Tag: Trump white supremacy

Why Trump’s Racist Appeals Might Be Less Effective In 2020 Than They Were In 2016

In the closing days of the 2018 midterms campaign, with the economy on a historic run, President Trump tried to focus Americans’ attention on a caravan of Central American migrants heading toward the United States. He seemed to believe that by highlighting the migrants, he might rally voters back to the GOP in advance of the vote.

In recent weeks, Trump has telegraphed that racialized wedge issues are again a central element of his political strategy and seems to see a consistent political advantage in overt or dog-whistle racist appeals and the condemnation they invariably draw. For example, Trump has promised to protect “the suburban housewife” from lower-income neighbors; threatened to veto a bill that contained a provision to rename military bases named for Confederate leaders; waved off the problem of Black Americans being disproportionately killed by police by saying “so are white people;” focused his campaign advertising on crime and protests; and repeated baseless, racist allegations about Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris.

In using racial appeals, the president is the latest in a generations-long line of politicians tapping into a dangerous vein in American politics. But is there sometimes a political logic to such appeals? They didn’t work in 2018. Democrats would go on to take control of the U.S. House and a bunch of governorships.1 That was a midterm election, though, and this is a contest for the presidency. So, are racialised wedge issues likely to work to the GOP’s advantage in November? Continue reading.

Trump goes all-in on ugly white grievance politics

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Not that this should come as a surprise, but with the Republican National Convention less than a week away, Donald Trump is sending every possible signal that whatever its official themes may be the GOP gathering’s true subject will be white grievance politics. Unlike in the past, where concerns about not appearing overtly racist have forced Republicans to resort to dog whistles and coded language, Trump seems to believe to that his best bet is to serve the racism straight up, thereby vanquishing any remaining doubts about whether our president is actually a white supremacist.

Late Tuesday night, Trump praised Laura Loomer, who won the Republican primary in Florida’s 21st congressional district, which is Trump’s official place of residence. To call Loomer a “far right” or “fringe” candidate is understating the case. She’s an obsessive bigot with a long history of unvarnished hatred of Muslims — or anyone she just suspects may be a Muslim — calling them “savages” and labeling herself a #ProudIslamophobe. Her rhetoric is openly genocidal, such as when she declared that “we should never let another Muslim into the civilized world” and urged taxi and ride-share companies not to hire Muslim drivers. (It may be reassuring to know that she almost certainly won’t win in November. The district is solidly Democratic, and Republicans didn’t even bother to run a candidate against incumbent Rep. Lois Frankel in 2018.)

Loomer has been banned by both Uber and Lyft for this overt bigotry, and then was banned from Twitter after tweeting about Rep. Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota Democrat who is one of two Muslim women in the House: “Ilhan is pro Sharia Ilhan is pro-FGM Under Sharia, homosexuals are oppressed & killed. Women are abused & forced to wear the hijab.” Continue reading.

Bill Barr has done this before

AlterNet logoAs violent crime continued to climb in Chicago and other cities across the country, Attorney General William P. Barr announced that the U.S. Department of Justice was mobilizing to help: Dozens of federal agents would be sent to work with local police to combat gangs and illegal guns.

“Our message to gangs, gang leaders and gang members is this: When we throw the federal book at you, it will be a knockout blow,” Barr said.

That was in 1992, during Barr’s first stint leading the Justice Department, under former President George H.W. Bush.

If it sounds too recent or familiar to have happened nearly three decades ago, that’s because Barr, now attorney general under President Donald Trump, made a strikingly similar announcement on July 22. Continue reading.

A Half-Century After Wallace, Trump Echoes the Politics of Division

New York Times logoGeorge Wallace’s speeches and interviews from his 1968 campaign feature language and appeals that sound familiar again as the “law and order” president sends federal forces into the streets.

WASHINGTON — The nation’s cities were in flames amid protests against racial injustice and the fiery presidential candidate vowed to use force. He would authorize the police to “knock somebody in the head” and “call out 30,000 troops and equip them with two-foot-long bayonets and station them every few feet apart.”

The moment was 1968 and the “law and order” candidate was George C. Wallace, the former governor of Alabama running on a third-party ticket. Fifty-two years later, in another moment of social unrest, the “law and order” candidate is already in the Oval Office and the politics of division and race ring through the generations as President Trump tries to do what Wallace could not.

Comparisons between the two men stretch back to 2015 when Mr. Trump ran for the White House denouncing Mexicans illegally crossing the border as rapists and pledging to bar all Muslims from entering the country. But the parallels have become even more pronounced in recent weeks after the killing of George Floyd as Mr. Trump has responded to demonstrations by sending federal forces into the streets to take down “anarchists and agitators.” The Wallace-style tactics were on display again on Wednesday as Mr. Trump stirred racist fears about low-income housing moving into the suburbs. Continue reading.

