Tag: Trump racism

Presidential historian Jon Meacham explains why Trump has ‘joined Andrew Johnson as the most racist president in American history’

AlterNet logoWhen President Donald Trump, over the weekend, told four congresswomen of color to go back to the countries they originally came from, it was obviously a rally-the-base strategy designed to appeal to the so-called “patriotism” of his far-right supporters. But, according to presidential historian Jon Meacham, Trump’s bigoted comments were the polar opposite of patriotic. This week’s true American patriots, according to Meacham, are the four congresswomen Trump attacked on Twitter: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York City, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan — and Trump is showing himself to be the most racist U.S. president since Democrat Andrew Johnson in the 1860s.

Appearing on MSNBC’s “Hardball” on Monday night, Meacham told host Chris Matthews, “Johnson’s state message said that African-Americans were incapable of self-government and relapsed into barbarism if they weren’t closely supervised.”

Meacham noted that the history of the U.S. is about a “journey toward a more perfect union,” not authoritarianism. The 50-year-old historian told Matthews, “What the president has done here is yet again — I think he did it after Charlottesville, and I think he did it, frankly, when he was pushing the birther lie about President Obama — he has joined Andrew Johnson as the most racist president in American history.”

View the complete July 16 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

GOP put on the back foot by Trump’s race storm

The Hill logoPresident Trump’s attacks on four minority Democratic lawmakers have created a rift in the GOP, putting many Republicans on the defensive.

Most are seeking to steer clear of the firestorm, but a few GOP lawmakers came out against Trump’s suggestion that the four women of color “go back” to their home countries, even though all are U.S. citizens.

One of the strongest denunciations came from Rep. Will Hurd (Texas), the only African American House Republican, whose district has a large number of Hispanic residents. He blasted Trump’s tweets as “racist” and “xenophobic” in a CNN interview.

View the complete July 16 article Alexander Bolton and Jordain Carney on The Hill website here.

Trump’s racism cements his party’s place among the West’s far right

Washington Post logoPresident Trump tweets with such frenzy and frequency that we have become almost inured to his rhetorical excesses. But there are times when you have to pay attention.

Over the weekend, Trump tweeted out a widely condemned attack on four Democratic congresswomen: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.). All four are freshmen lawmakers, women of color and outspoken, left-wing voices in the Democratic Party; only one, Omar, was born outside of the United States.

Yet Trump urged them to “go back” to the “crime infested places from which they came” and stated they all “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe.” The venom behind the tweets was unmistakable: Here was Trump openly questioning four minority women’s place in America. It was in keeping with the president’s lengthy history of white nationalism, from his “birtherist” campaign against America’s first black president, to his slurs at a Mexican American judge, to his preference for migrants from Norway over “shithole countries,” to his blanket attacks on Muslims, to his defense of white supremacist protesters, to his administration’s daily demonization of immigrants and minority communities.

View the complete July 16 article by Ishaan Tharoor on The Washington Post website here.

White identity politics drives Trump, and the Republican Party under him

Washington Post logoWith a tweeted attack on four minority congresswomen this week, President Trump made clear that his reelection campaign will feature the same explosive mix of white grievance and anti-immigrant nativism that helped elect him.

Trump’s combustible formula of white identity politics already has reshaped the Republican Party, sidelining, silencing or converting nearly anyone who dares to challenge the racial insensitivity of his utterances. It also has pushed Democratic presidential candidates sharply to the left on issues such as immigration and civil rights, as they respond to the liberal backlash against him.

Left unknown is whether the president is now on the verge of more permanently reshaping the nation’s political landscape — at least until long-term demographic changes take hold to make nonwhite residents a majority of the country around 2050.

View the complete July 16 article by Michael Scherer on The Washington Post website here.

A Blaring Message in Republicans’ Muted Criticism: It’s Trump’s Party

New York Times logoWASHINGTON — The lack of widespread Republican condemnation of President Trump for his comments about four Democratic congresswomen of color illustrated both the tightening stranglehold Mr. Trump has on his party and the belief of many Republicans that an attack on progressivism should in fact be a central element of the 2020 campaign.

