I realize that I’m both preaching to the choir and stating the obvious with this post title. I think it’s important to be direct when writing about the depths of the Insult Comedian’s bigotry and the damage it has done to the country.
Vox’s German Lopez has assembled an impressive timeline of Trumpian public racism that stretches back to 1973. It’s an ugly but must-read piece. Anyone with a lick of sense has known from the beginning that Donald Trump is not only a criminal, he’s a racist.
What else was birtherism but a demand that Barack Obama show his “papers” to prove his citizenship? It didn’t need to be true or even partially true to have a malicious effect on the body politic. Hell, Trump wasn’t even the original birther but he was the most persistent.
I realize that Trump’s “go back” attack on the Squad was an attempt to divert attention from all the Trump scandals. It was imperative, however, to call him on his egregious racism. I wish he would “go back” to Trump Tower and leave the rest of us alone.
There were only 4 Republican House members plus Justin Amash who voted for the resolution condemning Trump’s latest racist tweet. I was surprised that there were any so this kinda, sorta counts as progress.
The GOP response was typified by Mitch McConnell, Steve Scalise, and Kevin McCarthy all of whom claimed Trump is not a racist and that they were nice to then President Obama. It’s all so typical and tiresome. Give it a rest, y’all. You own this guy and his overt racism.
The worst effect of having a racist, white nationalist president* is that it’s now socially acceptable in some quarters to make overtly racist comments in broad daylight. They’re following the president’s* bad example. I wish they would crawl back under the rock they oozed out from under BUT at least we know where we stand. The dog whistle has been replaced with a bullhorn.
Team Trump’s 2020 strategy has been obvious for months: defame, slander, and lie about their opponents to depress Democratic turnout. It’s their only hope of winning since they’ve been shrinking their base since the infamous “American carnage” inaugural rant. The good news is that Trump’s racist, xenophobic mid-term campaign did not work. The bad news is that we’re stuck with this asshole until January, 2021.
One good effect of Trump’s face-off with the Squad is that the MSM is starting to call a racist a racist. Trump’s reaction has been typically overstated:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1151129281134768128
That’s the Insult Comedian’s version of “some of my best friends are black.” Given his record of sexual assault, there may be one bone in his body that isn’t racist, if you catch my drift.
I may be preaching to the choir but repeat after me: Donald Trump is a racist.
The last word goes to Rodney Crowell:
Serious Question: Is there any compelling evidence that Trump’s outbursts are deliberate distractions?
Trump, and basically everybody in his orbit, have been in a state of non-stop scandal since before he took the oath. He’s also known for being not a strategic thinker, and maybe not even tactical. So for him to have some racist outburst, because he saw The Squad mentioned somewhere on Fox, while some Trump-adjacent scandal is evolving, is an event with probability close to 100%. There’s no coincidence of timing that even needs to be explained.
Short version: yes, his twitter outburst landed at the same time as some scandal, but that’s just a day that ends in “y”. Doesn’t Occam’s razor imply that poor impulse control and easy access to twitter (and raging bigotry) are sufficient to explain any of these “distraction” events?
“Send her back” — typical Trump over-reaction since he could just divorce Melania rather than deporting her !