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Milbank: Face it, Republicans: Your Trump really is a racist
By Dana Milbank
Published: June 11, 2016, 6:01am
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Donald Trump needed validation. At a rally last week, Trump was discussing racial violence at his events and the perception that nonwhite people are against him, when he singled out a black man in the crowd.
“Look at my African-American over here,” Trump said, pointing. “Look at him. Are you the greatest?”
The gesture — reminiscent of Trump with a Cinco de Mayo taco bowl at Trump Tower and tweeting “I love Hispanics!” — was as respectful as if he had just instructed the crowd to “look at my Irish setter over here.” And it was as clumsy as if he had tried to validate his pro-Israel position by saying, “Look at my Jew over here,” or to neutralize his general intolerance by saying, “Say hello to my lesbian,” or, “Take a gander at my Chinese-American.”
It turns out Trump’s African-American, Gregory Cheadle, says he’s not a Trump supporter. He said he wasn’t offended by Trump taking possession of him, telling NPR it would have been worse if Trump followed “my African-American” by saying, “What’s up, dawg?” or the N-word.
Small consolation.
A confluence of three factors has caused a sudden and sharp change in Trump’s fortunes. The media scrutiny has increased significantly since he secured the nomination, and journalists, rather than chasing his outrage du jour, are digging in to report more on Trump University, Trump’s stiffing of charities, his lies and his racism. Hillary Clinton has, finally, made the shift to attacking Trump vigorously over his instability. And Republicans are, belatedly, discovering that their presidential candidate wasn’t putting on a show during the GOP primaries: He’s an actual racist.
You know you’re in trouble when you’re being lectured on sensitivity by Newt Gingrich. The former House speaker, a frequent Trump defender, emailed The Washington Post’s Dan Balz to say Trump’s claim that a federal judge had a conflict of interest because the Indiana-born jurist is “Mexican” was “completely unacceptable.” (He softened his criticism of Trump on Monday.)
House Speaker Paul Ryan, just one day after endorsing Trump, said on a radio show that Trump’s remarks about the Hispanic judge were “out of left field.”
Sorry, Mr. Speaker, but that’s nonsense. The things Trump is doing now — disparaging the “Mexican” judge, disqualifying Muslim judges, calling Sen. Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas” and singling out “my African-American” — is in line with what he has been doing for the past year, and before.
A bigot and racist
More than six months ago, I began a column by proposing, “Let’s not mince words: Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist.” His bigotry went back decades, to the Central Park jogger case, and came to include: his leadership of the “birther” movement suggesting President Obama was a foreign-born Muslim; his vulgar expressions for women; his talk of Mexico sending rapists into America; his call for mass deportation; his spats with Latino news outlets; his mocking Asian accent; his tacit acceptance of the claim that Muslims are a “problem” in America; his agreement that American Muslims should be forced to register themselves; his false claim about American Muslims celebrating 9/11; and his tweeting of statistics from white supremacists.
Now that Trump has secured the nomination, Republican officeholders are shocked to discover that his racism continues?
A month ago, the Trump campaign chose prominent white nationalist William Johnson to be one of its delegates. The campaign blamed a “database error” and Johnson resigned, but the racist American Freedom Party claims it has “more delegates” on Trump’s list. And the Chicago Tribune reported that Illinois Trump delegate Lori Gayne uses the social-media handle “whitepride” and said: “I’m so angry I don’t even feel like I live in America. You can call me a racist.”
Republicans, look at your nominee over here. It’s a grotesque sight.
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