HATE, LEAVENED WITH CORRUPTION (profanity alert):

President Donald Trump's new European travel restrictions have a convenient side effect: They exempt nations where three Trump-owned golf resorts are located.

Seated behind his desk in the White House Wednesday, Trump looked into the camera and warned Americans of an enemy who has infiltrated our borders. We are at war, he said, with a "foreign virus." [...]

Trump rode into office on a message of division, of fear and hate and xenophobia. He announced his campaign in 2015 by smearing Mexicans. Even his inaugural address was laced with dark notes. "From this day forward," he said during his address, "it's going to be only America first." Xenophobia isn't a bug in the system for him; it's a feature.

Throughout his time in office, again and again, he's rallied his supporters through fear of outsiders -- whether it was fear of travelers from Muslim-majority countries or asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border. He's portrayed foreigners as filthy and derided others' homelands as "s[***]hole countries."

Now, faced with explaining his government's response to an outbreak that's getting worse, he's relying on the same tropes.

On Wednesday night, when he should have been calling on Americans to come together, he attempted to make us afraid of all of Europe. "To keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days," Trump said (excluding the UK for some reason).

This isn't the first time in history a leader has stoked fears among the public by linking outsiders to germs, of course. It's been part of many dark chapters in world history. Researchers have documented the repeated, often unfounded fears of connections between germs and immigrants throughout the 20th century. In a moment of crisis, it's particularly jarring and dangerous.

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