the crowd, to the Texas crowd,” CPAC host and organizer Mercedes Schlapp told Blue Light News. “So Ken Paxton agreed to come, and he has a very high CPAC rating. And you know, we’ve invited Cornyn, and so we are still open. The invitation is still open for John Cornyn to come.”

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