Trump Holds a Nazi Rally & Things Get Kinda Nazi

Well, Donald Trump got the Nazi rally he wanted, though his campaign sure isn’t acting like it is happy with what it created. The hate was so stark that even the New York Times didn’t downplay or both-sides it:

A comic kicked off the rally by dismissing Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” then mocked Hispanics as failing to use birth control, Jews as cheap and Palestinians as rock-throwers, and called out a Black man in the audience with a reference to watermelon.

Another speaker likened Vice President Kamala Harris to a prostitute with “pimp handlers.” A third called her “the Antichrist.” And the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson mocked Ms. Harris — the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father — with a made-up ethnicity, saying she was vying to become “the first Samoan-Malaysian, low IQ former California prosecutor ever to be elected president.”

By the time the former president himself took the stage, an event billed as delivering the closing message of his campaign, with nine days left in a tossup race, had instead become a carnival of grievances, misogyny and racism.

When I first read that, I wondered about the race and ethnicity of the speakers. Was this a Diamond & Silk thing where the people spewing racist and sexist slander are of the same race, ethnicity, and gender of the folks that they are attacking? Usually, that is what Trump and his campaign does: They get a Black supporter to use crude stereotypes to defame Black people, Latinos to go after Latinos, and women to grind down women. That way the White-run campaign can hide behind their shills’ race, ethnicity and gender, claim that they are colorblind and unbiased, and treat everything like it’s normal and that the bigoted attacks are pure sentiment expressed by “true Americans.” It’s a slimy tactic, but it works in keeping the press off Trump’s back…until it doesn’t.

Trump’s lack of control and his refusal to set behavioral boundaries means that he not only keeps doing what he’s doing not mater how fucked-up it is. It also means that when not countered, Trump gets more fucked-up. As with all bullies, he backs down when confronted. Problem is that Trump is rarely confronted by the media, not strongly and not without qualifications, so he keeps it up, while getting more fucked-up and giving license to his followers to act on his hate.

This kind of journalistic wishy-washy plays on the opinion page, but when what Trump is doing and saying is racist, misogynistic, and hateful and it not reported as such, he sees that as a green light to keep on being fucked-up. And so do his campaign and supporters. And that is how a supposedly professional campaign operation creates a Nazi rally.

Anyway, I was curious if the official bigotry at Trump’s Nazi rally was Trump, once again, hiding behind Black people, Latinos, and women, so I did some image searching and what I saw was White, White, and White. Tucker Carlson, we know is White. We’ve seen too much of him already. The speaker who told the “pimp joke,” as White as a smalltown Ohio wrestling coach. And the comedian? If I was casting for young, White, villainous sociopath or Stephen Miller’s BFF, just on looks, the funnyman has the job.

(A sidenote: Since we are talking about comedians and stereotypes, ever noticed that Trump and so many of his circle are the real-life version of the horrible authority figures seen in 1980s screwball comedies: Dean Wormer, Judge Smalls, Sergeant Hulka, etc.)

When Trump took the stage, he rambled that the Republican Party was the party of inclusion. Some would say that he’s gaslighting. He’s not. Donald Trump is trying to convince people that he’s not responsible for Donald Trump. He’s running away from the scene of the crimes that he organized. It’s typical Trump cowardliness. And, as usual, his campaign spokespeople try to turn blame away from Trump. But it is Trump and everyone knows it…and a lot of people wallow in it.

The Washington Post ran a piece today on racist and misogynistic t-shirts and merch seen and sold at Trump rallies. The Post reports on a very popular t-shirt attacking Kamala Harris, one that reads ““Say No to the Hoe,” which is not a message from shovel enthusiasts against the lowly garden hoe, but White people who don’t know their “ho” from their “hoe.” Fun times in the bedroom! The Post treats the use of “hoe” as a sexist attack, and it is, but it is also racist, as racist as the White guy saying that Harris is controlled by “pimps.” “Hoe” and “pimp” are Trump’s “welfare Cadillac.”

It's embarrassing enough that the Post didn’t identify the racism of these “offensive” shirts. It’s infuriating that they don’t trace the bigotry further back than Trump vs Clinton. This hate is not a Trump thing. It’s a Nixon thing (see “southern strategy”). It’s a Reagan thing (“welfare Cadillac”). We saw it during both Bushes (Willie Horton, NOLA). We really saw it when Obama got elected (the Tea Party was nothing but White backlash). Trump is no originator. He is a bigot and know his type. He is an opportunist who plays to his talents. His talent is race and gender baiting. He sees a welcome audience in the Republican Party, people dying for someone “who tells it like it is.” It is a perfect match because everyone is and has been of the same mind for a long, long time. None of this is an anomaly. It is what it is.

