Donald Trump managed to give a speech that, while delivering an incendiary call for racial tension, still managed to fool the media into a drooling stupor because he managed not to use any outright slurs. Somehow, the majority of the media woke up this morning and decided to write about the new, docile Trump. They’ve all seemingly imagined him pivoting to some position of moderation and temperance. Just because a tiger doesn’t rip your face off on a given day, it doesn’t mean that he’s changed his stripes.
Somehow, the nonsense of discussing Donald Trump and the GOP as though they’re different continues.
It picked up a little steam after that speech as a matter of fact. People want to believe that Donald Trump is not the same as the GOP. He is. He is the logical conclusion of republican theories with a few minor exceptions.
He is not the first one to propose a wall, or useless arms buildup, or completely gutting the social safety net. In fact, those are things the republicans have kicked around for years. They put out budgets with insanely high growth in their dynamic scoring and show that their tax cuts for the wealthy will balance the budget somehow, or like they did recently they don’t even bother to make it balance.
Trump’s tax plan is a remix of the trickle down economics that got the whole massive national debt party started in the first place. Thanks Reagan. Thanks to Reagan too for the massive deregulation that set the stage for our current bubble and bust economic model.
The wall and blaming illegal immigrants for loss of prosperity is nothing new.
Look at the entire career of Rumsfeld and all his buddies if you want to see useless, massive arms buildup. To get the whole picture you have to go back to Rummy’s career during the Cold War. Don’t think the War on Terror was the only time Rummy tried to torpedo this country in service of his own insane world view. He’s an MVP in the Military Industrial Complex’s profit hall of fame.
Killing social security, medicaid, and any other social safety net in favor of corporate profits has been something the GOP drooled over for years. Look no further than any of the fantasy land budgets Paul Ryan has produced for evidence of this.
Donald Trump is the nastiest parts of the Republican platform of discrimination, warmongering, and otherism. His bald-faced representation of the base’s beliefs has finally awoken some response from moderate and reasonable America. It is an opportunity to tame the beast that the modern GOP has become. If the craven Republicans in congress ever do decide to impeach him, and we wind up with Pence who can give a speech without taking off his human mask, that opportunity will go away.
You can find plenty of evidence that the country will go back to sleep if the GOP is able to put a sane face on their destructive platform if you look at the reaction from the media after Donnie managed, just once to keep his eyes on the prompter.
Somehow, the media gobbled it all up.
The stories are everywhere and vacuous talking heads can’t help but fall all over themselves to say he’s pivoted. He’s started to come around. That’s utter nonsense. The content of the speech was as caustic as any even if he did manage to get through without straying from the teleprompter.
Van Jones said that when Trump recognized the wife of the fallen Navy SEAL, he became President at that moment. Setting aside the inauguration, making this gesture can’t possibly undo the massive pile of insults and slurs Trump has thrown at the military. He said that the generals are the ones who lost the SEAL, shoving off blame for approving the raid. He said McCain wasn’t a war hero, because he likes heroes who don’t get captured. He told a family that he’s the one who has made sacrifices, despite the fact that they lost their son. The list goes on and on. At least he didn’t eat fancy mustard on his burger.
Somehow it’s widespread. They say he acted so presidential. It’s beyond ridiculous. Just because he managed to use his inside voice and not lead any chants about jailing political opponents they seemingly glaze over the content of the speech. This speech included a call for publication of immigrant crimes. The result will be real violence perpetrated on anyone with an accent. Angry mobs don’t stop to check immigration status.
Right wing terrorism in this country is already a real problem, and it will only flare up more if incendiary speech like that becomes the norm. The least a thinking pundit or media organization can do is not pat Trump on the head for, “pivoting” because he manages to speak for an hour and not spew bile on the microphone. They owe it to us not to applaud like he’s a toddler that managed to peepee in the potty for the first time.
If Donald Trump starts behaving well, pushes policy that actually does work for people, and eschews his policy of otherizing and scapegoating the marginalized, then he deserves all the praise in the world. Until then, the media owes it to us not to be fooled into thinking that he’s normal because he can give one speech and sound like a politician.