PUBLISHED TO
Racism has always been Donald Trump’s go-to electoral move, but suddenly it’s not working so well for him. Being Trump, he’s doubling down on the racism—which has many Republicans, including some of his advisers, worried. “If
he was trying to lose, he’d be doing basically what he is doing right
now,” a Republican source “in frequent touch with the White House” told The Washington Post.
The issue Trump's advisers face is about public presentation, of course, not about getting Trump to stop being a racist—they sure can’t do that. But they’re not managing to achieve a less racist public presentation, either, from the decision to hold his return to campaign rallies on Juneteenth in Tulsa—the site of a major race massacre 99 years ago—to the decision to have him renominated for president in Jacksonville on the anniversary of that city’s Ax Handle Saturday, to basically every other statement in his Twitter feed.
“Donald Trump is a racist,” Jacksonville civil rights organizer Rodney Hurst said. “I don’t think it requires any real insight to know who and what Donald Trump is.”
But suddenly Trump’s racism is a problem serious enough, electorally speaking, for his advisers to care, and they can’t get him to tamp it down. “He’s talking as if this is a country in the 1950s and not 2020,” Richmond, Virginia, Mayor Levar Stoney told The New York Times. You don’t have to pretend racism is entirely fixed to understand that looking at broad-based protests across the country and sounding like Bull Connor might be a problem, but that thought appears way, way beyond the capacity of Trump’s racist mindset.
Trump needs to win back suburban white women, who abandoned Republicans in significant numbers in 2018 and, polls suggest, are staying away. But, while the Post reports that “Inside Trump’s orbit, several of the president’s aides are frustrated that some of his crafted statements on the recent unrest have been eclipsed by his incendiary tweets or remarks,” Trump’s campaign recently released an ad trying to stoke fears of protesters and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has been enthusiastically backing Trump’s every racist statement, from attacking the Buffalo protester to defending his stance against renaming military bases that currently honor Confederate leaders.
So while advisers may say in anonymous quotes that they’re worried about it, they’re either not as worried as they claim or they don’t have the leverage with Trump to get him to stop. Trump’s advisers, too, are trying to quickly make the transition from racism being a prime electoral weapon for their side to a world in which, as Washington, D.C., Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton told the Times, “So many white people have taken this to heart.”
Republican strategists are used to having traditional media frame Republican racism as “Democrats eager to capitalize on what some say is a racist president revealing his true beliefs.” And they still do get that language—thanks, Post!—but the balance has shifted, leaving the “Democrats eager, some say racism is racist” framing as a minor note in a longer litany of observations about Trump’s racism.
“It seems to me that Trump represents the death rattle of an older America,” Eddie Glaude, chair of the department of African American studies at Princeton University, told the Post. “Everything he’s doubling down on is precisely what we’re trying to leave behind, and so the battle that is now being engaged is precisely a battle surrounding what kind of country will we be moving forward, and he is holding onto with all of his might this idea of America as a white nation.”
The issue Trump's advisers face is about public presentation, of course, not about getting Trump to stop being a racist—they sure can’t do that. But they’re not managing to achieve a less racist public presentation, either, from the decision to hold his return to campaign rallies on Juneteenth in Tulsa—the site of a major race massacre 99 years ago—to the decision to have him renominated for president in Jacksonville on the anniversary of that city’s Ax Handle Saturday, to basically every other statement in his Twitter feed.
“Donald Trump is a racist,” Jacksonville civil rights organizer Rodney Hurst said. “I don’t think it requires any real insight to know who and what Donald Trump is.”
But suddenly Trump’s racism is a problem serious enough, electorally speaking, for his advisers to care, and they can’t get him to tamp it down. “He’s talking as if this is a country in the 1950s and not 2020,” Richmond, Virginia, Mayor Levar Stoney told The New York Times. You don’t have to pretend racism is entirely fixed to understand that looking at broad-based protests across the country and sounding like Bull Connor might be a problem, but that thought appears way, way beyond the capacity of Trump’s racist mindset.
Trump needs to win back suburban white women, who abandoned Republicans in significant numbers in 2018 and, polls suggest, are staying away. But, while the Post reports that “Inside Trump’s orbit, several of the president’s aides are frustrated that some of his crafted statements on the recent unrest have been eclipsed by his incendiary tweets or remarks,” Trump’s campaign recently released an ad trying to stoke fears of protesters and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has been enthusiastically backing Trump’s every racist statement, from attacking the Buffalo protester to defending his stance against renaming military bases that currently honor Confederate leaders.
So while advisers may say in anonymous quotes that they’re worried about it, they’re either not as worried as they claim or they don’t have the leverage with Trump to get him to stop. Trump’s advisers, too, are trying to quickly make the transition from racism being a prime electoral weapon for their side to a world in which, as Washington, D.C., Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton told the Times, “So many white people have taken this to heart.”
Republican strategists are used to having traditional media frame Republican racism as “Democrats eager to capitalize on what some say is a racist president revealing his true beliefs.” And they still do get that language—thanks, Post!—but the balance has shifted, leaving the “Democrats eager, some say racism is racist” framing as a minor note in a longer litany of observations about Trump’s racism.
“It seems to me that Trump represents the death rattle of an older America,” Eddie Glaude, chair of the department of African American studies at Princeton University, told the Post. “Everything he’s doubling down on is precisely what we’re trying to leave behind, and so the battle that is now being engaged is precisely a battle surrounding what kind of country will we be moving forward, and he is holding onto with all of his might this idea of America as a white nation.”
No comments:
Post a Comment