Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Donald J. Trump—our nation’s most stable genius and part-time Gotham City historian—has once again graced us with his latest paranoid bedtime story: that other countries are “dumping their criminals, crazies, and lunatics” into the United States. Apparently, asylum seekers at the border aren’t families fleeing persecution, war, and famine—they’re escapees from international supermax prisons, hand-delivered straight to Texas by evil foreign masterminds.

It’s almost poetic, really. Trump’s imagination has gone full comic book. In his mind, somewhere south of the border, a shadowy cabal of foreign leaders is cackling as they load up buses filled with Joker look-alikes, Harley Quinns, and maybe even a few Riddlers for good measure, all bound for the Rio Grande. Forget facts, forget international law—Donald seems to truly believe that Joe Biden has opened America’s doors to Arkham Asylum.

You can practically hear him now at one of his rallies: “Folks, they’re sending us their worst—murderers, lunatics, villains with face paint! They’re all coming in! Bane himself! Not good, folks. Not good!” And his followers, bless their obedient hearts, nod along as if they just watched The Dark Knight Rises on Newsmax and thought it was a documentary.

This fantasy tells us less about immigration and more about the psychological fan fiction running inside Trump’s head. Because to believe this nonsense, you have to imagine that entire nations have nothing better to do than conspire to unload their most dangerous inmates onto America, as if Honduras has an official “Buy One, Get One Deportation” deal with the White House. It’s absurd, but in Trump’s world, absurdity is policy.

What’s even more unbelievable is that Trump actually sees himself as the hero in this comic book drama—the lone caped crusader standing between “real Americans” and a horde of imported villains. Never mind that his own inner circle has been more of a rogues’ gallery than any asylum intake list: convicted felons, indicted advisors, grifters, and would-be coup plotters. If anyone’s running Arkham, it’s not Biden—it’s Mar-a-Lago.

Let’s remember what asylum seekers actually are: human beings legally exercising their right under international and U.S. law to seek refuge from violence, persecution, and danger. But Trump’s imagination doesn’t have room for that nuance. To him, empathy is weakness, and humanity is just another inconvenient regulation to repeal. So he spins his border mythology—part scare tactic, part campaign fuel, and entirely disconnected from reality.

In his speeches, you can almost picture him pacing like a demented Batman villain himself, shouting about “Biden’s border madness,” while gesturing to invisible convicts parachuting into Arizona. If he had any self-awareness, he might notice that his rhetoric sounds less like a presidential statement and more like a bad comic book pitch: “Gotham Falls: The Biden Betrayal.”

But here’s the irony that could choke even the Joker with laughter: Trump’s own policies helped destabilize parts of the region people are now fleeing from. His administration cut aid to Central American countries, undermined asylum processing, and left a humanitarian vacuum that fueled the very desperation he now demonizes. So in true Trumpian fashion, he broke the system—and now blames the victims.

In the end, this isn’t about crime, immigration, or national security. It’s about fear. Trump thrives on it, marinates in it, and sells it like snake oil to anyone willing to buy. He doesn’t see asylum seekers; he sees villains in need of a campaign villain arc. And he’s counting on his supporters to confuse empathy with chaos and compassion with weakness.

So when Donald Trump tells us that Biden has unleashed the inmates of Arkham Asylum onto American soil, maybe he’s projecting a little. Because if anyone’s been letting the lunatics run the asylum, it’s the man who turned the White House into a live-action farce of his own making.

In Trump’s America, reality isn’t just optional—it’s the enemy. And somewhere, the Joker is probably watching all this unfold, grinning ear to ear, because even he couldn’t write satire this unhinged.