I'm stunned at this late moment that we haven't seen a presidential tweet – exhausting all 280 characters and all 11 syllables of Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos' last name.
Dot. Dot. Dot.
If Donald Trump considers himself a Fox News hound, what's with his failure to exploit that name and all the angst and anger – angster -- he can further foment among his fearful followers?
Surely the leader of the paleface world heard the name pronounced on TV. All those trilled Rs and alien phonics. Why, that "G" isn't even pronounced the way God intended it.
Aguilera-Mederos was behind the wheel of a runaway semi that caused one of the most horrific traffic accidents in Colorado history – 28 vehicles, four fatalities, scores of injuries.
That's bad enough, but consider: Using "Fox & Friends"-speak, the driver was from what would qualify as one of those "Mexican countries" (actual headline) down around the equator. Aguilera-Mederos is here from Cuba with a green card.
The semi was headed down a steep incline on I-70 when the driver lost control. Charging down from the foothills, the truck slammed into cars halted by another traffic accident.
Runaway trucks are nothing new in the Rockies. That's why emergency ramps are availed and signs advise the utmost caution. Aguilera-Mederos was negligent. A court will decide if he's criminally so.
It's just the state of discourse, however, that the driver's ethnicity became a focal point of much of it.
Someone whipped up an online petition to deport Aguilera-Mederos, and to remark on the harm wrought by "brown devils." It continued, "The wetbacks need to get out of R country and build the f---ing wall."
Once again, Mr. President. Why no tweet? Your public awaits.
Ah, but let's think about this a little further. What if the truck was defective? And if this man was unqualified, who hired him?
It turns out a small Houston trucking company owns the vehicle. Not surprisingly, the company has been cited for vehicles with, ahem, brake problems.
Yes, isn't that the way it works? We talk about invading hordes of brown-skinned people (actually people who demonstrate the highest qualities of resourcefulness, hard work and attention to family), but rarely do we talk about the people who exploit their labor.
Like Donald Trump, for instance.
Remember the tempest stirred during the Clinton administration – Nannygate it was called – when two candidacies for attorney general (Zoe Baird and Judge Kimba Wood) were withdrawn after acknowledging they hired undocumented individuals to perform household functions?
President Trump didn't withdraw Andrew Pudzer's name from nomination as his secretary of labor though Pudzer acknowledged the very same thing. (Pudzer was rejected by the Senate.)
And why should Trump have made a thing about it? His properties are well-known to have employed undocumented individuals. A recent Washington Post expose revealed a veritable Costa Rican pipeline of undocumented workers to Trump properties.
If members of the MAGA set know this, it appears not to bother them one bit.
Reportedly, federal investigators from the Southern District of New York, are not so sanguine. They are investigating the Trump Organization's use of illegal labor as one piece of a possible organized crime case under the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act.
Rest assured, those who will made a big deal out of Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos' name have no complaint if people with all those dreaded syllables clean their motel toilets, harvest their produce or replace their storm-battered roofs.
And of course they're completely satisfied if brown-skinned "devils" help prop up the business of a folk hero with a forked tongue.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
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