(Editor's Note: The following opinion column does not constitute an endorsement of any political party, or candidate, on the part of Newsmax.)
Politically incorrect words don't kill, but Venezuelan gangs do.
On Saturday, former President Donald Trump warned rallygoers in a small Wisconsin town that if Vice President Kamal Harris "is reelected, your town and every town ... will be transformed into a Third World hellhole."
Trump repeatedly warns that Biden-Harris open borders are turning New York into a "Third World nation" and America into a "Third World" disaster.
Left-leaning elites are apoplectic over Trump's use of "Third World."
Never mind the violence perpetrated by migrant gangs and the societal disorder caused by open borders. The left's problem is with "Third World."
NPR calls the term "offensive." Foreign Policy columnist Howard French calls it "utterly racist rhetoric."
This is an intentional distraction.
People watching their neighborhoods being degraded know what they are seeing with their own eyes. They have no problem calling the conditions "Third World."
New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino, a Republican, says, "We've got a Third World country now here in New York City, with Third World crime." She estimates that 60% of the arrests in her Queens district are "illegal aliens."
Queens resident Ramses Frias, a Democrat-turned-Republican, complains that commercial streets are being turned into a "Third World market," with illegal vendors hawking stolen merchandise and half-naked sex workers strutting in plain sight of children walking to school. Roosevelt Avenue is so overrun with hookers that it's dubbed the "Market of Sweethearts" and looks like Bangkok's sordid Patpong market.
The Trump campaign is also getting backlash for posting a comparison of two images on X: one of a quiet, clean street lined with homes, and the other of hundreds of newly arrived migrants, eating and sleeping huddled on the sidewalk outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan.
The Trump War Room caption reads: "Import the third world. Become the third world."
The NAACP said of the post, "They are showing all of us just how racist they are."
Preposterous.
Bedlam is being imported to the area around the hotel, once a Manhattan landmark. Businesses are fleeing.
The migrants pictured happen to be mostly Black, but commuters — Black as well as white — dread walking past the chaos to get to Grand Central Station.
Trump is also being bashed as racist for calling migrants who rape and murder "animals." On Saturday, he said, "Just this month, right here in this beautiful town, police arrested an illegal alien member of a savage Venezuelan prison gang known as Tren de Aragua" for "holding a mother and daughter captive against their will and sexually assaulting them again, and again, and again."
Trump called the alleged assailant "an animal."
He also used "animal" to describe the Venezuelan illegal who allegedly raped, bludgeoned, and killed nursing student Laken Riley. But Reuters accused Trump of wrongdoing for "resorting to the degrading rhetoric he has employed time and again."
Ridiculous.
The issue isn't Trump's choice of words. It's loss of life caused by Harris' open border.
The left elite also turn a blind eye to the impact of prostitution on business owners and families trapped in close proximity to the brothels.
Incredibly, most Democrat politicians — except New York City Mayor Eric Adams — align themselves with the sex workers.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose Queens district is overrun with street prostitution, has insisted in the past that "sex work is work" and generally supported decriminalization. Rep. Jerrold Nadler supports decriminalization, even as prostitution spreads in his Manhattan district.
A Democratic bill in Albany would decriminalize buying and selling sex, operating a brothel, and sex tourism — never mind the impact on neighborhoods. "This legislation would make NYC a major sex tourism destination," warns Sonia Ossorio, of the National Organization for Women, who has documented the explosion of migrant prostitution.
Last week, The Washington Post accused Trump of alarming voters by depicting an "imaginary and frightening world."
Frightening, yes. But not imaginary.
Felonies are up 35% in New York City since 2019, and an estimated 75% of arrests in midtown Manhattan for assault and other crimes are illegal migrants. Street sex sells for $50 for fellatio, and $100 for vaginal penetration, according to NOW.
The situation is Third World, and you'll get four more years of this mayhem if Harris is elected president.
Betsy McCaughey, Ph.D., is the former lieutenant governor of New York State. Read Betsy McCaughey's Reports — Here Now.