Trump’s Racism Infests the Republican Party
As his latest foray into bigotry shows, the president is feeling empowered by the lack of opposition from within the GOP.
By Timothy L. O'Brien
July 29, 2019, 4:00 AM PDT
Earlier this year, Mark Meadows thanked his friend Elijah Cummings for defending him against accusations of racism. President Trump spent the weekend attacking Cummings — and slagging him as a racist — and Meadows is nowhere to be found.
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One person who has yet to speak out on Cummings’s behalf is his good friend, Meadows. The congressman from North Carolina, like
his entire political party, has remained silent while Trump – an inveterate racist– has spent yet another weekend targeting a high-profile Democrat of color in heinous, prejudiced ways. In that context, Meadows is a proxy for the lack of political courage and moral clarity in Trump’s Republican Party.
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Finally, and most troubling of all, the White House has concluded that Trump’s racist tweets and attacks on politicians of color may be an asset in the 2020 presidential campaign because it will resonate strongly “among his political base,” according to the Washington Post.
All of this explains why Trump sprang into action over the weekend. But it’s worth recognizing too just how comfortable the president has become with random bigotry, and with openly deploying a racism that has come naturally to him for quite some time. He might have checked himself if his party was more resolute, but he clearly understands that Meadows and the rest are there to empower him.
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https://twitter.com/TimOBrien/status/1155819769968386049
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-29/trump-s-baltimore-elijah-cummings-racism-is-fine-with-republicans