The Real Problem With Trump’s Rallies

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.

  • hippies,
  • beatniks,
  • civil rights “agitators,”
  • “pointy-headed intellectuals,”
  • both “briefcase-toting bureaucrats” and
  • “bearded bureaucrats,”
  • “lazy” welfare recipients,
  • “anarchists and communists,”
  • atheists,
  • antiwar “radicals and rabble rousers,” and
  • street thugs whom liberals, he said, believed had “turned to rape and murder because they didn’t get enough broccoli when they were little boys.”

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 senior
adviser Jared Kushner he did a lot of
defending the president on a lot of
different topics on an interview with
Axios on HBO so let’s get right into it
because I want to show you what happened
when Kushner is asked whether he has
seen Trump do anything racist or bigoted
take a look so for the answer is no
absolutely not
you can’t not be a racist for 69 years
then run for president be a racist and
what I’ll say is that when a lot of the
Democrats call the president a racist I
think they’re doing a disservice to
people who suffer because of real racism
in this country I’m so imagine you have
the same reaction everyone else did
watching that luckily Jonathan Swan the
interviewer in this he had a pretty good
follow-up take a look was birtherism
racist um look I wasn’t really involved
in that I know you wouldn’t mm-hmm was
it racist like I said I wasn’t involved
in that I know you won mm-hmm was it
racist um look I know who the president
is and I have not seen anything in him
that is racist so again I was not
involved in that did you wish he didn’t
do that like I said I was not involved
in that that was a long time ago all
right so that’s his answer to the
follow-up I forget who did it my name is
John King who was like there was a
normal interview going on and then right
after this series of questions began
Jared forgot how to speak like how to
speak in complete sentences so hard to
lie I mean it is obviously affecting him
Jared who I didn’t think was capable of
human emotions I’m not sure I thought he
was capable of hunger maybe thirst okay
fear okay I guess that might have been
the driving factor there but like that I
just break down every single thing about
what happened there first he says that
the president was not racist for 69
years nice or however long it was right
and then suddenly is racist right but
but he has been raised
refusing to cop to that so was that
racist I wasn’t a part of this nobody
asked you you just claimed to know
everything about this man for the past
69 years yeah so were you there were you
now every single day absolutely he’s
that kind of guy and then he says it
does a disservice to people who have
suffered from actual racism which is
like an attempt at the kind of arguments
that conservatives try to make in order
to just confuse people it’s like using a
triple negative they’re just like I have
no idea what you’re saying
right but you seemed confident as you
said it but when you want to talk about
people who were actual victims of racism
how about all the people that weren’t
allowed to move into Trump buildings
because he had racist tenant policies
absolutely ridiculous I guess I don’t
know how else his son-in-law is supposed
to answer a yes or no question that
everyone knows but we have video proof
there are federal documents from of what
you’re talking about there’s a full-page
ad in The New York Times in 1989 like we
have actual proof of his racism there’s
a video of him on the campaign trail you
know so there’s actual proof but I guess
I can’t imagine his son-in-law answering
it but any other way wouldn’t it be
great if Jared was like yes thank you
finally yes he’s so racist right exactly
and then he went to dinner with George
Conway
it’s just with that relationship I
wonder how Trump can be okay with his
daughter marrying such a wiener such
like a limp wiener like that’s what it
is and the answer is probably uh he’s
from a big real estate family who did
better than mine but he’s never gonna
challenge me as the dominant figure in
my daughter’s life
great that’s I think this is the first
time I’ve really been able to figure out
what that relationship is like and all
his confidence in Jared Jared might just
be like an okay project manager but
never anything else and what we’ve seen
over and over again is that you’re okay
until you’re not he would Trump yeah so
who knows what the future holds
yeah I don’t know but I wouldn’t skip
ahead a little bit and talk about Russia
okay okay because uh he was also asked
about that infamous Rush
meeting and like just you know straight
up a flick why didn’t you report this to
the FBI why did you go why and there was
a bit of a back-and-forth it’s a I want
to show you here so the question from
swan is does it not set off some alarm
bells when you see an email that the
Russian government wants to help the
campaign Kushner says the email I got on
my iPhone said show up at 4:00 I didn’t
scroll down so on reminds him that it
had Russia in the subject line and then
still no copping to the reality of the
situation is right there you knew what
the meeting was gonna be about and so we
asked him if this happened again would
you report it to the FBI take a look at
his answer call the FBI happen again I
don’t know it’s hard to do hypotheticals
but the the reality is is that we were
not given anything that was salacious
this wouldn’t be hard for me to do
hypotheticals that is any precise
hypothetical where you say yes I would
because you’re hiding behind this
concept that you don’t know the rules
right and you’re just new to this but
the hypothetical answer should be I
would report it to the FBI it’s the
easiest thing to do unless you
consistently do get invites like this
and just don’t want to cop to that fact
right you’re right like you know that
it’ll happen again and you you know that
you won’t report it to the FBI otherwise
like I don’t see how this isn’t saying
yes immediately isn’t a good look for
the administration say yes of course we
would because we didn’t know what was
going on we had nothing to do with that
so of course we would but he doesn’t
want to answer any questions whatsoever
pursue I mean I just that moment when
they asked about the racism
yeah just like what what would you do
what I was not involved in that so you
you can’t make an assessment of
birtherism or any racist act whether it
was racist whether you wanted it to
happen whether you endorsed it because
you weren’t involved in it first of all
that’s like the tacit acknowledgement
and crappiness that allows racism to
persist because people aren’t able to
just say oh no that was bad it was
absolutely races it was absolution
absolutely racially motivated and and he
should just cop to that
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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.