Three weeks ago I wrote my first “The Stakes, Not the Odds” essays, which focused on the impact of a second term for #PO1135809 on healthcare policy in the United States. Two weeks ago I wrote my second essay in this series, focused on what foreign policy might look like in his second term. Last week I wrote the third essay, focusing on the impact on the overall functioning of government and the judiciary. This week I’m writing about how the white supremacy inherent in the MAGA approach to governing will kill the America we have known. I’m repeating the first page or so of my introductory essay before I go into this week’s essay.
It’s December of 2023, and we are less than a year away from the 2024 presidential election. We should be worried, because President Biden’s popularity as reflected in the polls is lower than that of his likely opponent, #PO1135809. I can’t, for the life of me, understand why people think that it’s a good idea to give #PO1135809 another term in the White House, but that seems to be the case – at least for now.
We saw a couple of statements from #PO1135809 last week that warn us clearly about his plans. He confirmed in a public interview that he plans to be a dictator “on Day One” if he is reelected. We should take him both seriously and literally. He was never funny, and he is no longer even a bad joke.
Warning signs are flashing around the world. A second term for #PO1135809 would be a – well we don’t really have a term for BEYOND disaster, but that’s what it would be. You don’t have to trust me on this – Google “Trump” “second term” and “authoritarian” to see articles from around the world about this threat. The January/February issue of Atlantic (soon to be released) is totally devoted to this threat. We should all read it. Yes, sources like Atlantic are not free. It costs something under $100 per year, depending on what plan you select. Eight dollars a month, give or take. Quality journalism is worth paying for.
I have friends (acquaintances, tbh) who have decided to take the moral “high ground” and refuse to vote for either Biden or #PO1135809. They refuse to accept the notion that this is not the hillside to die on.
The media tend to focus on elections as horseraces – who’s ahead, who’s behind, who’s lagging, who’s coming up on the inside, who is the “dark horse” that you didn’t see coming. This is not helpful in our current situation. Instead of the “odds” of Biden winning reelection, we should be talking about the “stakes” at play here. What would a second #PO1135809 administration look like?
The last decade in American politics has featured racist political rhetoric that had not been publicly acceptable since the 1950s (it was as vile then as it is now, but it was acceptable across wide swaths of the United States). The muted language that replaced the openly racist comments (“urban” instead of black, “global” instead of Jewish) obscured the reality that the previously overt racism had not disappeared but had simply been submerged.
#PO1135809 has damaged the United States in many ways, but one of the most insidious is the poisoning of the rhetoric surrounding race. If the American electorate is so misguided as to give him another shot at the office, this will only get worse.
Since the 1970s, many events in his life illustrate his affinity for racist ideas, words, and actions.
In the 1970s, the Trump Organization (under his father Fred Trump and then under #PO1135809) faced a lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice for alleged racial discrimination in housing practices. The case was settled with the Trumps’ not admitting guilt but agreeing to specific guidelines to prevent future discrimination.
In 1989, when five Black and Latino teenagers were accused of assaulting and raping a jogger in Central Park, #PO1135809 took out full-page ads in New York City newspapers calling for the reinstatement of the Death Penalty. The Central Park Five (as the accused individuals were labeled) were later exonerated by DNA evidence and their convictions were vacated in 2002. In 2014, #PO1135809 wrote an opinion article for the New York Daily News in which he commented that the settlement was a “disgrace” and that “settling doesn’t mean innocence.” Two years later, in his presidential campaign, he again commented that the Central Park Five were guilty and that their convictions should not have been vacated.
#PO1135809 was a prominent advocate of the claims that Barack Obama had not been born in the United States – the so-called “birtherism” conspiracy theory that began during the 2008 presidential campaign. The Republic Party went batshit over the idea that an African-American could become President of the United States, and #PO1135809 rode the Birtherism movement right into the White House. The reality that President Obama was everything #PO1135809 was not – smart, handsome, classy, witty, urbane, compassionate, charming – strengthened the hold that birtherism had on the extremes of the GOP, including #PO1135809.
After President Obama won reelection in 2012, the GOP issued a strategic planning document called the “autopsy,” which concluded, among other things, that the GOP could move forward successfully only if it broadened the party’s appeal to reach out to minorities and women. Shortly afterward, #PO1135809 – who would announce his first bid for the White House two years later – dismissed the RNC's recommendation and signaled he'd do things differently. Trump tweeted that the RNC report "was written by the ruling class of consultants who blew the election."
It should not surprise us that #PO1135809 continued his racist ways while he was President. Here are a few examples:
In his 2015 Presidential announcement, he made comments characterizing Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists. Throughout his presidency, he advocated for building a border wall along the southern border. Throughout his administration, he referred to the “caravans” of immigrants approaching the border as an “invasion,” and encouraged the use of the US Army and state militias to repel this invasion by force.
In the early days of his presidency, he signed an executive order commonly referred to as the “Muslim Ban.” This sparked widespread condemnation and accusations of religious discrimination.
After white supremacists and neo-Nazis gathered for a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, leading to violent clashes with and counter-protesters, #PO1135809 responded by equating “both sides” and refusing to unequivocally condemn white supremacists.
