MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow cut through the White House excuses and revealed that Trump’s defense of racists, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists as an intentional political strategy.
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Maddow said:
This was a lot of things today. It was not apparently a mistake, and at some point, it is going to have to stop being treated as a surprise. This was not the President accidentally blundering into something that inadvertently sounded like sympathy for people with unpopular political views. This is on purpose. This is what it is meant to be. The President building up and trying to center up in American politics a long standing force in white American politics and culture that we have been trained to think of as a fringe thing, but it does have a very long history, and it does have real force.
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The President is not messing up here. He did not trip and accidentally praise white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and pro-Confederate demonstrators who actually killed somebody this weekend. This is not a screw-up. What he is building back up is something that was a long standing force for political power and terror for generations, and he is doing what he can to help them come back.
The MSNBC host said that Trump is doing what he can to build the racists back up and that it is working.
The reality is that anyone who followed the 2016 presidential campaign understands that these beliefs are nothing new. Trump has always dog whistled these beliefs, but now that he is in the White House, Trump is not trying to be subtle.
Maddow was correct. This is an intentional political strategy. Trump is an unpopular president who can only play to his base, and his base of support is the racist far right. Trump is trying to use the presidency to revive something deadly. Racism has never gone away, and for Donald Trump is the fuel for his presidency.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