While a smattering of Republicans chastised Mr. Trump on Monday, most party leaders in the House and Senate and much of the rank-and-file remained quiet about the president’s weekend tweets directing dissenters to “go back” where they came from. He followed up on those comments on Monday with harsh language directed at “people who hate America” — an inflammatory accusation to be leveled against elected members of the House.

With Mr. Trump far more popular with Republican voters than incumbent Republican members of Congress, most are loath to cross the president and risk reprisals. The case of Representative Justin Amash, the Michigan lawmaker who was forced to leave the party after he dared to suggest Mr. Trump should be impeached, serves as a cautionary tale.

View the complete July 15 article by Carl Hulse on The New York Times website here.

How Trump aides rushed to repackage the ‘go back’ tweets

Over the course of 24 hours, the Trump campaign tried to repackage the attack as a broader patriotic message.

Within hours of President Donald Trump’s radioactive tweets on Sunday urging several Democratic congresswomen to “go back” to other countries, his campaign was scrambling to repackage the attack on the four women of color into a broader patriotic message.

By Sunday night, the campaign was portraying Trump as a defender of American pride. “President Trump loves this country [and] doesn’t like it when elected officials constantly disparage it,” said Tim Murtaugh, communications director for Trump’s reelection operation.

By Monday morning, the campaign’s rapid response director and Trump himself were branding the congresswomen as dangerous ideologues, retweeting Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s accusations that the congresswomen were “a bunch of communists.”

View the complete July 15 article by Gabby Orr on the Politico website here.

Lindsey Graham’s and the GOP’s initial responses to Trump’s ‘go back’ tweets are a mess

Washington Post logoThey’re all over the place, and they’re often nonsensical.

This post has been updated.

After spending a day silently pretending that President Trump didn’t say what he just said, GOP reactions to Trump telling nonwhite congresswomen to return to the countries they came from are starting to roll in.

And it’s clear they have no good answers.

The first high-profile Trump ally to take a stab at explaining his tweets was his campaign’s rapid response director, Matt Wolking. Wolking took to Twitter to argue that Trump wasn’t actually telling anyone to go back to their countries, despite Trump having said exactly that.

View the complete July 15 article by Aaron Blake on The Washington Post website here.

Fox News’ John Roberts tells Trump to his face: ‘White nationalist groups are finding common cause with you’

AlterNet logoFox News reporter John Roberts asked President Donald Trump to his face whether he cared that white nationalists agreed with his views on race.

The president provoked widespread outrage by calling on four Democratic congresswomen — all women of color — to leave the country because they disagreed with his policies, and Trump insisted his tweets were not racist while continuing to lob bigoted attacks at them.

“Mr. President,” Roberts asked during an impromptu Monday news conference, “does it concern you that many people saw that tweet as racist, and that white nationalist groups are finding common cause with you on that point?”

View the complete July 15 article by Travis Gettys from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Trump steps up attacks on minority congresswomen

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Monday stepped up his attacks on four progressive, minority Democratic lawmakers, which were widely condemned by Democrats — and some Republicans — as racist and unbecoming of an American president.

One day after Trump said the four women should “go back” to their home countries, even though all are U.S. citizens, the president denied he was being racist and expressed no remorse when told that white nationalist groups found common cause with his message.

“It doesn’t concern me because many people agree with me,” Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House during an event highlighting American manufacturing.

View the complete July 15 article by Jordan Fabian on The Hill website here.

Border Patrol Kept Families Separated To Avoid ‘Paperwork’

Unsettling details of Trump’s family separation policy were laid out in a new investigative report released by congressional staff for Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), acknowledging that “child separations were more harmful, traumatic, and chaotic than previously known.”

The investigation found that the youngest known child to be ripped away from his parents was a four-month-old Romanian boy.

In another instance, an eight-month-old baby was taken from her father in May 2018. At the time of his father’s release from custody, “the baby had spent nearly half of his life without his parents, in the custody of the Trump Administration,” according to the report. “It is unclear whether the child and father have been reunited.”

View the complete July 13 article by Dan Desai Martin on the National Memo website here.