The White House blames the targets of the package bombs.
Trump to rally crowd: "I'm going to tone it down a little. Is that all right?"
Rally Crowd: "No!"
Trump: "I thought you would say that."
Trump's audiences don't want Trump to be "presidential." They want him to attack. They think it's hitting back.
At the press conference Monday Sarah Huckabee Sanders said of course Trump was not responsible for creating a tone and message that encouraged the pipe bomb attacks. "Let's not forget those same Democrats have repeatedly criticized the president. . . . The president is going to continue to fight back."
Huffington Post thinks this is absurd; it's blaming the victim.
Trump supporters do not.
Trump voters like it when he takes on blacks, Muslims, immigrants, the university know-it-alls, the global-thinker types, the Democrats, and the media.
Trump supporters do not.
Trump voters like it when he takes on blacks, Muslims, immigrants, the university know-it-alls, the global-thinker types, the Democrats, and the media.
It is easy to underestimate Trump's appeal to his supporters. Readers dismayed by Trump (like the 101 historian Guest Post author yesterday) can be blind to the fact that Trump has succeeded in tapping something politically powerful within the body politic.
Resentment. Resentment of upstarts and interlopers.
Trump briefly tapped leftist resentment against corporate power during the campaign--drain the swamp--but that was a feint. His real target is a punch down, against the people an electoral college majority of white Americans are revealed to resent: people competing for a place at the American table.
The Kavanaugh confirmation battle dovetailed with that narrative. Republican women believed Kavanaugh was being railroaded.
A significant majority of white Americans believe that Afro-Americans face no discrimination, and consider whites to be the disadvantaged group. Trump gets applause when he has renamed Maxine Waters "Low I Q Maxine Waters", the black Congresswoman. The crowds cheer his contempt.
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| Click: NPR Survey |
The Kavanaugh confirmation battle dovetailed with that narrative. Republican women believed Kavanaugh was being railroaded.
A significant majority of white Americans believe that Afro-Americans face no discrimination, and consider whites to be the disadvantaged group. Trump gets applause when he has renamed Maxine Waters "Low I Q Maxine Waters", the black Congresswoman. The crowds cheer his contempt.
He calls it a counter-punch. After all, the aspirations of those groups started it,
And immigrants, too. The Trump view of the Mexican caravan is that it is filled with people who just pretend to be refugees, cheaters, paid by George Soros, with terrorists hiding among them. Trump's audiences cheer the idea of turning them back without a hearing.
Today Trump announced he was reinterpreting the 14th Amendment which states that people born in America are citizens. This would mean a class of stateless and disempowered non-citizens, a return to the pre-civil war era. He is announcing this a week before the mid-term elections because he believes this is popular. Keep them out and keep them down.
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| Click: December 4, 2015 |
I had watched Trump--and his crowds--up close three times by December of 2015, and I was warning readers that Trump had a theme that was working for him, and the political world needed to take note.
It was simple, I wrote. He message was that Muslims and immigrants were dangerous and stealing our jobs and we should resent it. He said white Americans aren't appreciated enough, and they get accused of racism or sexism for itty bitty things that are taken wrong, and this isn't fair. He said American leaders cooperate with foreigners and we are being taken for suckers.
It was that simple, I said. Trump had located points of resentment and was fanning the flames to an audience who shared those feelings, and it was working for him politically.
He is still doing it.
[NOTE: I have learned I need to say this whenever I describe what I think is real, as opposed to what i prefer. Readers--especially ones on the left--assume I like what I am describing, and that I must therefore agree with Trump's chanting crowds. No.
1. I think Trump is a dangerous demagogue. He is very skilled, however, which is why he is dangerous. He has a performer's gift of engaging an audience and observing what motivates it. I observe this. I don't celebrate this. 2. I am a white male, but I disagree with the polled majority of people who think whites face more discrimination than do Afro-Americans. I consider that absurd. Black and brown people face a headwind of prejudice, and I have benefited from a tailwind of cultural assumptions, benefits, and prejudice.]
He is still doing it.
[NOTE: I have learned I need to say this whenever I describe what I think is real, as opposed to what i prefer. Readers--especially ones on the left--assume I like what I am describing, and that I must therefore agree with Trump's chanting crowds. No.
1. I think Trump is a dangerous demagogue. He is very skilled, however, which is why he is dangerous. He has a performer's gift of engaging an audience and observing what motivates it. I observe this. I don't celebrate this. 2. I am a white male, but I disagree with the polled majority of people who think whites face more discrimination than do Afro-Americans. I consider that absurd. Black and brown people face a headwind of prejudice, and I have benefited from a tailwind of cultural assumptions, benefits, and prejudice.]
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