Trump is stoking the fires of Waco

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/trump-stokes-fires-extremism-waco-rally-17856521.php

Trump is stoking the fires of Waco
The Editorial Board
March 23, 2023


The Branch Davidians' Mount Carmel compound outside of Waco, Texas, burns to the ground during the 1993 raid by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). Gregory Smith/Corbis via Getty Images

On a sultry Sunday afternoon in August, 1980, the Republican nominee for president of the United States chose the Neshoba County Fair outside the little town of Philadelphia, Miss., for his first major campaign speech. Ronald Reagan — “appearing in an open-necked shirt and red clay-stained shoes,” a local reporter noted — assured a mostly white crowd that day that he was a firm believer in “states’ rights,” an oft-used code in the South in those days for racial segregation and discrimination.

Reagan happened not to mention that seven miles from where he was speaking, three young civil rights workers had been kidnapped and murdered 16 years earlier by a Ku Klux Klan gang that included the county sheriff. Debated to this day is the question of whether the candidate’s paean to states’ rights, combined with his failure to mention the martyred trio, represents an early example of what has come to be called dog-whistle politics — in other words, conveying a subtle message for those with ears to hear, while maintaining plausible deniability.

Some historians suggest that a campaign scheduler made a mistake by sending the candidate to Philadelphia, and Reagan was reluctant to disappoint his Mississippi audience by backing out. Others maintain that the former two-term governor of California, a first-time presidential nominee but an experienced politician, was pursuing his own “southern strategy” by showing up in a place associated with all-out resistance to civil rights.

When Donald Trump flies into Waco on Saturday evening for the first major campaign event of his 2024 reelection quest, dog ears won’t be the only ones twitching. Trump doesn’t do subtle; dog-whistle messages are not his style. The more apt metaphor is the blaring air horn of a Mack 18-wheeler barreling down I-10.

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