There are a lot of similarities between the president and George Wallace of Alabama. But there’s also one big difference.
President Trump’s political rallies are certainly a spectacle, but a spectacle we’ve seen before. In both style and substance, the president’s campaign appearances bear strong resemblances to the rallies held a half-century ago by Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama.
There are a number of similarities between the two politicians’ rallies. But there is one significant difference — and it shows how Mr. Trump remains a greater danger and poses a graver threat to peaceful political discourse, especially as we enter a presidential election campaign.
Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Wallace presented himself as the political champion of aggrieved working-class and middle-class whites. As governor, he embodied the cause of segregationist resistance, literally standing in the schoolhouse door to block the first black students at the University of Alabama and figuratively standing against what he called the “civil wrongs bill.”
Yet in his repeated campaigns for the presidency between 1968 and 1976, despite today’s consensus to the contrary, Mr. Wallace didn’t make open appeals to racism. Instead, he couched opposition to the civil rights movement — both his own opposition and that of whites in the North and South alike — in new terms. Taking aim at liberals in government and leftist protesters in the streets, Mr. Wallace presented himself as the champion of ordinary Americans besieged by both. He promised then, as Mr. Trump has now, to restore “law and order” to a troubled nation.
While he lacks Mr. Wallace’s background in boxing, Mr. Trump has adopted a similar stance in his own rallies. He’s claimed some of Mr. Wallace’s specific phrases as his own
— most notably the call for “law and order” — and more generally has stoked the same fires of resentment and racism.
Mr. Wallace’s words electrified crowds of working- and middle-class whites. “Cabdrivers and cattle ranchers, secretaries and steelworkers, they hung on every word, memorized the lines, treasured them, savored them, waited to hear them again,” noted an Esquire profile. “George Wallace was their avenging angel. George Wallace said out loud what they nervously kept to themselves. George Wallace articulated their deepest fears, their darkest hates. George Wallace promised revenge.”
Mr. Trump has tapped into that sentiment, winning over white voters with a willingness to buck “political correctness” and voice their anger and anxieties directly. “He says what we’re thinking and what we want to say,” noted a white woman at a Trump rally in Montana. “We wish we could speak our mind without worrying about the consequences,” explained a white man at a Phoenix event. “He can speak his mind without worrying.”
Mr. Wallace’s rallies regularly erupted in violence, as his fans often took his words not just seriously but also literally. Mr. Wallace often talked about dragging hippies “by the hair of their head.” At a Detroit rally in 1968, his supporters did just that, dragging leftist protesters out of their seats and through a thicket of metal chairs. As they were roughed up, the candidate signaled his approval from the stage: “You came here for trouble and you got it.”
Mr. Trump’s rallies have likewise been marked by violence unseen in other modern campaigns. At a 2015 rally in Birmingham, Ala., for example, an African-American protester was punched, kicked and choked. Rather than seeking to reduce the violence from his supporters, Mr. Trump rationalized it, saying “maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.”
This leads us to the significant difference between Mr. Wallace and Mr. Trump. Mr. Wallace’s targets were, for the most part, presented in the abstract. Though he denounced broad categories of generic enemies — “agitators,” “anarchists” and “communists” — he rarely went after an individual by name.
Mr. Trump, in pointed contrast, has used his rallies to single out specific enemies. During the 2016 campaign, he demonized his political opponents in the primaries and the general election, and also denounced private individuals, from Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News anchor, to the former Miss Universe Alicia Machado and the federal judge Gonzalo Curiel.
At recent rallies, he has targeted four Democratic House members who have criticized him and his administration — Representatives Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley.
Participants at Mr. Trump’s rallies have been moved to attack individuals he’s singled out. For most rally participants, the attacks have been confined to ominous but nevertheless nonviolent chants — from the 2016 cries of “Lock her up!” to the recent refrain of “Send her back!” But a handful have gone further, targeting the individuals named by the president with death threats and even attempts at violence.
In late 2018, a Trump supporter, Cesar Sayoc Jr., mailed pipe bombs to high-profile Democrats and media figures who had criticized the president and whom the president had denounced in return. After his arrest, Mr. Sayoc explained that Mr. Trump’s rallies had become “a newfound drug” for him and warped his thinking. “In the lead up to the 2018 midterm elections,” Mr. Sayoc’s lawyers added last week, “President Trump warned his supporters that they were in danger from Democrats, and at times condoned violence against his critics and ‘enemies.’”
Since the midterms, Mr. Trump’s rhetoric and the threats from his supporters have only intensified. In March, a Trump backer in New York was arrested on charges of threatening to “put a bullet” in Ms. Omar’s “skull.” In April, a Trump supporter in Florida was arrested on charges of making death threats to Ms. Tlaib and two other Democrats. This month, two police officers in Louisiana were fired over a Facebook post suggesting that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez should be shot.
