“Why The Media Is Duty-Bound To Call Donald Trump A Racist”: That Ugly Fantasy Might Just Become Our Ugly Reality
It was easy to label the Missouri murder of Craig Anderson “racist,” as BuzzFeed did in its excellent accounting of the modern-day lynching. In 2011, a group of white teenagers allegedly shouted racial epithets while beating Anderson and celebrating running him over with a truck. No one would accuse BuzzFeed of bias for calling that horrific crime racist; it’s a simple statement of fact, not a judgment call. Indeed, it’s easy to call a group of violent, ignorant teenagers committing an alleged hate crime racist.
But for some reason, when covering the people vying for the most powerful office in the land, the media is hesitant to apply the “R” word, no matter how apt it may be. And that hesitation could have extraordinarily serious consequences for the country.
Donald Trump, who maintains a comfortable lead in national polls, launched his campaign by arguing that Mexico sends rapists over our border illegally. His subsequent rise in the polls came not in spite of this anti-immigrant rhetoric, but because of it.
There has long been a racist undercurrent in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination. And the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris by ISIS-affiliated terrorists have exposed it to sunlight.
When the Paris attacks were initially — and falsely, it appears — blamed on terrorists who had snuck into Europe with Syrian refugees, each of the Republican presidential candidates strived to be the most fiercely opposed to allowing Syrian refugees into the U.S. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush suggested we allow just the Christians in, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz followed up with a bill that would write that policy into law. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said he wouldn’t allow 5-year-old Syrian orphans into the country.
But just denying the refugees fleeing terrorism and repression wasn’t enough. The anti-terrorism furor has grown into an anti-Muslim furor. Trump has called for shutting down mosques and refused to rule out a national registry for Muslims. Marco Rubio is trying to out-Trump Trump by calling not just for shutting down mosques, but even cafes or websites where Muslims gather.
Now, to be clear, these ideas would not only fail to combat terrorism — they would probably increase extremist violence. Repressing loyal Muslim-Americans would drive more radicalization and help ISIS and other terrorist organizations with their recruiting drives. Tell 5-year-old orphans they’re too dangerous to seek refuge in America, and you’ll create the next generation of terrorists.
But these proposals aren’t just obviously wrong-headed; they’re racist. And the media — even nominally objective reporters from mainstream outlets — shouldn’t be shy about saying so.
Nazi analogies are usually the worst. People who resort to comparisons to Hitler or concentration camps or the Holocaust are trivializing the 20th century’s greatest horror. They’re invariably overreacting.
But look at where we are today. Leading candidates for presidents are flirting with requiring adherents of a single religion to be registered. To carry identification cards. To be subject to additional surveillance. To be refused entry to the nation even if they’re escaping horrific repression. To have their houses of worship closed down.
Those are racist, fascist policies. To avoid the comparison with early Nazi repression against Jews is to avoid telling the full story. And that’s just what the media is doing by refusing to call these proposals racist.
Calling a candidate for president racist sure sounds biased, doesn’t it? After all, except for a small fringe of extremists, virtually all Americans believe racism is a Very Bad Thing. Tarring a candidate with that label doesn’t sound like objective reporting; it looks like taking sides.
But it isn’t a judgment call to identify the naked racism of Donald Trump for what it is. Several GOP candidates — even the “mainstream” candidates like Christie, Bush, and Rubio — are suggesting ideas that harken back to some of the ugliest stains on American history, like the unjustified internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
It’s not just the racism directed at Muslims. On Sunday, Trump retweeted a graphic filled with made-up statistics about how blacks commit a majority of murders against whites in the United States. It was quickly debunked; the majority of murders of both whites and blacks are committed by people of the same race.
“@SeanSean252: @WayneDupreeShow @Rockprincess818 @CheriJacobus pic.twitter.com/5GUwhhtvyN“
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2015
The fake statistics from a fake organization was accompanied by a racist graphic of a black man, face covered in bandanas, holding a gun sideways. The Hill called this “controversial.” BuzzFeed said it was “questionable.”
It was actually racist.
Trump spread a false statistic about black-on-white crime to drive up an unfounded fear of black criminals. He was trying to make white people afraid so they’ll vote for him.
This is racist.
Donald Trump is the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president. He has expressed outright racism against Latinos, Muslims, and African-Americans. His words have already had real-world consequences. Trump supporters kicked and beat a Black Lives Matter protester at a rally Saturday. The next day Trump said “maybe he should have been roughed up.” Two men cited Trump when they beat a homeless Latino Boston man in August. Trump said his supporters were “passionate.”