The Post article quotes a While, middle-aged Trump supporter on his “hoe” shirt. He says, “I understand it’s derogatory. We can joke. We can wear crude shirts. Everybody here is having a good time.”

We can joke? Everybody here is having a good time? Yes, because at the Nazi rally, no one present is being attacked and no matter how thick the bigotry, everyone is having fun denigrating others for who they are. Thing is, Trump isn’t running for head of the Nazi Party and that isn’t what his supporters want. They want to control the United States of America, a whole country full of a lot of different kinds of people, many of who are targets of these “jokes” and aren’t having a good time.

“No, no, no” they say. “We want everyone to feel included. We are for everyone. We just hate the ‘bad hombres.’ We aren’t haters. You are the haters for saying we are the haters. You are the racists for saying we are racist. You are sexists for saying we are sexist Now excuse us, we have to pick up our cloaks and hoods from the cleaners.”

I’m glad that the Times is being a little less mealy-mouth on this stuff. But the Washington Post? Two years ago, they wouldn’t have pulled punches. Now they are, hiding behind “journalistic principles” and “unbiased reporting.” Is this the “Rupert Murdoch-ization” of the Post? (The Post’s refusal to endorse a presidential candidate? That’s on Jeff Bezos. And staff is pissed.)

The most frustrating thing about all this is that everyone knows what is happening! We know that Trump hates women and thinks anyone who isn’t White is inferior to him. JD Vance has been very explicit about his bigotry. I saw a Stephen Miller speech the other day and Miller sounded exactly like Louis Beam, a 1970/80’s Klan leader. There’s nothing ambiguous about Tea Party members portraying the Obamas as apes. We know plenty about Reagan’s race baiting and Nixon’s southern strategy. Trump and Republicans know what they are doing. We know what they are doing. And yet too many in the mainstream media report otherwise.

I’m not saying that the press has to “take a side.” No, we don’t need articles that read “Bad Trump racist bad.” Just. Report. The. News. “Racist,” “misogynist,” and “fascist” are not biased terms. They are definitions, which can be used as accusations or insults, just as “short,” “hairy,” or “smelly,” three descriptions I would take as an insult, if they weren’t so damn accurate. It’s the responsibility of writers – that includes journalists and their editors – to use own whatever words are accurate and not hide behind “journalistic principles.” To do anything else is to engage in denial and to help extend the nightmare that we are in.

Trump is a fucking Nazi. He is also insane. He wants to round up and deport hundreds of millions of people, imprisoning, according to JD Vance, more people than we currently have in US prisons. Trump repeatedly quotes and paraphrases Hitler. He constantly talks about the “enemy within” and how his opponents are more dangerous than North Korea. He has vowed to punish them. And he goes racist, sexist, and hateful every single day.

Here's another thing: Trump is a horrible politician. Forget that he’s got a rump of support. That doesn’t mean that he is any good at this stuff. American culture is plump with plenty examples of of shallow, shoddily made crap that is also popular - Trump included. That people like that shallow, shoddily-made crap – Trump included – doesn’t make the crap good or desirable. It means that the crap’s consumers like crap and are easily sold. And the crap’s popularity doesn’t give it a free pass, especially not to people who are tasked with keeping us informed.

You don’t have to look at the Dance Party Q&A or the ogling of Arnold Palmer’s cock or allowing outright racists to speak for you at a major rally in a state that isn’t going to vote from him as proof that Trump sucks as a politician. Look at the fallout.

Immediately after Trump’s favorite comedian called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin got on social media to condemn the speaker and Trump for racist attacks on their island. Worse for Trump, Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican superstar, the most popular Latin musician since Shakira was at her prime, an American citizen who can vote and influence a lot of votes, did what the Harris campaign has been working on for a long time: Bad Bunny endorsed Harris. If his endorsement turns into votes, it will be as impactful as Taylor Swift’s nod, maybe more, as Bad Bunny’s “Yes” will be felt in swing states.

No effective politician allows for an endorsement like that to happen. No effective politician makes it easy for that kind of endorsement to happen. No campaign sets things up so that the likely result of a guest speaker saying that a key voting demographic lives on or is from a “floating island of garbage” is that a major superstar with an apolitical following directs his fans to vote for the candidate the guest speaker and campaign are against. That is bad, bad politics.  

If we truly lived in a country where merit rules, Trump would not only lose this election, he’d be broke and living in a box on the side of the road, ranting about dog-eaters and Hitler to passing cars. That should be reported every day. That – and so many other things – should cost Trump this election.

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