Utah Rep. Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, said Tuesday she was troubled by Maloy’s seeming embrace of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric.

“It’s unfortunate we’re dehumanizing people who are looking for a better life for their family,” Romero said.

. . .“I’m worried about anyone who is of Hispanic origin,” Romero said. “I hear the rhetoric and fear that people who look like me will be targeted. The panic and fear this type of rhetoric brings turn people against each other.”

This is exactly what will happen, it’s exactly what was happening 90 years ago in Germany, and she is right to be concerned. Unless we stop it in November, this is only the start.

But what really got my attention is the photo of Celeste Maloy. Maybe it’s the angle, most likely it’s the hair, but she did not initially strike me as being 100% white. Normally I don’t care. But when a person of non-white ethnicity is spouting the modern-day equivalent of Aryan race theory, it gets my attention.

For example, I know a person of obvious Hispanic origin that works near here. I run into him pretty frequently, and there are a lot of people just like him in this area, even though it’s nowhere near the southern border. There are a lot of Mexican transplants here, and my guess is that he’s second or third generation Mexican. He’s got a wife that looks the same, and kids too. Good people, perfect English, not poorly educated but not academics either, decent, hard working. Salt of the earth.

But eight years or so ago this guy went full Trump, and now he’s got his co-worker to reinforce it: a white guy who is just completely batshit insane anyway, but is also HARD right wing, not just a Trumper but a guy with strong American History X vibes, a person I suspect would very much enjoy lining anyone up against a wall. They’re not allowed to sport political clothing or accessories at work, but if I had to bet on it I’d put a confident $20 on the white guy having racist ink, in addition to the shit that spews out of his mouth.

Day in and day out, they reinforce each other in all this at work, openly mocking anyone who doesn’t line up with their views; it’s only by accident I overheard it at all. But I did, and it chilled me to the core, because it was as insanely bad as anything I’d ever heard, or even heard about.

Yet even if this Hispanic guy wanted to hear different opinions, which is unlikely to start with, it would never get through because his right-wing buddy would shoot it down hard. Both of them are 100% anti-immigrant, god-save-me-from-the-caravans MAGA Trump stans.

And meanwhile the Hispanic guy seems to have zero clue, none, that he and his pretty wife and their cute curly headed young kids look exactly like the people they both so loudly despise.

Every time I see him or his wife and family, I wonder exactly what Angela Romero is saying out loud now.