The America Trump promises to build is ugly: walled off, repressive, and racist. If the media fails to call racism what it is, if they fail to tell the full story, then that ugly fantasy might just become our ugly reality.
By: Jesse Berney, The Week, November 25, 2015
“Why Is Trump Still Talking?”: The Mad Men Throwback, Treating Women As Nothing More Than A Distraction
When the Republican presidential debate began Tuesday evening in Milwaukee, I was still in my car heading home, so I listened to the first part on satellite radio.
As Richard Nixon learned after his 1960 televised debate with Jack Kennedy, listening to a debate without the distraction of participants’ facial expressions changes how we hear them. We tend to focus more on substance. For Nixon, this was a good thing. For Donald Trump, not so much.
A quick aside for political junkies: In 2006, Meet the Press host Tim Russert walked into the show’s greenroom and told my husband and me why Nixon had become such a wet mop of a mess in that same studio during that debate. Bobby Kennedy, knowing of Nixon’s propensity for sweating, arrived early to the studio to turn up the thermostat. Nixon didn’t stand a chance. Remember that story the next time someone goes on and on about how debates were always such an honorable tradition before this circus came to town.
Driving along the streets of Cleveland, I heard Trump without seeing the usual pouty expressions and ubiquitous shrugging of his shoulders. Whenever he spouted in his meandering know-it-all voice, I thought, “Whom does he remind me of?”
I didn’t have the answer until after I walked through the door and made it to the TV in time to catch Trump complaining about Carly Fiorina. She had interjected her opinion about Ronald Reagan and Reykjavik before Rand Paul had finished talking. Her repeated behavior of stepping on the comments of others was no different from that of her male colleagues on the stage. Trump singled her out anyway.
“Why does she keep interrupting everybody?” he said, waving his left arm in her direction. “Boy, terrible.”
A smattering of laughter and applause preceded loud booing from the audience, and for a fleeting moment, I identified with Fiorina. That feeling quickly passed, but I had finally figured out whom — or, more accurately, what — Trump represents to a lot of his fans. He’s that other Donald, albeit a less classy and certainly less sophisticated version of him. He’s the Mad Men throwback, a Donald Draper wannabe.
Even if you’ve never seen an episode of the AMC show, if you are over 50 or wish we still lived in the ’50s, you know the type I mean. He’s the guy who thinks women are either a prop or a problem, and he is incapable of hiding his contempt for women who think otherwise.
His comments about Rosie O’Donnell in the first debate were such an egregious example of misogyny that it was easy for some to dismiss him as a dinosaur. His public display of disgust for fellow presidential candidate Fiorina, however, revealed a more sinister side. Not only does he think it’s ridiculous that he has to compete with this, this woman but also he assumes plenty of others agree with him.
If this were Trump in a vacuum, we could dismiss him as the summer replacement for the prime-time show returning this fall. But he continues to poll as one of the top two presidential candidates for Republican voters, which means a lot of people are, at the very least, getting a kick out of him. They either share or don’t care about Trump’s attitudes toward women.
This doesn’t surprise a lot of women in my generation, who long ago lost count of how many times we’ve been told to pipe down. Certainly, it’s no news to my daughters’ generation, either. The stories they tell.
Our youngest daughter is weeks away from giving birth. She has started sharing with me comments from male strangers and men she barely knows. They point to her belly and let her know she’s pregnant and feel free to tell her she should be napping, not working at her job. They feel free to ask her whether she’s going to nurse, too, as if her pregnancy has given them permission to discuss her breasts.
These men are old enough to know better and way too young to claim an elderly generation’s habits. This is all part and parcel of the same thing. They are Trump, multiplied, and to them, he is a godsend. He’s rich and powerful, and he’s made it popular again to say it out loud — to treat women as nothing more than a distraction and an invitation to misbehave. In that way, we women are no different to Trump from the 11 million Mexicans he wants to march right out of here.
As we lean in to the 2016 campaign, I leave you with this, from Don Draper: “Get out of here and move forward. This never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened.”
From your lips, mad man.
By: Connie Schultz, a Pulitzer Prize-Winning Columnist; The National Memo, November 12, 2015
“Polarized Congress Will Ignore Pope’s Plea”: We Are Living Through A Deeply Polarized Era In Which Compromise Is A Dirty Word
In a more generous political climate, an adorable little girl who gave a letter and a hug to Pope Francis could make a difference. In an era with a more pragmatic Congress and a less Balkanized electorate, 5-year-old Sophie Cruz could break through the gridlock around immigration reform.
