| Race continues to be a blind spot for Trump one year after Charlottesville | |||||||||||||||||
Vacationing at his golf club in New Jersey late Friday night, Trump reacted angrily to an interview James gave CNN about a charter school he’s opened for underprivileged kids in Ohio. Lemon asked the star, who recently moved from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Los Angeles Lakers, if he had a message for the president. “I would never sit across from him,” James replied. That prompted Trump to tweet, “Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television … He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do.” At a rally the next night in Ohio, Trump had the good political sense not to attack James. But he knew accusing Waters, a California Democrat who has called for his impeachment, of having a low IQ would be a crowd pleaser. -- The comments dominated the Sunday shows. Jake Tapper asked former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, a potential Democratic candidate for president in 2020, whether he agreed with “a lot of observers out there who saw the president's tweet as yet another example of the president's racism.” “Well, you know, it's hard to argue with that,” Patrick replied Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But it's nothing new. And the tweets are all the same. They’re all about division, and they're often – or usually – about the president.” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said Trump is wrong about Waters, who he served with in the House. “[There are] a lot of things ... you could say about Maxine Waters, but to indicate she’s not a bright person is not one of them,” Blunt said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” adding later that the GOP is “not anti-black.” -- As a national leader of the “birther” movement during the first half of this decade, Trump also routinely questioned Barack Obama’s intelligence. He claimed with no basis in reality that the first black president was “a terrible student” and demanded the release of his transcripts from Columbia University and Harvard Law School. (Trump has declined to produce his own transcripts.) Obama and his advisers were perennially nervous about engaging on race-related matters. This was especially true during the 2008 campaign and through the first term, though he became more emboldened in the twilight of his presidency. Consider Obama’s carefully crafted Philadelphia speech to address his former pastor Jeremiah Wright’s sermons and “the beer summit” after his criticism of a white cop who arrested Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. outside his home in Cambridge, Mass. Trump, in contrast, has seemed almost gleeful at times about picking fights with prominent black athletes, from Colin Kaepernick to Steph Curry. Aides have repeatedly said that the president sees the culture war over whether it’s acceptable to kneel for the national anthem as a great way to gin up his core supporters. He first seized on the issue during a rally last fall in Alabama.
“There was a breathtaking quality to this attack, and not just because white men demeaning the intelligence of black people is one of the oldest and ugliest tropes in American history,” writes Powell. “Some of my colleagues in the news media seem at pains to avoid detecting a whiff of race-baiting in Trump’s attacks. … The eminent Stanford University historian George M. Fredrickson wrote a groundbreaking book, ‘The Black Image in the White Mind,’ in which he documented the white obsession during the 19th and early 20th centuries with measuring the supposedly deficient size of black brains, the better to undergird ‘scientific racism.’” -- Trump praised James on Twitter multiple times, right up until the NBA star called him a “bum.” -- In the CNN interview, James complained that Trump is using sports to divide Americans. “Sports has never been something that divides people. It’s always been something that brings people together,” he said. “Sports was the first time I was ever around someone white. I got an opportunity to see them and learn about them, and they got the opportunity to learn about me. … And I was like, 'Oh, wow, this is all because of sports.’”
-- Trump appears to have felt emboldened by his political resiliency after the Charlottesville firestorm. “Three former aides said the takeaway from Charlottesville is the nihilistic notion that nothing matters except for how things play,” Politico’s Annie Karni reported Sunday. “‘The lesson of the Trump presidency is that no short-term crisis matters long term,’ said one former White House official who worked in the administration last year during the racial crisis. Indeed, the Republicans in Congress who distanced themselves from Trump during the height of the controversy last summer have since embraced the president on tax reform and his Supreme Court selection … Many of the executives who walked away from Trump’s business councils have simply taken their hobnobbing behind closed doors … His supportive gang of Fox News hosts have become more ethno-nationalist in their rhetoric than they were a year ago.” -- Since Charlottesville, in addition to his fights with mostly black athletes, Trump has found himself in other race-related controversies. In January, Trump reportedly referred to predominantly black nations in Africa, plus Haiti, as “shithole countries” while asking during a meeting why the United States cannot take more immigrants from European countries. “I’m not a racist,” he told reporters after the story broke. “I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed.” -- A Quinnipiac University national poll last month found that 49 percent of registered voters believe Trump is “racist,” while 47 percent think he is not. Half the country thinks the main motive for Trump's immigration policies is “a sincere interest in controlling our borders,” while 44 percent said his main motivation is “racist beliefs.” That follows a Washington Post-ABC News poll last year found that 2 in 3 Americans think Trump is the most divisive president in recent history, and a Pew poll that found 6 in 10 Americans believe Trump's election has led to worse race relations. -- Many Trump supporters came to his defense over the weekend.“LeBron DOES have a high I.Q., but that's Trump being wrong, not racist,” tweeted Ann Coulter. -- On the other hand, Trump is galvanizing more African American athletes to become politically engaged. For his induction into the NFL Hall of Fame this weekend, Randy Moss wore a tie with the names of several African Americans who have been killed in police custody.
