President Trump's divisive and racial rhetoric is becoming the new normal. We can't let that happen
President Trump's divisive and racial rhetoric is becoming the new normal. We can't let that happen to us as a nation
A year ago, it seemed unfathomable: an American president defiantly defending “very fine people on both sides” of neo-Nazism; an American president suggesting moral equivalency between fighting for racial equality and championing white supremacy.
To be fair, President Donald Trump was making a somewhat subtler point. In his colloquy with the press, he was not calling neo-Nazis great folks but arguing that many of the Confederate-statue-loving protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, were not neo-Nazis at all. Somehow, these “fine people” got mixed in with white supremacists shouting, “Jews will not replace us,” and never noticed their compatriots were not fine people, too
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More than a year-and-a half into the Trump presidency, many have accepted the reality that Trump is unlike any U.S. president previously seen, that he wallows in divisive rhetoric and tolerates odious behavior because he so often indulges in it.
Trump inflames racial tensions
His recent assault on LeBron James as stupid and CNN host Don Lemon as stupider (“low IQ” is his go-to insult for blacks) is par for the course. It’s impossible, at this point, to be surprised by boorish behavior in someone who consistently acts like a boob. The trap — and one that Trump could easily lead us into — is to start thinking such behavior is not just normal for Trump but normal.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/08/10/white-supremacists-neo-nazis-charlottesville-unite-right-rally-trump-column/935708002/