But we are living through a deeply polarized era in which compromise is a dirty word, listening to those with whom we disagree is seen as weakness and respect for different opinions regarded as betrayal. Pope Francis’ gracious address to Congress, in which he urged compassion toward “foreigners,” won’t change that. Neither will a cute little girl.
The pope’s embrace of young Sophie has flashed around the world, carried at the supersonic speed of social media. As he made his way down the National Mall in the Popemobile on Wednesday, he spotted her trying to break through his firewall of security guards and beckoned for her.
She handed him a letter — accompanied by a delightful drawing of the pope with children of different races — pleading for a comprehensive immigration reform that might save her parents from deportation. Though she is a citizen (so far, at least, since Donald Trump has not yet had his way on birthright citizenship), her parents crossed the border from Mexico illegally.
Her well-written letter and her flawless recitation of it for reporters were no accident. She and her parents, who live in Los Angeles, went to Washington with a group of immigration activists. They apparently chose Sophie as likely to get the pope’s attention because of his well-known affection for children.
Their strategy hearkens back to the days of the civil rights movement, when activists scoured the landscape for well-scrubbed and presentable symbols to show to the nation. That’s quite understandable. When an oppressed group has the opportunity to present itself on a grand stage, its leaders seek to make a good impression. And that in no way diminishes Sophie’s charm.
She gave moving testimony to the anxiety and insecurity created by the threat of deportation, writing to the pope: “I would like to ask you to speak with the president and the Congress in [sic] legalizing my parents because every day I am scared that one day they will take them away from me.”
But those voters who are willing to be persuaded by the hopes and dreams of 11 million undocumented immigrants already support changing the law. According to a recent CBS poll, 58 percent believe they should be given citizenship, while another 10 percent believe they should be granted legal status. That’s a substantial majority who support bringing those immigrants out of the shadows.
The Republican Party, however, has been captured by the xenophobic minority following Donald Trump, with his denunciation of Mexicans as “rapists” and “murderers” and his insistence on deportation for millions. Little Sophie won’t change their views. Neither will the powerful preaching of Pope Francis.
“In recent centuries, millions of people came to this land to pursue their dream of building a future in freedom. We, the people of this continent, are not fearful of foreigners, because most of us were once foreigners. I say this to you as the son of immigrants, knowing that so many of you are also descended from immigrants,” he told Congress.
In a different political climate, that message may have moved Speaker John Boehner, a Catholic, who teared up during the pope’s address. But he seems cowed by the nativists in his restive caucus, and he has refused, so far, to force a vote on the comprehensive immigration reform plan passed by the Senate two years ago.
Our political system is paralyzed, for now, by the fears and bigotry of a few. And little Sophie can’t change that.
By: Cynthia Tucker Haynes, Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2007; The National Memo, September 26, 2015
Editor’s Note: House Speaker John Boehner announced his resignation, effective October 30, after this piece was filed.
“Jindal To GOP; I’ll Be Your Donald Trump!”: Racist Demagoguery Is Too Important A Task To Be Left To An ‘Egomaniacal Madman’
Well, this is going to be interesting. Donald Trump’s Twitter account has been silent most of the day, and so we haven’t seen any response to Bobby Jindal’s supreme act of provocation at the National Press Club. He is going to be on Greta van Susteran’s show tonight, so maybe he’s saving up some heat-seeking missiles to send Bobby’s way. Will he make exorcism jokes? Mention how reluctant Bobby is to spend time in the state he is supposedly governing, or how unpopular he is there? Mock Jindal’s campaign for resorting to attacks on Trump to get some attention? No telling.
But blowback aside, Jindal’s speech is pretty amazing. It very, very carefully distinguishes between Trump and Trumpism, holding up the latter even as it tears down the former:
I like the idea of a DC outsider.
I like that he doesn’t care about political correctness.
I like the fact that he says things people are thinking but are afraid to say.
I like that he uses Ronald Reagan’s theme of making America Great Again.
Trump’s diagnoses is correct — the professional political class in Washington, including the Republicans, is incompetent and full of nonsense. He is right. The political class in Washington has abandoned us. Trump has performed an important service by taking on the political class and exposing them for being completely full of nonsense.
But Trump doesn’t really believe this stuff, because he only believes in himself.
