Some people complain that Donald Trump doesn't have a campaign message. Michelle Goldberg isn't buying it. In fact, she writes, the message is simple and straightforward: white grievance:
The president started this week by tweeting out a video that encapsulates the soul of his movement. In it, a man in The Villages, an affluent Florida retirement community, shouts, “White power!” at protesters from a golf cart bedecked with Trump signs. “Thank you to the great people of The Villages,” wrote Trump. Only after several hours and a panic among White House staffers did the president delete the tweet.
Trump understands that he became a significant political figure by spreading the racist lie that Barack Obama was really born in Kenya. He launched his history-making presidential bid with a speech calling Mexican immigrants rapists and adopted a slogan, “America First,” previously associated with the raging anti-Semite Charles Lindbergh. Throughout the 2016 campaign, he won the invaluable prize of earned media with escalating racist provocations, which his supporters relished and which captivated cable news.
He "seems to grasp that racism is what put him over the top. It’s what made his campaign seem wild and transgressive and hard to look away from."
Except this time it isn't working. Yet Trump continues to do what he has done all his life -- deny reality. He played a businessman on TV as his businesses cratered. Now he's playing a president on TV, as coronavirus cases -- and deaths -- soar.
At some point, reality has to hit the road.
Image: The Daily Beast
4 comments:
Racism didn't put Trump over the top, misogyny did. The Neonazis and Klansmen were always going to vote for him anyway, but misogyny was what appealed to the broader demographic he needed to win.
Trump's problem now is that he's running against another old white guy, and a boring centrist at that. The racism he used against Obama and the misogyny he used against Clinton don't apply. He knew he'd be in a bind so he pressed Ukraine and China to manufacture dirt on Biden. That didn't work out and now he's stuck. He promised better, cheaper healthcare and instead his failure to deliver has killed 130,000 Americans. He promised a booming economy and instead he's got a depression. Racism's the only tool he's got left, but even he knows the racists won't deliver a victory.
Cap
After reading your post, Owen, some lines from The Beatles' Nowhere Man came to mind:
He's a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody
He's as blind as he can be
Just sees what he wants to see
Nowhere Man can you see me at all?
It seems clear that the racists won't get him to where he wants to be, Cap. That's the reality. But Trump has denied reality for his whole life.
Most appropriate, Lorne. Your reference reminds me of a much older song -- "I Got Plenty of Nothin!"
Post a Comment