Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Trump wanted to 'Kaepernick' Bubba Wallace. Instead he made him too big to fail
(Guardian UK) More than 130,000 Americans have died from coronavirus. Double-digit unemployment plunges the economy ever closer toward depression. All the while the police continue to kill unarmed Black people with impunity, sparking demonstrations across the country. Any one of these legacy-defining crises would consume the average American president. For Donald Trump, somehow, there is an even more pressing agenda item: wrecking the racing career of Nascar’s Bubba Wallace.
The bashing began on Monday with Trump wondering on Twitter whether Wallace – whose status as Nascar’s only top-level Black driver came into sharp relief after a noose was discovered in his team garage a little more than a week after he successfully called on his Southern-fried sport to ban the Confederate flag – had “apologized to all those great Nascar drivers & officials who came to his aid, stood by his side, & were willing to sacrifice everything for him, only to find out that the whole thing was just another HOAX?”
Later White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany defended her boss’s comments by comparing Wallace to the actor Jussie Smollett, a false equivalency that had gathered momentum among self-styled fake news watchdogs after the FBI closed its investigation by declaring the noose had been hanging in the garage stall for at least eight months. Never mind the pictures, or the word “noose” appearing three times in one paragraph of the FBI’s case-closing statement, or the fact that it was Nascar rather than Wallace who reported the noose in the first place.
Trump has never had much bandwidth for context that can’t be measured in ratings. So it figures that he’d also claim in his Bubba-bashing tweet that Nascar’s Noosegate controversy and flag ban was responsible for the sport’s “lowest ratings ever,” even as the data disproves him. ...............(more)
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/jul/07/bubba-wallace-donald-trump-twitter-nascar
15 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Clearly, Trump was just kicking up yet another distraction from the very real existential crises he gives passing consideration to between his all-too-frequent tee times. But in the end, well, it backfired. Not only does there figure to be even more scrutiny on Nascar going forward, but also greater pressure on the sport to stay on the correct side of history and do right by a driver who once wanted nothing more than to be just another guy on the grid. Despite the president’s best efforts to “Kaepernick” his career, all Trump did instead was mark this as the moment Wallace truly arrived.
Wallace isn’t just bigger than ever now. He’s too big to fail.
Wallace isn’t just bigger than ever now. He’s too big to fail.
Thanks for posting it! 
