We begin today’s roundup with John Harwood’s insight at CNBC on the GOP’s reaction to Trump’s racist tweets:
With their votes this week, House Republicans absolved President Donald Trump of racism in calling for four non-white lawmakers to “go back” to other countries.
But not only Trump.
They also voted to absolve themselves, their party and the voters who elected them – like the ones who chanted “send her back” at a rally Wednesday in North Carolina. It took more than just fealty to the president to unite 187 of 191 Republicans against condemning his words...[T]his week’s furor implicates the character and reputation of many others besides the president. Denouncing Trump’s words as racist, as the House Democratic majority voted to do, means denouncing those chanting rally audiences that all GOP candidates depend on.
Adam Sewer at The Atlantic highlight’s the significance of this moment in American history:
[M]ost of Trump’s predecessors had something he does not yet have: the support of a majority of the electorate. Ilhan Omar’s prominence as a Republican target comes not, as conservatives might argue, simply because her policy views are left-wing. Neither is it because, as some liberals have supposed, she is an unmatched political talent. She has emerged as an Emmanuel Goldstein for the Trumpist right because as a black woman, a Muslim, an immigrant, and a progressive member of Congress, she represents in vivid terms a threat to the nation Trumpists fear they are losing. To attack Omar is to attack a symbol of the demographic change that is eroding white cultural and political hegemony, the defense of which is Trumpism’s only sincere political purpose. Many of the president’s most outrageous comments have been delivered extemporaneously, when he departs from his prepared remarks. Last night, though, his attacks on Omar were carefully scripted, written out by his staff and then read off a teleprompter. To defend the remarks as politically shrewd is to confess that the president is deliberately campaigning on the claim that only white people can truly, irrevocably be American.
Here’s Zak Cheney-Rice’s analysis at New York magazine:
Some GOP officials don’t want the president’s bigoted remarks reflecting on the party as a whole. (Though others are fine with it.) Rather, they prefer to be judged by Trump’s policies, as backed and implemented by rank-and-file Republicans. As it stands, these policies include an attempt to ban Muslim entry to the United States, disguised as a travel restriction targeting countries deemed a security threat. They’ve included a naked attempt to erode the political power of Hispanic voters in favor of non-Hispanic white people by adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, thus discouraging participation by Hispanic immigrants and leading to an undercount that would favor Republicans during redistricting. The administration has expended significant resources defending both efforts before the U.S. Supreme Court — the first successfully, the second unsuccessfully. Trump has supplemented these policies with dramatic restrictions on immigration, targeting Central American migrants attempting entry via the U.S.-Mexico border. These include narrowed options for legitimate asylum claims and compulsory separation of undocumented children from their guardians, creating a network of child jails near the border, some in degraded and lethal conditions. The animus driving these measures is not in dispute: Trump has described Central American migrants as murderers, rapists, and drug dealers hiding terrorists from the Middle East in their ranks, and derided their homelands as “shithole” countries — while submitting his preference for immigrants from European countries like Norway.
The clear takeaway from the party’s response to this agenda is that some Republicans may be put off by Trump’s racist remarks, but they’re fine with his racist policies.
At The Washington Post, Catherine Rampell has more on those racist policies:
By all means, we must continue to condemn Trump’s virulently bigoted rhetoric. But we never needed him to talk the talk to know what he thinks. He’s long been walking the walk.
Susan Glasser at The New Yorker:
Half of the country is appalled but not really sure how to combat him; the other half is cheering, or at least averting its gaze. This is what a political civil war looks like, with words, for now, as weapons. As if to underscore the point, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary account tweeted this during Trump’s rally: “Tonight’s top searches, in order: racism, socialism, fascism, concentration camp, xenophobia, bigot.” Whatever you call what is happening in America right now, Trump is convinced it is working for him, which is why we are in for many more such weeks, all the way through 2020.
Eugene Robinson on Trump’s 2020 strategy:
Trump has decided to seek a second term by making a naked appeal to white racism. I didn’t think we’d ever see anything worse than his 2016 campaign, which he launched by slandering Mexican immigrants as drug dealers and rapists. Obviously, I was wrong. [...]
He has never made a serious effort to expand his base. Instead, he seeks to inflame it.
Trump no longer pretends to be the voice of forgotten working-class Americans. He has become the voice of insecure white Americans, whom he encourages to resent foreigners, immigrants and uppity minorities. His border policy — separating babies from their mothers, putting children in cages — is the fulfillment of an ugly revenge fantasy. Cruelty isn’t an unfortunate byproduct of Trump’s crackdown on asylum seekers. It’s the whole point.
On a final note, don’t miss Montel Williams, writing in USA Today, on why Trump is relying on such a 2020 strategy:
Once again, our national dialogue has been hijacked by the immature, racist tweets of a man I’ve known for more than 20 years who is unraveling before our eyes on Twitter and on live television. As much as I want to believe that my former acquaintance’s election was a fluke, it’s time we simply admit the truth: President Donald Trump got elected because of his racism, not in spite of it. My former party, including its voters, has been infected by it. And if we’re not incredibly careful, he’ll be re-elected — because racism is a powerful drug. [...]
It is long past time to end the debate about whether the president is a racist — it’s painfully obvious that he is. So too is it time to stop pretending that he is somehow a genius playing four-dimensional chess — he’s not. It’s also long past time to acknowledge that the unifying principles for his candidacy were xenophobia, racism and bigotry. The only debate left is whether we, as a country, care enough to make a stand against racism.
The best antidote to Trumpism, the single most important form of resistance, is to show up to vote in each and every election. Decisions are made by those who show up. And the fact is, we’re where we are right now because a lot of folks couldn’t be bothered to vote.