As the 2020 campaign heats up, the president’s rhetoric will as well. It’s long past time that he started worrying about the consequences of his words.
Jared Kushner SPEECHLESS After Reporter’s Question
Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senioradviser Jared Kushner he did a lot ofdefending the president on a lot ofdifferent topics on an interview withAxios on HBO so let’s get right into itbecause I want to show you what happenedwhen Kushner is asked whether he hasseen Trump do anything racist or bigotedtake a look so for the answer is noabsolutely notyou can’t not be a racist for 69 yearsthen run for president be a racist andwhat I’ll say is that when a lot of theDemocrats call the president a racist Ithink they’re doing a disservice topeople who suffer because of real racismin this country I’m so imagine you havethe same reaction everyone else didwatching that luckily Jonathan Swan theinterviewer in this he had a pretty goodfollow-up take a look was birtherismracist um look I wasn’t really involvedin that I know you wouldn’t mm-hmm wasit racist like I said I wasn’t involvedin that I know you won mm-hmm was itracist um look I know who the presidentis and I have not seen anything in himthat is racist so again I was notinvolved in that did you wish he didn’tdo that like I said I was not involvedin that that was a long time ago allright so that’s his answer to thefollow-up I forget who did it my name isJohn King who was like there was anormal interview going on and then rightafter this series of questions beganJared forgot how to speak like how tospeak in complete sentences so hard tolie I mean it is obviously affecting himJared who I didn’t think was capable ofhuman emotions I’m not sure I thought hewas capable of hunger maybe thirst okayfear okay I guess that might have beenthe driving factor there but like that Ijust break down every single thing aboutwhat happened there first he says thatthe president was not racist for 69years nice or however long it was rightand then suddenly is racist right butbut he has been raisedrefusing to cop to that so was thatracist I wasn’t a part of this nobodyasked you you just claimed to knoweverything about this man for the past69 years yeah so were you there were younow every single day absolutely he’sthat kind of guy and then he says itdoes a disservice to people who havesuffered from actual racism which islike an attempt at the kind of argumentsthat conservatives try to make in orderto just confuse people it’s like using atriple negative they’re just like I haveno idea what you’re sayingright but you seemed confident as yousaid it but when you want to talk aboutpeople who were actual victims of racismhow about all the people that weren’tallowed to move into Trump buildingsbecause he had racist tenant policiesabsolutely ridiculous I guess I don’tknow how else his son-in-law is supposedto answer a yes or no question thateveryone knows but we have video proofthere are federal documents from of whatyou’re talking about there’s a full-pagead in The New York Times in 1989 like wehave actual proof of his racism there’sa video of him on the campaign trail youknow so there’s actual proof but I guessI can’t imagine his son-in-law answeringit but any other way wouldn’t it begreat if Jared was like yes thank youfinally yes he’s so racist right exactlyand then he went to dinner with GeorgeConwayit’s just with that relationship Iwonder how Trump can be okay with hisdaughter marrying such a wiener suchlike a limp wiener like that’s what itis and the answer is probably uh he’sfrom a big real estate family who didbetter than mine but he’s never gonnachallenge me as the dominant figure inmy daughter’s lifegreat that’s I think this is the firsttime I’ve really been able to figure outwhat that relationship is like and allhis confidence in Jared Jared might justbe like an okay project manager butnever anything else and what we’ve seenover and over again is that you’re okayuntil you’re not he would Trump yeah sowho knows what the future holdsyeah I don’t know but I wouldn’t skipahead a little bit and talk about Russiaokay okay because uh he was also askedabout that infamous Rushmeeting and like just you know straightup a flick why didn’t you report this tothe FBI why did you go why and there wasa bit of a back-and-forth it’s a I wantto show you here so the question fromswan is does it not set off some alarmbells when you see an email that theRussian government wants to help thecampaign Kushner says the email I got onmy iPhone said show up at 4:00 I didn’tscroll down so on reminds him that ithad Russia in the subject line and thenstill no copping to the reality of thesituation is right there you knew whatthe meeting was gonna be about and so weasked him if this happened again wouldyou report it to the FBI take a look athis answer call the FBI happen again Idon’t know it’s hard to do hypotheticalsbut the the reality is is that we werenot given anything that was salaciousthis wouldn’t be hard for me to dohypotheticals that is any precisehypothetical where you say yes I wouldbecause you’re hiding behind thisconcept that you don’t know the rulesright and you’re just new to this butthe hypothetical answer should be Iwould report it to the FBI it’s theeasiest thing to do unless youconsistently do get invites like thisand just don’t want to cop to that factright you’re right like you know thatit’ll happen again and you you know thatyou won’t report it to the FBI otherwiselike I don’t see how this isn’t sayingyes immediately isn’t a good look forthe administration say yes of course wewould because we didn’t know what wasgoing on we had nothing to do with thatso of course we would but he doesn’twant to answer any questions whatsoeverpursue I mean I just that moment whenthey asked about the racismyeah just like what what would you dowhat I was not involved in that so youyou can’t make an assessment ofbirtherism or any racist act whether itwas racist whether you wanted it tohappen whether you endorsed it becauseyou weren’t involved in it first of allthat’s like the tacit acknowledgementand crappiness that allows racism topersist because people aren’t able tojust say oh no that was bad it wasabsolutely races it was absolutionabsolutely racially motivated and and heshould just cop to thatthank you for watching this clip fromthe damage report for more content fromthe show and access the TYT Networkmembers-only exclusives go to ty-t-dot-com / Brooke wait no it’s twhitey dot-com / John go to t whiteycalm / John to sign up
Republicans’ Race to the Bottom
The absurdity of denying Trump’s bigotry.
