I generally have not agreed that President Trump’s various utterances and actions have been racist, or at least not thought them provably so. His comments about the conflict in Charlottesville in 2017, for example, are usually taken out of context — it is clear by “very fine people on both sides” he meant Southerners who felt they were supporting their heritage, not white supremacists. He specifically condemned the white supremacists.
But this time is different. In a heinous series of grunts emitted via twitter, Trump suggested legal immigrant citizens are not actual Americans and lumped together a group of nonwhite American women with names that lack white European provenance and suggested they should go back to their “countries.”
Here is what he said:
So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!
Now, I don’t like the views of any of these women — Reps. Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley. They are all progressives, and at least three them, Omar, Ocasio-Cortez, and Tlaib, have said some contemptible things of their own. Omar is almost certainly anti-Semitic.
It’s hard to work up much sympathy for them. But they are all Americans, and they have as much right as anyone to say “how our government is to be run.”
Trump’s branding them all in as foreigners is not just racist — would he have told a white American-born woman to go back to her country? — it’s race-baiting, an obvious attempt to appeal to racist voters.
The president’s comments were crude, nasty, and just kind of dumb. I don’t believe there was much of a strategy other than to excite the worst elements of his base and to vent against his opponents.
What particularly chills here is a president casting his opponents not just as un-American, which is bad enough, but as NOT American.
These women have at least two things in common: They are all red-blooded Americans — even if I suspect they don’t like this country very much. And they all have never had bone spurs.
It’s too bad. Trump has been a pretty good president. But there is no amount of success that justifies this kind of racism and intolerance.
We are in a war with the left for the soul of this country. Globalism, unlimited immigration that cannot be absorbed into the culture, political correctness, the deep state, and a rejection of our history threaten the foundations of our society.
But Trump cannot lead the struggle if he allows rottenness to fester in his own soul.