The message here seems to be that racist demagoguery is too important a task to be left to a “egomaniacal madman” like the guy who’s shown how popular racist demagoguery can be among the GOP rank-and-file.
So Bobby’s offering himself as the vehicle for Trumpism without Trump, or as he puts it, a “politically incorrect conservative revolution.”
I’m not sure what that would look like in practice, but in Bobby’s version it seems to begin with treating Trump the way Trump treats Mexicans: denouncing him in terms that burn any conceivable bridges to smithereens. Indeed, if I were advising Bobby, I’d be a bit worried that he won’t be able to sign the very “loyalty pledge” Trump has signed, which commits the candidate to support of the GOP nominee, even if it’s Trump.
I mean, seriously, listen to this:
Many say he’s dangerous because you wouldn’t want a hot head with his fingers on the nuclear codes. And while that’s true, that’s not the real danger here.
The real danger is that, ironically, Donald Trump could destroy America’s chance to be Great Again.
As conservatives, we have a golden opportunity in front of us. The Democrats have terribly screwed things up, and are basically giving us the next election.
If we blow this opportunity – we may never get it again, the stakes are incredibly high.
It’s true Trump might launch a nuclear war, says Bobby, but “that’s not the real danger here.” Hillary could win the election!
I really didn’t think my opinion of Bobby Jindal could get any lower, or my very low opinion of Donald Trump could get any higher. This continues to be a season of political wonders.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, September 9, 2015
“Our Lead Exhibit”: Trump Proves Ignorance Doesn’t Matter Much
Our question for the day: Does ignorance matter?
Our lead exhibit — you will not be shocked to hear this — is Donald Trump.
Last week, the billionaire real estate mogul who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination stumbled over a question about terrorism from conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. Specifically, he was forced to admit that he could not identify the leaders of Hezbollah and al Qaeda, among other terrorist organizations.
There is a pattern for how Trump reacts when cornered, and he was true to it last week. First, he made the usual vague, grandiose promises about how effective he will be once in office (“I will be so good at the military, your head will spin. … I’m a delegator. … I find absolutely great people and I’ll find them in our armed services”). Then he attempted to kill the messenger, bashing Hewitt on Twitter as a “very low-ratings talk-show host” and a “3rd-rate gotcha guy.”
As has also become part of the pattern, a gaffe that might have totaled another candidate’s campaign seems to have not even scratched the paint on this one. Or, as a Politico headline put it: “Trump bluffs past another crisis.” Indeed, Trump has come to resemble nothing so much as a real world “Sebastian Shaw” — a Marvel Comics supervillian who gets stronger every time you hit him.
After insulting Mexicans, insulting his rivals and insulting Fox “News” personality Megyn Kelly with a tasteless jibe that he claimed wasn’t about menstruation, though it transparently was, Trump continues to lead all contenders for the Republican presidential nomination. Nor is the ignorance of world affairs he betrayed on Hewitt’s show likely to change that.
It’s a fact that speaks volumes about the present state of the Grand Old Party. This is, after all, now the third presidential election cycle in a row in which one of its stars has shown him or herself to be spectacularly clueless on some relatively simple question of presidential readiness.
There is a straight line from Saran Palin in 2008 — unable to give coherent answers to questions about the economy, foreign policy and her own reading habits — to Herman Cain hemming and hawing and shifting in his chair in 2011 when asked about Libya, to Trump bristling and pouting because he was quizzed about major figures in Middle East terrorism.
One is reminded of the old political axiom that people want a president they could imagine having a beer with. And that’s fine. But you’d think they would also want to imagine him or her being able to find North Korea on a map. And, in the last few years, there have been some political contenders and pretenders you suspect could not do it even if you spotted them a hemisphere.
Since when did running for president become a reality show? How does Trump or anyone else figure that a presidential candidate should not be asked hard questions? And what does it say about us that fundamental ignorance about things a president should know does not automatically disqualify one from credibly contending for that office?
Perhaps it says that some of us want the world to be simple, and that they want a president who will not ask them to think too deeply, nor proffer any policy prescription too complex to fit on a bumper sticker.
Perhaps it says that some of us embrace an extremist resistance to social change and are willing to support whoever promises most loudly to drag the country back to an imagined yesterday of purity and strength.
But the world is not simple and never was. And yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone.
Does ignorance matter? Well, Donald Trump is still the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination.
So obviously, it doesn’t matter nearly as much as it should.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., Columnist for The Miami Herald; The National Memo, September 9, 2015
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