{"id":106354,"date":"2025-12-23T13:28:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T13:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/106354\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T13:28:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T13:28:09","slug":"its-a-wonderful-ice-trumpworld-tries-to-hijack-a-holiday-classic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/106354\/","title":{"rendered":"‘It’s a Wonderful ICE?’ Trumpworld tries to hijack a holiday classic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For decades, American families have gathered to watch \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life\u201d on Christmas Eve<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The 1946 Frank Capra movie, about a man who on one of the worst days of his life discovers how he has positively impacted his hometown of Bedford Falls, is beloved for extolling selflessness, community and the little guy taking on rapacious capitalists. Take those values, add in powerful acting and the promise of light in the darkest of hours, and it\u2019s the only movie that makes me cry.<\/p>\n

No less a figure of goodwill than Pope Leo XIV revealed last month that it\u2019s one of his favorite movies<\/a>. But as with anything holy in this nation, President Trump and his followers are trying to hijack the holiday classic. <\/p>\n

Last weekend, the Department of Homeland Security posted two videos celebrating its mass deportation campaign<\/a>. One, titled \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Flight,\u201d re-creates the scene where George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart in one of his best performances) contemplates taking his own life by jumping off a snowy bridge. But the protagonist is a Latino man crying over the film\u2019s despairing score that he\u2019ll \u201cdo anything\u201d to return to his wife and kids and \u201clive again.\u201d <\/p>\n

Cut to the same man now mugging for the camera on a plane ride out of the United States. The scene ends with a plug for an app that allows undocumented immigrants to take up Homeland Security\u2019s offer of a free self-deportation flight<\/a> and a $1,000 bonus \u2014 $3,000 if they take the one-way trip during the holidays.<\/p>\n

The other DHS clip is a montage of Yuletide cheer \u2014 Santa, elves, stockings, dancing \u2014 over a sped-up electro-trash remake of Mariah Carey\u2019s \u201cAll I Want for Christmas is You.\u201d In one split-second image, Bedford Falls residents sing \u201cAuld Lang Syne,\u201d just after they\u2019ve saved George Bailey from financial ruin and an arrest warrant.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis Christmas,\u201d the caption reads, \u201cour hearts grow as our illegal population shrinks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life\u201d has long served as a political Rorschach test. Conservatives once thought Capra\u2019s masterpiece was so anti-American for its vilification of big-time bankers that they accused him of sneaking in pro-Communist propaganda. In fact, the director was a Republican who paused his career during World War II to make short documentaries for the Department of War.<\/a> Progressives tend to loathe the film\u2019s patriotism, its sappiness, its relegation of Black people to the background and its depiction of urban life as downright demonic.<\/p>\n

Then came Trump\u2019s rise to power. His similarity to the film\u2019s villain, Mr. Potter \u2014 a wealthy, nasty slumlord who names everything he takes control of after himself \u2014 was easier to point out than spots on a cheetah. Left-leaning essayists quickly made the facile comparison, and a 2018 \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d parody imagining a country without Trump as president so infuriated him that he threatened to sue. <\/p>\n

But in recent years, Trumpworld has claimed that the film is actually a parable about their dear leader.<\/p>\n

Trump is a modern day George Bailey, the argument goes, a secular saint walking away from sure riches to try to save the \u201crabble\u201d that Mr. Potter \u2014 who in their minds somehow represents the liberal elite \u2014 sneers at. A speaker at the 2020 Republican National Convention explicitly made the comparison, and the recent Homeland Security videos warping \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life\u201d imply it too \u2014 except now, it\u2019s unchecked immigration that threatens Bedford Falls. <\/p>\n

The Trump administration\u2019s take on \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life\u201d is that it reflects a simpler, better, whiter time<\/a>. But that\u2019s a conscious misinterpretation of this most American of movies, whose foundation is strengthened by immigrant dreams.<\/p>\n