In a 2018 meeting discussing immigration policy, he referred to certain African nations, El Salvador, and Haiti as “shithole countries,” which was widely condemned as derogatory and indicative of a dismissive attitude toward predominantly non-white nations.
Throughout his presidency, #PO1135809 peppered his public and private speech with racially charged language, referring to Democratic Congresswomen of color as “The Squad” and suggesting that they should “go back” to their countries (they were all American citizens and three of them were born in the United States.)
Since his unsuccessful reelection bid in 2020, the language #PO1135809 uses has, if anything, become more racially charged. The rhetoric of his supporters has followed his lead, and the resultant increase in attacks on institutions (including schools and houses of worship) associated with the groups he condemns (Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Muslims), has continued to poison the American body politic.
In the run-up to the 2024 campaign, #PO1135809 has essentially gone full Nazi in his rhetoric:
His slogan “America First” was the name of a movement in the United States in the early 1940s opposing US involvement in World War II. Its historical connotations are associated with the isolationism that accompanied pro-Nazi sentiments in the United States during the 1930s. (Google “Dr. Seuss anti-Nazi cartoons” for reference. You may be surprised at what you find.)
His attacks on the media, often referring to unfavorable coverage as “fake news” and calling journalists the “enemy of the people” have drawn unfavorable parallels to Third Reich efforts to control and manipulate the media to shape public opinion.
His rhetoric targeting immigrants and minority groups has become increasingly divisive, scapegoating and targeting specific ethnic or religious communities.
A recent Axios article takes a deep dive into the most recent examples of how #PO1135809 has poisoned the nation’s political rhetoric. His “poisoning the blood” language has been producing his desired goal – headlines – but his opponents in the GOP contest for the nomination have exhibited xenophobia as well as racism and white nationalism. Here are a few examples Axios provides; you can probably think of more:
Vivek Ramaswamy (son of Indian immigrants) has promoted the “Great Replacement Theory,” a racist conspiracy theory that nonwhite people are being allowed into the US in a plot to replace white voters. You should recall that the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville chanted “Jews will not replace us.” Ramaswamy has been reluctant to criticize #PO1135809, and campaigns with former Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican who was forced to resign his seat in Congress (by the GOP, imagine that!) because of racist and xenophobic statements, including noting that US culture can’t be restored “with somebody else’s babies” and called for an America “so homogeneous that we look a lot the same.” Makes me shiver.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ team included a speechwriter who created campaign literature – later shared on a pro-DeSantis Twitter account – that contained neo-Nazi imagery. The fact that the speechwriter was fired provides partial exoneration for the fact that he was hired in the first place and felt free to create neo-Nazi campaign literature.
Various far-right groups have begun to call candidate Nikki Haley – whose parents were Indian immigrants – by her first name, Nimarata, rather than Nikki, the middle name she has gone by for most of her life. Ramaswamy (there he goes again) has called Haley “lying Nimarata Randhawa,” providing a rich example of a pot who does not recognize that he is also the kettle.
Among the four major GOP candidates left, only one – Chris Christie – has explicitly condemned the “poisoning the blood” rhetoric from his opponents. Christie apparently has zero f*cks left to give. Although some Republicans have joined Democrats in criticizing this vitriol, most of them have remained silent – including the most visible non-#PO1135809 Republicans like the GOP leaders of the United Senate and House of Representatives, Senator Mitch McConnell (KY) and Representative Mike Johnson (LA).
And just a couple of days ago (after the Axios article was written), Nikki Haley decided to compete for the prize of “Most Racist GOP Candidate Other Than The Front-Runner” in response to a question in New Hampshire about the causes of the Civil War, leading her to revert to her “Lost Cause” education in the American South. If you didn’t see this, I’ll give you a hint:
Here's what Joshua Zeitz wrote about this in Politico (this is worth a few minutes of your time):
But as Haley must know — after all, as governor of South Carolina, she presided over the removal of Confederate flags from the Statehouse — many Americans do question the fundamental fact that slavery precipitated the Civil War, and her equivocation played into a long-standing agenda to rewrite American history. Haley was effectively parroting the Lost Cause mythology, a revisionist school of thought born in the war’s immediate aftermath, which whitewashed the Confederacy’s cornerstone interest in raising arms to preserve slavery. Instead, a generation of Lost Cause mythologists chalked the war up to a battle over political abstractions like states’ rights.
These attitudes, statements, and actions are vile and horrifying, but it is increasingly likely that these are the attitudes that will be enshrined by the judges appointed by #PO1135809 to hold lifetime federal judicial appointments. The far-right justices that he appointed to the Supreme Court have already weakened the Voting Rights Act, abortion rights, and affirmative action. In a second term, he would have the power not only to add more justices to the highest court, but also to appoint hundreds more lower-level judges to the federal district and circuit courts around the country, virtually guaranteeing the gradual erosion of the rights attained over the last 60 years by anyone who is not white, Christian, male, and native-born.
We can’t reelect this man. Tell your friends.
Friday posts are always the best. Your topic for that day of the week is most interesting to me, of course, but this particular set of essays has been super fine. Thank you.
Great group of essays but OMG