There is a specific, terrifying alchemy that happens when a political figure decides to combine the festive spirit of Thanksgiving with the rhetorical structure of a declaration of war. It is the moment when “Season’s Greetings” becomes a threat, and the turkey on the table is replaced by a policy proposal that reads like it was drafted in a bunker by someone who has never met a human being they didn’t want to deport. On Thanksgiving Day 2025, Donald Trump took to Truth Social not to offer a bland platitude about gratitude or family, but to issue a manifesto of exclusion so comprehensive, so radically unhinged, that it transforms the holiday from a celebration of harvest into a festival of purgation.
The post begins with the performative grandeur of a king addressing his subjects, wishing a “Happy Thanksgiving to all,” before immediately pivoting into a list of exceptions so long it requires a scroll bar. It is a two-faced greeting card, the kind that starts with “Peace on Earth” and ends with “Terms and Conditions Apply: Offer Valid Only for Those Deemed Compatible with Western Civilization.” The tone is casual, rambling, almost conversational, which makes the content all the more chilling. We are watching the executive branch draft a new immigration code in crayon from inside a social media bunker, bypassing Congress, the courts, and reality itself to declare entire continents “non-compatible.”
Trump’s assertion that “most” of the 53 million foreign-born people in the U.S. are criminals, welfare recipients, cartel members, or from “failed nations” is not just a lie; it is a foundational myth of the authoritarian state. It frames the immigrant not as a person, but as a parasite. It posits that every social problem in America—from the housing shortage to high crime rates—can be explained by the presence of the Other. If your rent is too high, it’s because an immigrant is living in the apartment you deserve. If your wages are low, it’s because a migrant took your job. If your community feels unsafe, it’s because a “failed nation” has exported its chaos to your doorstep.
This is a political Rorschach test where every blot of social frustration is assigned an immigrant-shaped silhouette. It allows the administration to ignore the complex, structural causes of American decline—corporate greed, the hollowing out of the middle class, the opioid crisis—and instead offer a simple, violent solution: get rid of them.
The specific targets of this rage are revealing. Trump singled out Somali refugees in Minnesota, claiming they have “took over” the state and that “Somalian gangs” are roaming the streets looking for prey. This is a racialized hallucination, a fever dream of black criminality designed to terrify white suburban voters. It was paired with a renewed, grotesque attack on Representative Ilhan Omar, repeating the debunked lie about her “marrying her brother.” This isn’t policy; it’s blood libel. It is an attempt to delegitimize a sitting member of Congress not by arguing with her ideas, but by framing her as culturally and biologically deviant.
But the centerpiece of the manifesto is the call to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries.” This phrase, “Third World,” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It is a Cold War relic dusted off to serve as a euphemism for “non-white.” It lumps together billions of people from diverse cultures, economies, and histories into a single category of “undesirable.” It ignores the fact that the U.S. economy, military, tech sector, agriculture, elder care, and manufacturing all depend heavily on migrant labor from these very countries.
We are told that we must stop this flow to allow the “U.S. system to fully recover.” Recover from what? From growth? From innovation? From the labor that keeps the nursing homes staffed and the crops harvested? The idea that immigration is an illness from which the nation must convalesce is a biological metaphor straight out of the eugenicist playbook. It treats the nation as a body and the immigrant as a virus.
Then comes the threat of “denaturalization.” Trump vows to strip citizenship from migrants who do not meet his purity test for “loving our Country.” This is a terrifying escalation. Citizenship is not a gym membership that can be revoked for insufficient enthusiasm. It is a legal status protected by the Constitution. The idea that the government can retroactively decide you are no longer a citizen because you protested, or voted wrong, or simply didn’t assimilate enough, is a hallmark of fascist regimes. It transforms every naturalized citizen into a second-class subject, perpetually on probation, their rights contingent on the mood of the leader.
He calls for the deportation of anyone labeled a “public charge” or “non-compatible with Western Civilization.” This phrase, “non-compatible,” is lifted directly from the European far-right. It imagines civilization not as a set of ideas—democracy, rule of law, individual rights—but as an ethnicity. It implies that there is a specific, racialized essence to “The West” that cannot be learned or adopted by people from the Global South. It ignores the awkward historical fact that the “Western Civilization” currently celebrating Thanksgiving was built by settlers who arrived with muskets, smallpox, and land deeds written on someone else’s soil.
The promise of “REVERSE MIGRATION” is the final, dystopian flourish. It sounds like an urban planning trend pitched at a hedge fund conference, the kind of “disruption” that excites people who view human beings as inventory errors. But in practice, “reverse migration” means mass deportation. It means raids. It means camps. It means the forcible removal of millions of people who have built lives, families, and communities here. It is a proposal for ethnic cleansing disguised as a bureaucratic correction.
Trump backs this up with fabricated statistics, claiming that immigrant families “get fifty thousand dollars in yearly benefits.” This number is a fiction, a mathematical impossibility designed to evoke resentment. It is meant to make the struggling American worker look at their own paycheck and wonder why the “illegal” next door is getting rich. It is the classic “welfare queen” trope, updated for the 21st century and applied to an entire class of people who are often barred from accessing the very benefits they are accused of stealing.
The historical echoes are deafening. Trump’s rhetoric is not new; it is a remix of the Know Nothings’ anti-Catholic hysteria, the Chinese Exclusion Act’s ban on “undesirables,” and the 1924 National Origins Act’s obsession with “racial stock.” It mirrors the post-9/11 suspicion that treated every Muslim traveler as a potential terrorist. It channels the “Operation Wetback” deportation drives of the 1950s. The only innovation is the platform. We used to print these ideas in pamphlets; now we post them on Truth Social.
The contradiction at the heart of this manifesto is the economic reality. The United States has an aging population and a labor shortage. We need workers. We need care aides. We need engineers. We need the very people Trump wants to ban. By calling for a “permanent pause” and “reverse migration,” he is advocating for economic suicide. He is proposing to starve the economy of its most vital resource—labor—in order to satisfy a nativist fantasy of purity.
Yet, the “America First” movement cheers. They cheer because the pain is the point. They cheer because the cruelty validates their own sense of belonging. If the government is hurting them, it must be protecting us.
The closing of the post, the “Happy Thanksgiving to all, except,” is the final twist of the knife. It divides the country into the worthy and the unworthy, the blessed and the damned. It turns a holiday of gratitude into a loyalty test. It reminds us that in Trump’s America, there is no unconditional love, only conditional presence. You are welcome at the table as long as you look right, vote right, and don’t come from a “failed nation.”
We are left with a picture of a movement that screams about foreign caravans at the border while its own moral compass is completely unmoored. It is a movement that claims to defend “Western Civilization” while dismantling the very values—equality, liberty, due process—that civilization claims to uphold.
The “Happy Holidays” from Mar-a-Lago is not a greeting. It is a warning. It is a notice of intent to foreclose on the American experiment and replace it with a gated community where the only people allowed inside are the ones who already own the keys.
The Part They Hope You Miss
The most dangerous aspect of this rhetoric is how easily it expands. Today, “non-compatible” means an Afghan refugee. Tomorrow, it means a student protestor. The day after, it means a journalist, a judge, or a political opponent. Once you establish the principle that citizenship can be revoked and presence can be criminalized based on “compatibility,” you have created a weapon that can be aimed at anyone. The definition of “The People” shrinks until it includes only the leader and his reflection. And by then, it is too late to ask for a second helping of democracy.