Stoking division may be a winning campaign strategy, but it comes at a cost
Immigrants like the late Dikembe Mutombo love America more than the men who want to lead it

One Republican president, George W. Bush, honored Dikembe Mutombo at his 2007 State of the Union address at the Capitol, saying, “Dikembe became a star in the NBA and a citizen of the United States, but he never forgot the land of his birth, or his duty to share his blessings with others.”
It wasn’t just the sports world that mourned the death of Mutombo this week at the age of 58. Mutombo, who had become a U.S. citizen the year before Bush’s public praise, was known for both his unique basketball skills and his humanitarian and philanthropic efforts in this country, and especially in his native Democratic Republic of the Congo. Through the efforts of the NBA’s first global ambassador, a hospital and school were built there.
His obituary in The New York Times recounted that moment when a president recognized the sports star. Mutombo was awarded an academic scholarship to Georgetown, where he double majored in linguistics and diplomacy instead of his original pre-med dream; he spoke French, English, Spanish, Portuguese and five African languages.
What a full life, in just 58 years.
I wonder, though, if another former Republican president gave that stellar American’s death a second thought.
Instead, the current GOP nominee for the office was using Mutombo’s birthplace and the people who hail from that African country as villains at campaign stops on the Donald Trump hate tour. I doubt Trump knows much about any country in Africa, but he’s canny enough to realize conjuring up lurid images he seems to have gleaned from a Tarzan movie would scare up a few votes by stoking fear of the other, particularly if that other consists of nameless hordes of Black people, invading a white, suburban haven.
“They come from, from the Congo in Africa,” Trump said at a campaign stop in Wisconsin this week, repeating what has become a familiar refrain. “Many people from the Congo. I don’t know what that is.” It’s always Scandinavian countries such as Norway and Denmark that draw his admiration, while he heaps insults on the Middle East, Asia, Central and South America and Africa.
The attacks on Haitian migrants in Ohio and Pennsylvania by Trump and running mate Ohio Sen. JD Vance continue to cause problems in struggling communities that would prefer, its state and city officials say, problem-solving leadership.
Trump has never been subtle, but now he doesn’t even try to hide the racism in his fearmongering. He has made his play clear. After a few unsuccessful attempts to stick to policies, which boil down to “concepts” of a plan on health care and using tariffs as a cure for whatever ails the economy, he has retreated to his comfort zone, stoking division.
While Democrats and Republicans, with a few exceptions, generally try to keep politics out of disaster relief because torrential rain and high winds don’t check party registration before unleashing their power, it was no surprise when Donald Trump used his trip to Hurricane Helene-ravaged Georgia to attack Democrats — in particular and in general.
Usually, government officials wait for assurances that their presence won’t be a distraction to first responders before barging in for a photo op and press availability. Not Trump, who had at his side and on his side the Rev. Franklin Graham, who long ago ditched the example of his father, the Rev. Billy Graham, who later in life regretted his close alliance with a different political figure, Richard Nixon.
We know how that turned out.
It didn’t matter that what came out of Trump’s mouth had no relation to the truth; he was the center of attention.
Trump claimed that the battleground state’s governor had been unable to reach President Joe Biden. But Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, said he and the president had spoken. Biden’s message, said Kemp, was “that if there’s other things we need, just to call him directly, which I appreciate that.”
Trump’s attacks were pure projection since, as president, he delayed disaster relief to Puerto Rico when a hurricane hit. His administration denied 99 percent of the aid requested by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper for North Carolina after Hurricane Matthew, and he remains cozy with Project 2025, which would restructure the Federal Emergency Management Agency and downsize the National Weather Service, which provides critical data about storms and other weather events.
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, had let FEMA start its work before diverting precious local resources that would be needed for a trip to the still recovering area. Harris met with FEMA officials and workers.
Framing Harris, his rival for the White House, as incompetent is something you would expect Trump to do. He went even further, calling her “mentally disabled,” an insult to her and also those with mental disabilities, casting them as a punchline rather than actual human beings. It seems he’s still smarting from the hurting the vice president put on him in their lone debate; lashing out at a woman of color makes him feel better.
It’s not exactly presidential behavior.
Harris speaks of the “privilege” of being an American. Trump and Vance see America as a crime-ridden hellscape, even as FBI data show crime, particularly violent crime, is actually down. A National Institute of Justice-funded study examining data from the Texas Department of Public Safety “found that undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes.”
The attacks, with women and minorities, the poor and disabled, somehow always to blame for everything that goes wrong in America, are ugly stuff — and a reminder of Trump’s self-centered philosophy of life.
What a contrast to Mutombo, a Congo-born citizen of America. He used the advantages provided by his chosen home to give back to those in need.
He loved America more than the men who desperately want to lead it.
Mary C. Curtis has worked at The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Charlotte Observer, as national correspondent for Politics Daily, and is a senior facilitator with The OpEd Project. She is host of the CQ Roll Call “Equal Time with Mary C. Curtis” podcast. Follow her on X @mcurtisnc3.