Internet claps back at Trump as team reportedly hunts for a disease to seal the border

A mix of good-natured humor and horror took over social media Thursday after reports emerged that President-elect Donald Trump’s team has been on the hunt for a disease they can use as a springboard to seal the border.

The plan – revealed by The New York Times less than two weeks before Trump is inaugurated as the 47th president – involves the incoming president invoking Section 265 of Title 42 to declare a public health emergency and summarily expel migrants.

But not all were immediately on board with the unconventional border strategy.

“The disease is called narcissistic personality disorder. It currently affects Donald Trump,” Will Bunch, national opinion columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote on Bluesky.

“The actual disease is fascism but NYT can't help but parrot Trump's fascist statements without challenging them,” human rights attorney Qasim Rashid said to his followers on X. “Also immigrants consistently have higher vaccination rates and lower disease rates than do US Citizens. But facts don't matter to fascists.”

Historian Charles Louis Richter posted for his Bluesky followers a “working list of possible diseases to blame, leaked from the Trump Office,” which includes: “Mad Cow Disease, Ebola, Spontaneous Dental Hydroplosion, Leprosy, Flesh-Eating Bacteria, Hot Dog Fingers, Anal Fissures, Government Created Killer Nanorobot Infection, Inverted P----, Count Choculitis [and] Dermatitis.”

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“I admittedly haven’t read the article, but I’m just imagining the Trump team searcher for a disease the way the cops were searching those bushes for evidence when the United Healthcare CEO was shot,” Bluesky user @hlrowe.bsky.social, a psychologist, wrote to her account.

Political science professor Don Moynihan offered his followers a brief history lesson from Trump’s first administration.

“Finding a public health excuse to close the borders is a strategy from the first term: when migrants got sick in detention centers Stephen Miller would say it justify (sic) border closings,” Moynihan wrote Thursday on Bluesky. “Eventually Covid came along to allow him to introduce this policy.”

He continued: “This is why General Counsels matter so much to dubious claims of executive power, and why Miller/Vought et al have focused on getting loyalist lawyers into government. In the first term govt lawyers blocked these efforts. In the second term, more likely to say yes.”

Trump made his hardline immigration stance a hallmark of both of his presidential campaigns and has repeatedly vowed to institute mass deportations starting on his first day in office.