\"Frank <\/p>\n

Director Frank Capra<\/p>\n

(Handout)<\/p>\n

In his 1971 autobiography<\/a> \u201cThe Name Above the Title,\u201d Capra revealed that his \u201cdirty, hollowed-out immigrant family\u201d left Sicily for Los Angeles in the 1900s to reunite with an older brother who \u201cjumped the ship\u201d to enter the U.S. years before. Young Frank grew up in the \u201csleazy Sicilian ghetto\u201d of Lincoln Heights, finding kinship at Manual Arts High with the \u201criff-raff\u201d of immigrant and working-class white kids \u201cother schools discarded\u201d and earning U.S. citizenship only after serving in the first World War. Hard times wouldn\u2019t stop Capra and his peers from achieving success.<\/p>\n

The director captured that sentiment in \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life\u201d through the character of Giuseppe Martini, an Italian immigrant who runs a bar. His heavily accented English is heard early in the film as one of many Bedford Falls residents praying for Bailey. In a flashback, Martini is seen leaving his shabby Potter-owned apartment with a goat and a troop of kids for a suburban tract home that Bailey developed and sold to him.<\/p>\n

Today, Trumpworld would cast the Martinis as swarthy invaders<\/a> destroying the American way of life. In \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life,\u201d they\u2019re America itself.<\/p>\n

When an angry husband punches Bailey at Martini\u2019s bar for insulting his wife, the immigrant kicks out the man for assaulting his \u201cbest friend.\u201d And when Bedford Falls gathers at the end of the film to raise funds and save Bailey, it\u2019s Martini who arrives with the night\u2019s profits from his business, as well as wine for everyone to celebrate. <\/p>\n

Immigrants are so key to the good life in this country, the film argues, that in the alternate reality if George Bailey had never lived, Martini is nowhere to be heard.<\/p>\n

Capra long stated that \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life\u201d was his favorite of his own movies, adding in his memoir that it was a love letter \u201cfor the Magdalenes stoned by hypocrites and the afflicted Lazaruses with only dogs to lick their sores.\u201d <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve tried to catch at least the ending every Christmas Eve to warm my spirits, no matter how bad things may be. But after Homeland Security\u2019s hijacking of Capra\u2019s message, I made time to watch the entire film, which I\u2019ve seen at least 10 times, before its customary airing on NBC. <\/p>\n

I shook my head, feeling the deja vu, as Bailey\u2019s father sighed, \u201cIn this town, there\u2019s no place for any man unless they crawl to Potter.\u201d <\/p>\n

I cheered as Bailey told Potter years later, \u201cYou think the whole world revolves around you and your money. Well, it doesn\u2019t.\u201d I wondered why more people haven\u2019t said that to Trump.<\/p>\n

When Potter ridiculed Bailey as someone \u201ctrapped into frittering his life away playing nursemaid to a lot of garlic eaters,\u201d I was reminded of the right-wingers who portray those of us who stand up to Trump\u2019s cruelty<\/a> as stupid and even treasonous.<\/p>\n

And as the famous conclusion came, all I thought about was immigrants. <\/p>\n

People giving Bailey whatever money they could spare reminded me of how regular folks have done a far better job<\/a> standing up to Trump\u2019s deportation Leviathan than the rich and mighty have. <\/p>\n

As the film ends, with Bailey and his family looking on in awe at how many people came to help out, I remembered my own immigrant elders<\/a>, who also forsook dreams and careers so their children could achieve their own \u2014 the only reward to a lifetime of silent sacrifice.<\/p>\n

The tears flowed as always, this time prompted by a new takeaway that was always there \u2014 \u201cSolo el pueblo salva el pueblo,\u201d or \u201cOnly we can save ourselves,\u201d a phrase adopted by pro-immigrant activists in Southern California this year as a mantra of comfort and resistance.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the heart of \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life\u201d and the opposite of Trump\u2019s push to make us all dependent on his mercy. He and his fellow Potters can\u2019t do anything to change that truth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For decades, American families have gathered to watch \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life\u201d on Christmas Eve. The 1946 Frank…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[19412,57423,57421,1924,57425,57422,42332,30732,5776,57424,48,52,51,47,50,49,1555,57426,1519,57427,32740],"class_list":["post-106354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-bailey","tag-bedford-falls","tag-capra","tag-film","tag-george-bailey","tag-giuseppe-martini","tag-hard-time","tag-holiday-classic","tag-homeland-security","tag-immigrant-dream","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-man","tag-mr-potter","tag-trump","tag-trumpworld","tag-wonderful-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}