The scene drew reactions of shock and horror
So we’re going for the full Nuremberg now. We knew he was planning to, but it still comes as a shock to see how far he will go.
Goaded on by the president, a crowd at a Donald Trump rally on Wednesday night chanted “send her back! send her back!” in reference to Ilhan Omar, a US congresswoman who arrived almost 30 years ago as a child refugee in the United States.
Trump used the 2020 campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina, to attack Omar and three other Democratic congresswomen – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan – calling them “hate-filled extremists”.
Which is deeply ironic given how accurately that describes him.
The House voted to condemn his venomous “go back” tweets on Tuesday, so naturally on Wednesday he piled on the malevolent racist bullying and incitement, in front of a crowd and a host of tv cameras. This is where we are now.
“Let ’em leave,” Trump said of the members of Congress. “They’re always telling us how to run it, how to do this, how to do that. You know what? If they don’t love it, tell ’em to leave it.”
He’s always telling us how to run it, how to do this, how to do that. He hates most of us. He could leave it.
Trump’s speech in North Carolina also included a professed exasperation with the fact that Ocasio-Cortez’s name is hyphenated.
“No, no: I don’t have time to go with three different names,” Trump said. “We’ll call her Cortez. Too much time. Takes too much time.”
The scene drew reactions of shock and horror from across the political spectrum. “The bigoted mob chanting ‘send her back’ tonight is significant,” tweeted Walter Shaub, a former director of the US office of government ethics under Barack Obama.
“When you outdo [Richard] Nixon in repulsiveness, you’ve gone a long way,” said commentator David Gergen on CNN, a veteran of the Nixon and other Republican administrations.
“‘SEND HER BACK, SEND HER BACK,’ is ugly. It’s ignorant. It’s dangerous,” tweeted Joe Walsh, the conservative radio host and former Republican congressman. “And it’s un-American. It’s flat out bigotry. And every Republican should condemn this bigotry immediately. Stop this now.”
But not every Republican will; we’ve already seen that. Most of the Republicans in Congress won’t.
Nothing will stop him. Not the burning shame, not public opprobrium, not international disgust, nothing.
One of them is probably going to get murdered… Fucking lovely…
I was listening to audio of Trump speaking at a rally last night. He was screaming invective at Ilhan Omar and anyone else who doesn’t like his America. My first reaction was the shock and horror that anyone of prominence would dare to say such a thing in public, let alone someone in elected office. This thought was very closely followed by how smooth and flowing and well cadenced his voice was. As I listened it became clear that the more hate filled the sentence was, the better the presentation. The ‘more anodyne’ passages reverted back to closer to his weird, stilted, speech pattern. In my experience of public speaking, the closer what you are saying accords with your inner thoughts and emotions, the better you speak. That speech spoke volumes to me. I am sure it spoke volumes to his supporters.
On a separate, but related, note. There was a brief snippet following that of interviews with people from the crowd. One speaker could barely string three words together, but managed to pour hatred and scorne on ALL Democrats. She finished with ‘bag of idiots’. I bet there will be no outcry of how demeaning and awful it is to say such a thing. Still, would anyone now really dare to question Clinton’s summary of Trump supporters as a basket of deplorables?
Way too many well meaning liberals. And even those that agree with her still seem to want to harp on how awful she was to say it. NO. It needed to be said. It needs to be said again. And again. And again.
Turns out the basket is bigger than she thought, maybe bigger than most of us thought. (I tend to think it’s even bigger than that, because I live smack dab in the middle of Trump country.)
I remember being told off for calling them human garbage at one point… how many would dispute that now?
BKiSA, [to continue the pedantic/petty discussion on another thread] I might quibble, but I wouldn’t argue or dispute.
A certain Joe B. comes to mind who will still repeat that working “across the aisle” and “reaching out to republican voters” is totally needed (because that worked so well when he was vice-president).
Yeah, Biden is still caught up in a world he believes exists. It was iffy if that existed through his years in the Senate, though there were still some moderates in the Republican party that could be reached out to. The voters have managed to purge those now, leaving us with a crop of deplorables.
Biden needs to recognize that his world does not exist anymore, if it did at all. But he won’t. It’s scary going up against the Big Bad Wolf, and he’d rather be safe.
And, of course, the pundits continue to help him by condemning Democrats for being “too extreme” even when they operate no further left than JFK (who was far, far from being a socialist). And they continue to condemn “identity politics”, which seems mostly to mean women, blacks, and Hispanics, without noticing that the ones practicing identity politics are not the ones proclaiming all groups should be equal, but the ones proclaiming white males should be at the top of the heap at all times.
I would like to see all the white male candidatess look around, say, hey, I shouldn’t be the one here right now, and bow out. Only, there is a lot of fear in this country (not unjustifiably) that only white males are electable against Trump. The question is, can the so-called “outrage brigade” muster enough votes to truly change things? If so, the white male candidate might be a disaster; if not, he’s probably the only way to go.
I wish my crystal ball would come back from the shop. I could sure use it about now.