Donald Trump: The people chanting ‘send her back’ are ‘incredible patriots’

Before I get knee-deep into all of the racist BS that’s still happening, let’s take a moment to remember that there’s a whole huge thing that’s happening which is ALSO racist AF. Remember how the American government is running concentration camps at the border and putting babies in cages? The A$AP Rocky thing was supposed to distract from that, but weirdly it was Justin Bieber who, like, spoke truth to power?

— Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) July 20, 2019

I mean… sometimes Bieber gets it right. Slow clap for him.

As for the other big racist story, we’re still talking about Donald Trump’s attacks on American congresswomen for being A) women and B) women of color. Trump started attacking them two weekends ago and it’s still happening, even more so since the “send her back” chant. He’s just… incredibly deranged and without a doubt, he’s trying to get these women killed. New York Magazine did a truly frightening summary of all the sh-t that’s gone down in the past week, some lowlights:

The changing narrative around the “Send Her Back” chant: The next day, pressured to disavow the chant by concerned GOP lawmakers and Vice-President Mike Pence, Trump didn’t even bother coming up with remotely believable lies to explain why he had seemed to savor the moment. Instead, he claimed that everyone’s eyes were the real liars, insisting he’d tried to “quickly” speak over and cut off the chanting and that he was “not happy” and “disagreed with” it and even “felt a little bit bad” that it had happened.

Then he changed his mind: The day after that, Trump decided he was done pretending to distance himself from the racist spectacle he had incited. In a callback to his infamous post-Charlottesville praise of white-supremacist protesters, he defended the supporters who came to his rally in North Carolina. “Those are incredible people, they are incredible patriots,” Trump told reporters on Friday. Asked if he was unhappy about the chant, this time he said, “No,” and pivoted to an attack in which he falsely implied that Omar has said she hated America. He also said the lawmaker, a naturalized refugee who has called herself Trump’s “worst nightmare,” was “lucky to be where she is, let me tell you that.” Then, in a second exchange with reporters on Friday, Trump argued that the chant wasn’t even racist. “You know what’s racist to me,” the president deflected, “when someone goes out and says the horrible things about our country, the people of our country, that are anti-Semitic, that hate everybody, that speak with scorn and hate — that, to me, is really a very dangerous thing.”

The GOP wants more dog-whistle racism, not blatant racism: Over the weekend, the president continued to attack “the Squad” and make up transgressions in order to demonize them. But none of the women have said they hate America, or referenced “evil Jews,” or called America “garbage,” as Trump has now claimed. But there will be more exaggerations, lies, and blatant attempts to strip the women of their Americanness. This is exactly what his allies and advisers have urged him to push instead of naked racism, as the Washington Post reported on Saturday: “Like others, [Senator Lindsey] Graham urged Trump to reframe away from the racist notion at the core of the tweets — that only European immigrants or their descendants are entitled to criticize the country. Advisers wrote new talking points and handed him reams of opposition research on the four congresswomen. Pivot to patriotism. Focus on their ideas and behavior, not identity. Some would still see a racist agenda, the argument went, but at least it would not be so explicit.

[From NY Magazine]

“Those are incredible people, they are incredible patriots,” just like the neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville were “very fine people,” right? Anyway, the point of this NY Mag piece was to put everything in some kind of context of Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, which I think is probably the right context. Yes, Trump is a violent misogynist and a violent racist. Yes, he believes and thinks and says those things all the time. But he’s also going Full George Wallace for 2020, and he WANTS to talk about racist sh-t as his PLATFORM. That’s his political ideology: racism, hatred, misogyny, bullying, violence, child molestation, rape, white supremacy. It really is that simple. There’s no “oh, he’s just talking about this because he doesn’t have a health care plan!” THIS IS HIS PLATFORM. This is what he wants the election to be about.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

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