Is Trump Racist; many media outlets seem to think so

Editor: Vlad Rothstein | Tactical Investor

Is Trump Racist; there’s evidence to indicate he is not

The view that a racial lens is the best way to see and understand the Trump phenomenon is popular among many of the country’s most esteemed thinkers. Ta-Nehisi Coates has emphasized what he perceives to be Trump’s unique exploitation of race by dubbing him our “First White President.” More recently, Charles Blow characterized Trump as “The Lowest White Man” in a piece for the New York Times – focusing on how the gap between Trump’s inadequacy and Obama’s exceptionalism evinces a society that demands more from those to whom less is given, while casting the successes of a rich kid like Trump as proof of the power of meritocracy.

He has explicitly mocked the idea of a “poor” person joining his cabinet, and it can even be argued that Trump chose riches over racism when he claimed Oprah Winfrey as his dream vice presidential candidate back in the Nineties. A man so invested in status that he named his son “Baron,” Trump’s place in the public imagination is bookmarked by brassy bold letters, rococo interiors and glitzy excess in lieu of genuine taste. Lest his milieu be in doubt, Trump announced his candidacy in the lobby of one of his opulent towers mere yards away from the flagship location of Tiffany’s Jewelers – the namesake of another of his children.

Trump is far from a champion of the white race

In fact, for all he maligns non-whites, Trump is far from a champion of the white race. Even at his most bigoted, one can tease out the financial incentives that operated in symbiosis with his prejudice. His relentless campaign against the Central Park Five was not only evidence of his callow disregard for criminal justice and the civil rights of the accused, it reflected his personal interest in the greater policing of New York City, the increased safety which most (wrongly) assumed would follow, and the correspondingly higher value of his Central Park-facing properties.

The housing discrimination for which Trump is famous was enabled by a lack of fundamental respect for black renters, yes, but it was also likely motivated, in part, by a desire to extract the maximum fees from his properties. Trump wrote off entire nations as “shithole countries,” but while those “shitholes” were uniformly brown, it strains credulity to believe that he would have made a stink about wealthy, non-white nations like Japan or Saudi Arabia. Even Eric Trump’s foot-in-mouth defence of his father’s racism speaks some truth to power: “My father,” he says, “sees one colour: green. That’s all he cares about.” Full Story

10 times President Trump’s comments have been called racist?

Most of the what the press labels as racist today has to be taken with a grain of salt.

“Lebron (sic) James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon,” Trump tweeted. “He made Lebron (sic) look smart, which isn’t easy to do. I like Mike!”

“The president has called a lot of people stupid,” Lemon said on CNN. “Some of those people are white. But I would just like to note that referring to an African American as dumb — remember this is America — is one of the oldest canards of America’s racist past and present: that black people are of inferior intelligence.”

“Congresswoman Maxine Waters, an extraordinarily low IQ person, has become, together with Nancy Pelosi, the Face of the Democrat Party,” Trump posted on Twitter in June. “She has just called for harm to supporters, of which there are many, of the Make America Great Again movement. Be careful what you wish for Max!”

Trump Racist? It Appears Not

“We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in — and we’re stopping a lot of them — but we’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals. And we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before.”

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son-of-a-bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!'” Trump stated

“The NFL players are at it again – taking a knee when they should be standing proudly for the National Anthem. Numerous players, from different teams, wanted to show their ‘outrage’ at something that most of them are unable to define,” Trump tweeted Full Story

The Trump Racist Debate Continues

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll, however, suggests that in the current political climate, this strategy might be less useful to Trump in 2020 than it was in 2016. The poll, conducted in July, was designed to measure the racial beliefs and political engagement of voting-age adult Americans.

One set of questions asked respondents if they perceive that white people and black people receive equal treatment from law enforcement officials, for example, and in public places like restaurants, hospitals, and courts. In another section, respondents were asked to place whites, African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians on spectrums ranging from, among others, peaceful to violent and hard-working to lazy.

Despite his frequent assertions to the contrary, Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory was a narrow one, which leaves him little margin for error in 2020—especially among white working-class voters in traditionally blue states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, which he needed to win in order to put him over the top in the Electoral College. If enough voters are no longer enthusiastic about the bigoted sentiments he rode all the way to the White House or more voters are motivated to vote against those same sentiments, this time, the president’s racism might be what pushes him out of it. Full Story

Is Trump Racist; there’s evidence to indicate he is not

Trump is far from a champion of the white race

10 times President Trump’s comments have been called racist?

Trump Racist? It Appears Not

The Trump Racist Debate Continues

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