The most disgusting public performance in the history of the American presidency
Donald Trump on Tuesday afternoon gave the most disgusting public performance in the history of the American presidency. Framed by the vulgar excess of the lobby of Trump Tower, the president of the United States shook loose the constraints of his more decent-minded advisers and, speaking from his heart, defended white supremacists and by extension, their credos of hatred. He equated with those thugs the courageous Americans who had gathered to stand up to the racism, anti-Semitism and doctrine of violence that won the cheers and Nazi salutes of the alt-right hordes to whom Trump felt such loyalty.
He made it crystal clear, in case anyone hadn’t caught on yet, that the reason it took him so long to rebuke the racist rally is the fact that he didn’t want to, because he liked it.
No one who values the best of what the United States has stood for could watch without feeling revulsion, anger or heartbreak. No one who comes from a past such as mine, which includes similar mobs rising up and ultimately collaborating in the murder of dozens of my family members in Hitler’s Europe, could view Trump’s performance without a degree of fear as well. Certainly, the same must be true for African Americans who have watched such mobs lynch their family members and seek to deny them the most basic rights.
Remember Edgar Ray Killen? He’s the KKK guy who was the architect of the murder of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner in Neshoba County, Mississippi in 1964. It’s as if we’d made him president. It’s as if we’d made Bull Connor president, or George Wallace, or David Duke. It’s that disgraceful and shaming and filthy.
He has to go.
Every day Trump remains in office is a victory for the extremists. But in that same moment on Tuesday, Trump made it clear that to defeat the champions of hatred in the United States, he must go. That he also must go to preserve the United States’ standing in the world, to ensure the safety of our people and our way of life has also been made clear in the past week. It is now time that we follow his dangerous words with our own actions. It is why Heather Heyer was on that street in Charlottesville. We owe it to her and to ourselves to remove him from office as soon as the law permits. Trump himself has demonstrated the price of each day of delay.
25th Amendment.
It doesn’t make a difference, but in the spirit of understanding the enemy I would observe that his racism is mostly of the “casual” variety: I doubt he sees himself as a nazi or white supremacist, and doubt that he even sympathizes with them per se. A key to understanding Trump is realizing that he neither supports nor opposes the sufferings of black people, insofar as neither they nor anyone else actually matters at all to him. The only thing that truly exists in the universe is Trump’s ego.
In this context, this means that his initial objection to denouncing the white supremacists was that he vaguely recognized that these were his supporters, and that denouncing them would, indirectly, be criticizing himself. Being the embodiment of all that is good and right, he couldn’t in good conscience criticize himself, and therefore he can’t criticize his followers.
He resisted the more pointed denunciation his aids wrote for him the way a child resists bath time because reading a revised statement would mean that his prior statement was in some way less than adequate. Since his every utterance is a timeless classic of all the best words saying all the best things, it would be dishonest to suggest that his previous speech was in any way lacking — obviously, the revised speech is nothing but a concession to the losers and haters who failed to appreciate his previous historic speech, and who therefore have shown themselves incapable of appreciating anything good.
He then reversed the pre-written speech and doubled down on his prior sentiments because the indignity still rankled. The world deserves the benefit of Trump’s unfiltered id; if only we would truly listen to him, we would realize that he understands all the things much deeplier than the rest of us. For example, what about George Washington? Obviously nobody is asking that question, but Trump in his geniusness does think to ask it. If only the haters weren’t such haters, plus also just plain dumb.
The effect is more or less the same as if he were the grand wizard of the KKK himself. Understanding his motivations doesn’t justify anything, nor mitigate anything. But for example it helps explain why he can’t even dissemble as well as, say, a David Duke. He can’t dissemble because he can’t subordinate his ego to ANY agenda; his ego IS the agenda.
‘He resisted the more pointed denunciation his aids wrote for him the way a child resists bath time because reading a revised statement would mean that his prior statement was in some way less than adequate. ‘
He hasn’t shown any reluctance about denying and contradicting his own pronouncements before. Even a child resisting bathing is showing more self-awareness and consistency.