It’s hard to say what’s a bigger taboo in American politics: being a racist, or calling someone one.
Sure, the Republican Party will occasionally try to distance itself from one of its more egregiously hateful members, like Representative Steve King of Iowa, who lost committee assignments after seeming to defend white nationalism. But mostly, right-wing politicians and their media allies pretend, to the point of farce, that the primary racial injustice in America involves white people unfairly accused of racism. This makes talking openly about the evident racism of our president harder than it should be.
To see how this works in microcosm, consider the House Oversight Committee hearing at which Donald Trump’s former consigliere Michael Cohen testified on Wednesday. Cohen said, in his opening statement, that, in addition to being a con man and a cheat, Trump is a racist. This should be clear to all people of good faith, given that Trump was a leading figure in the birther movement, defended white supremacist marchers in Charlottesville,and claimed he couldn’t get a fair hearing from a judge of Mexican heritage, to mention just a few examples.
But Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina, strenuously objected to Cohen’s description, and came up with what he seemed to think was an airtight rejoinder. Meadows, who is white, had Lynne Patton, an African-American woman and longtime Trump employee now at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, stand behind him, and quoted her saying that she would not work for a racist. Checkmate!
In the past, one person who would often publicly vouch for Trump’s non-racism was Omarosa Manigault Newman, the “Apprentice”-star-turned-White House aide. Then Manigault Newman came out with a book calling Trump “a racist, a bigot and a misogynist.” As part of her promotional tour for that book, she released an audio recording of a conversation she had with Patton and another African-American Trump supporter, Katrina Pierson, strategizing about how to handle the fallout should a tape surface of Trump using a racist slur. On the recording Patton, the person Meadows called upon as a character witness for the president, didn’t seem doubtful that Trump could have said such a thing.
Many liberals were agog at this stunt by Meadows; on the left it’s largely accepted that responding to charges of racism by pointing to black friends — never mind black employees — is clueless at best. Some white conservatives, however, seem convinced that you can’t be racist if you have an affectionate relationship with a person of color. And so when Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, called out Meadows toward the end of the hearing, he was so aggrieved he nearly melted down.
The “fact that someone would actually use a prop, a black woman, in this chamber, in this committee, is alone racist in itself,” said Tlaib, who is Palestinian-American. Red-faced, indignant and seemingly on the verge of tears, Meadows demanded that Tlaib’s words be stricken from the record, turned the charge of racism back on her, and said that he has nieces and nephews who are people of color. In a stunning dramatization of how racial dynamics determine whose emotions are honored, the hearing momentarily came to a halt so that Tlaib could assure Meadows that she didn’t mean to call him a racist, and the committee chairman, Elijah Cummings, who is African-American, could comfort him. “I could see and feel your pain,” Cummings told him.
This contradiction is behind some of the madness of our public life right now. Normalizing Trump, which has become a central mission of the Republican Party, depends on denial about what racism is. Not for the first time, Tlaib got in trouble for pointing out the obvious — the president is a bigot, and that in bringing out Patton to exonerate him, Meadows only demonstrated his own gross insensitivity.
On Thursday, Tlaib and Meadows reportedly had a warm conversation on the House floor; according to a CNN reporter, they hugged. I’m glad; given how much she’s been demonized in her short time in Congress, it’s probably in her interest to make Meadows feel better about their earlier exchange. Who knows, if she’s friendly enough, maybe he’ll be able to cite their relationship next time he’s caught saying something awful.
Donald Trump isn’t racist, look at this Black woman I brought to prove it!
Later, Democratic Congresswoman Pressley: “Would you agree that someone could
- deny rental units to African Americans,
- lead the birther movement,
- refer to the diaspora as ‘shithole’ countries and refer to white supremacists as fine people,
- have a black friend,
- and still be racist?”