President’s objections to NDAA provisions put him outside political mainstream and run counter to what many GOP lawmakers think

President Donald Trump has leveled veto threats at both the House and Senate versions of the annual Pentagon policy measure, a bill loaded with so many politically popular provisions, such as a military pay raise, that it has been enacted for 59 continuous years.

Veto threats on the defense authorization bill are nothing new for this or any other administration, and yet the bill always becomes law. But what is unusual this year is Trump’s strong objections to both chambers’ versions of the bill, despite his own party’s control of the Senate.

Trump has grumbled about a lengthy and diverse list of provisions, most notably and publicly language in both bills that would require the Pentagon to rename military installations that pay homage to the Confederacy. Continue reading.

Stephen Miller’s Uncle Publicly Blames Trump For Mother’s Death From Covid-19

Thousands of lives have been lost as the novel coronavirus continues to spread across the country, yet our government and its officials still refuse to acknowledge the severity of this pandemic. As of this report, data compiled by The New York Times has found that more than 4 million people in the U.S. have tested positive for COVID-19 and 143,700 have died. Among them have been some who once called the virus a “hoax,” the families of these individuals, and others who have experienced the loss of loved ones as a result of COVID-19. They are sharing their stories to shed light on the horrific reality of this pandemic and the importance of following health recommendations.

In an interview with Mother Jones, David Glosser, the uncle of xenophobic white supremacist and Trump adviser Stephen Miller shared his mother’s story (she was Miller’s maternal grandmother), who he says died from COVID-19. Glosser not only said that he was “angry” at Miller, but added that he blames the Trump administration in part for his mother’s death. “With the death of my mother, I’m angry and outraged at [Miller] directly and the administration he has devoted his energy to supporting,” he told Mother Jones.

In a Facebook post on July 4, Glosser said: “This morning my mother, Ruth Glosser, died of the late effects of COVID-19 like so many thousands of other people; both young and old. She survived the acute infection but was left with lung and neurological damage that destroyed her will to eat and her ability to breathe well enough to sustain arousal and consciousness. Over an 8-week period she gradually slipped away and died peacefully this morning.” Continue reading.

SPLC Watchdogs Name Stephen Miller To ‘Extremist’ List

Civil rights organization Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has added Trump administration official and noted white supremacist Stephen Miller to its “Extremists Files” for his role in implementing some of the most inhumane and racist immigration policies in modern U.S. history, putting this taxpayer-paid official alongside notorious racists and bigots like former KKK grand wizard David Duke and dead homophobe Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church.

“Stephen Miller is the architect behind some of the most draconian anti-immigrant policies that we’ve seen from the Trump administration,” SPLC senior investigative reporter Michael Edison Hayden said in a statement received by Daily Kos, stating that leaked communications with fellow racists from before he joined the White House “essentially provided a roadmap for the dehumanizing and hateful policies that we’ve seen enacted under this administration.”

“Through the conscious use of fear-mongering and xenophobia, Miller implements policies which demonize immigrants, regardless of their immigration status, in an apparent effort to halt all forms of immigration to the United States,” the SPLC said in its new “Extremists” profile on the notorious racist, who was a Senate aide to Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III before joining the White House to implement his white supremacist vision. Continue reading.

Biden says Trump is America’s first ‘racist’ president

Washington Post logoJoe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, on Wednesday called President Trump the country’s first racist to be elected to the White House.

The former vice president’s blunt assessment came during a virtual town hall organized by the Service Employees International Union after a health-care worker expressed concern that Trump continues to blame Asians for the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden signaled that he shared the questioner’s concern that Trump frequently refers to the pandemic as the “China virus,” saying, “the way he deals with people based on the color of their skin, their national origin, where they’re from, is absolutely sickening.” Continue reading.

White House threatens veto of defense bill over Confederate provision

The Hill logoThe White House on Tuesday threatened to veto annual defense policy legislation in part because it includes a provision that would direct the Pentagon to rename military bases currently named after Confederate leaders.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a statement hours before a House vote on the massive defense policy bill expressing “serious concerns” about multiple provisions of the bill. The White House said that if the bill were presented to President Trump in its current form, “his senior advisors would recommend that he veto it.” 

“The Administration strongly objects to section 2829, which would require renaming of certain military institutions,” the statement reads. “It also has serious concerns about provisions of the bill that seek to micromanage aspects of the executive branch’s authority, impose highly prescriptive limitations on the use of funds for Afghanistan, and otherwise constrain the President’s authority to protect national security interests.” Continue reading.

Colin Powell Suggests Trump Is Supporting ‘Another Country’ By Playing Footsie With The Confederacy

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell on Sunday revealed that he supports the renaming of bases that honor Confederate generals.

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell on Sunday revealed that he supports the renaming of bases that honor Confederate generals.

During an interview on CBS, host Margaret Brennan asked Powell if the country is too divided to address systemic racism.

“We’re a much better nation now,” Powell explained. “We’re living better than we did then. But there’s more to be done. There are more youngsters that have to be educated, there are more adults that have to be educated. We have to fix the economic system.” Continue reading.