It was bound to happen. Sooner or later, the PC police were going to arrest Donald Trump in the act of being a “raging racist” (the crime charged by Charles Blow of the New York Times). The “smoking gun” was a dumb tweet suggesting four xeno-American members of Congress (AKA “the squad”) return to the “totally broke and crime infested places from which they came.”
If you don’t think Blow was smiling after reading that tweet, you have not been reading him carefully. He writes that white supremacy in America is “a congenital illness [in] need of active rehabilitation” because “Trump is a racist” with a presidency that wants to make America white again. And, according to Blow, “Republicans absolutely love him for it.” All that from a single tweet? Not so fast.
The only revelation from Trump’s tweet was his binary view of “pro-America” and that he happened to target women of color. Trump believes those who govern are either pro-America (and welcome to stay) or anti-America (and welcome to leave). Further, being white does not make a legislator pro-America in Trump’s eyes, because Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren top the list of those he’d send packing.
Indeed, Trump’s tweet “smelled” of racism because it evoked “otherness” and those others were women of color. However, the otherness Trump had in mind was the squad’s perpetual injection of identity into every political debate. While it is true that Trump should not taunt women of color, it is also true that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib have attacked other identities, including the recent false claim that Nancy Pelosi was a racist.
Should we presume this president is the enemy of multiculturalism, when Trump is the husband of a Slovenian and father of an Orthodox Jew? How can one conclude this president is a “raging racist” in light of Trump’s friendship with Kanye West and presidential pardons for Matthew Charles and Alice Johnson? The pieces of that puzzle don’t fit.
It’s obvious President Trump differentiates between persons of color; such as between Kanye West and Ayanna Pressley, and between Alice Johnson and Ilhan Omar. Trump gave Kanye West a MAGA hat and defended the black rapper’s right NOT to be a Democrat, and claimed racial bias was behind Alice Johnson’s life imprisonment when he commuted her sentence.
Influential journalists like Blow should pause before claiming to know the mind of President Trump or supporting Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), who claims black Republicans deserve no seat at the table: “We don’t need black faces that don’t want to be a black voice.” Wrong! Tim Scott and Nikki Haley have just as much right to be heard as Ms. Pressley, perhaps more so.
And, while Trump was acting to reduce black incarcerations, Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was bashing America: “We export American exceptionalism, the land of liberty and justice; but we don’t live those values here, and that hypocrisy is one that bothers me.” Democrats might be right that Trump’s “go home” taunt lowered the bar for civility, but Trump is right about the squad (“they speak so badly of our country”).
The problem for the squad is Trump’s penchant for saying what many Americans are thinking, as in what happened to E Pluribus Unum? It is Trump’s right as an American to ask why a Somalian refugee believes the American Dream is dead, especially in a year when a 5-year record number of citizenship applications were accepted.
I think we all know where this ends. Ocasio-Cortez evoked Nazism by calling ICE detention centers “concentration camps.” Omar accused fellow Democrats of accepting Benjamins in exchange for support of Israel. The squad voted against humanitarian aid for the people of color trapped at the southern border. All that’s missing is a lick of sense.
Nancy Pelosi is a seasoned and skilled politician, who has correctly assessed the four rookies as having more press coverage than legislative clout. When they snubbed her compromise bill, she deftly minimized the action as just four “nay” votes. This set into motion AOC’s knee-jerk response, whining that Ms. Pelosi was a “racist” and attracting black Democrats to condemn AOC’s immaturity. Ouch!
There is no way the veteran Pelosi regrets the food fight between Trump and her marginalized back benchers: a simple lesson to her caucus that what goes around comes around in Washington. Omar and Tlaib surely got the message this week: not one candidate for president will attend their Muslim Caucus conference this month. This is what happens when the President and Speaker agree double secret probation is required.