(Dobbs) "They died as Americans."

Trump probably hasn't bothered to know their names.

Maybe this is one of the migrants who has been “poisoning the blood of our country.”

And this might be the kind of migrant we’ve been worrying about because, “They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They're rapists.”

Is this the one who’s responsible for “migrant crime?”

And might this one be one of those "drug dealers," "gang members," “criminals," and people from mental institutions?

This could be one of the “foreign enemies of the United States.”

Maybe, but we’ll never know. All five died when Baltimore’s Key Bridge was rammed by a super-sized container ship and, in a matter of seconds, collapsed. It was a cold rainy night. They were working the graveyard shift on the bridge, which is part of the Interstate Highway system, fixing potholes. If they hadn’t been in the wrong place at the wrong time, they would still be alive, but depending on the outcome of the November election, they might then have become part of the “largest deportation operation in America.”

We’ll never know.

Donald Trump, whose very words are immortalized in the quotation marks above, seems delighted to denigrate men like these. Now, even though they are no threat and by all accounts never were, he probably won’t bother to know their names. 

You might want to:

Miguel Luna, 49 years old, from El Salvador. A father of five.

Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, from Mexico. The father of four.

Jose Mynor Lopez, age 35, from Guatemala. Also the father of young children.

Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, age 38, from Honduras. A father of two.

Dorlian Cabrera, from Guatemala, age 26.

A sixth man, still missing, only has been identified as Carlos.

All worked hard. All led admirable lives. 

Historian Heather Cox Richardson yesterday offered up a more commendable quote than any of the vile venom from Trump. It came from Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch, who wrote: “The workers who died in the bridge collapse on Tuesday were not ‘poisoning the blood of our country,’ they were replenishing it…. They may have been born all over the continent, but when these men plunged into our waters on Tuesday, they died as Americans.”

Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.