Virginia Republican Senate nominee Corey Stewart speaks at a "Tea for Trump" event in June at the Trump Hotel in Washington. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
THE DOWN BALLOT IMPACT:-- “White Nationalists Love Corey Stewart. He Keeps Them Close. The Republican nominee for Senate in Virginia likes to engage the racial fringes of his party,” Danny Hakim and Stephanie Saul report on the front page of today’s New York Times: “While Mr. Stewart has disavowed some on the extreme right, interviews with dozens of his friends, colleagues, supporters and fellow Republicans yielded a portrait of a political opportunist eager to engage the coarsest racial fringes of his party to advance his Trumpian appeal. Some white nationalists volunteer for Mr. Stewart’s campaign, and several of his aides and advisers have used racist or anti-Muslim language, or maintained links to outspoken racists like Jason Kessler, the organizer of last year’s violent rally in Charlottesville … Mr. Stewart has not distanced himself from those aides. “Mr. Stewart praised President Trump’s statement that there were ‘very fine people on both sides’ at the … protests in Charlottesville … ‘I don’t think he said anything bad there,’ Mr. Stewart, 50, said during a 90-minute interview last month. ‘In fact I was one of the few people in the country that actually said pretty much the same thing.’ … [Stewart] does not accept that slavery was at the heart of the Civil War. ‘We can debate about the causes of the Civil War,’ he said, adding, ‘But the causes of it were much more complex’ than only slavery. … He contended that the term ‘white supremacist’ was a concoction of the left. “In an extraordinary sign of discomfort with Mr. Stewart, some Republicans have been eager behind the scenes to provide opposition research aimed at discrediting him … Shaun Kenney, former state party executive director, lamented that ‘the alt-right has taken over the Virginia Republican Party.’ After Mr. Stewart secured the nomination in June, John C. Whitbeck, Jr., the party chairman who once accused Mr. Stewart of ‘racist’ language, resigned. But many Republican leaders haven’t publicly disavowed Mr. Stewart, mindful that Mr. Trump is supporting him… “A ‘Corey Stewart for Senate’ sign flanks the gravel driveway leading to George and Donna Randall’s southern Virginia home. An avowed secessionist, Mr. Randall is eager to explain himself, welcoming a visitor onto his porch. ‘I’m a secessionist because the federal government is anti-Christian and we’re different culturally,’ explained Mr. Randall, a retired heavy equipment operator whose forebears include Confederate veterans. ‘The government never surrendered, only the Army. We’re still under Reconstruction.’ Interviews with Mr. Randall and his twin brother Gregory helped explain Mr. Stewart’s appeal to his die-hard supporters. ‘I liked Corey because he’s a Trump supporter,’ said Gregory Randall, who plays Stonewall Jackson in Civil War re-enactments, in an interview at his home in Fredericksburg. “George Randall and his wife Donna have helped organize ‘meet and greets’ for Mr. Stewart. The 60-year-old brothers have been seen frequently with him and are known to provide volunteer security for Mr. Stewart at public events, a task they both confirmed, though Mr. Stewart denied it, saying ‘that was one of those crazy rumors.’ Both brothers took part in the Unite the Right rally and also belong to the League of the South, a Southern nationalist organization that honors John Wilkes Booth ‘for his service to the South’ and seeks to secure ‘a future for white children.’” -- Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon also defended Trump’s “both sides” comments in an interview with The Hill that published Friday. “I still support what he said,” he said. “Antifa is just as bad, if not worse, than the quote-unquote fascists that they try to stop.”
-- Portland, Ore., police deployed flash grenades and pepper spray to disperse a crowd of clashing protesters from the right and left. Authorities declared the tense standoff a “civil disturbance” and made four arrests. (Leah Sottile) -- Under pressure, the D.C. Metro transit system has ruled out transporting white nationalists in separate train cars during Saturday's “Unite the Right” rally in the District. After the board chairman said the idea was being considered to prevent violence, many complained about “special treatment.” (Reis Thebault, Martine Powers and Teo Armus) -- A man accused of participating in last year’s Charlottesville rally was discharged from the Marines. Lance Cpl. Vasillios Pistolis allegedly attacked protesters while marching in the “Unite the Right” rally. (Jacksonville Daily News) -- Charlottesville businesses suffered for months after the rally. “[O]ur lines of credit are maxed out,” said Wilson Richey, owner of the local establishment the Whiskey Jar. “If anything even close happens again, it’s going to kill off a lot of businesses.” (Daily Progress)
-- The sign marking the spot where Emmett Till’s body was recovered has once again been vandalized. The marker outside Glendora, Miss., which was pierced by four bullets late last month, is the third version of the sign after the first was stolen and the second also destroyed by gunfire. (Alex Horton)  |
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