and in an op ed in today’s New York Times, Andrew Rosenthal demonstrates that clearly.
His column is titled Donald Trump’s Real Message on Race and its very beginning gives a hint of where Rosenthal is going:
The more Donald Trump presses his supposed effort to appeal to black voters, the more bizarre it gets.
I am not going to go through all of it. The column is brief enough.
As others have done, Rosenthal points out that Trump is not really seeking Black votes. After reviewing some of the recent landscape, including the obnoxious Trump Mahoning County Chair, he says of Trump’s recent actions and words
Not convinced that this is going to make black Americans vote for Trump?
That’s probably because Trump isn’t actually speaking to minority voters. He is offering excuses for white Americans who might otherwise hesitate to support a racist candidate.
After going through other material, Rosenthal returns to Kathy Miller, that Mahoning County (now former) Trump county chair, making sure we know all that she said. Remember, she is the one who said that there was no racism until Obama became President.
Which eventually brings us to his two final paragraphs. These are the words that cut through the bs:
On Earth, people know that racism has poisoned America since it was founded. All that changed when Obama was elected in 2008 was that some bigots began to speak more openly.
Trump has given them permission to shout their hatred from the rooftops. That’s the truth behind his campaign, and no phony town-hall meeting staged by Fox News is going to change it.
Indeed.
By now anyone who has been paying attention should know Trump’s horrible record on race, from the 1970s and getting cited for discrimination in housing, to having dealers of color not on the floor when he visited his casinos, to his actively fanning hatred and calling for execution of the Central Park Five who actually were innocent of the crime for which they were convicted, to his pretending that he did not know who David Duke was, to both he and his son actively retweeting racist and anti-Semitic images, to more.
There is no doubt that Trump is bigoted in many ways.
There is even less doubt that he is purposefully fanning bigotry among others as a means of advancing his candidacy, otherwise he never would have hired Bannon to run his campaign.
If you remember nothing else from this column, think of how many bigots have come out from under their rocks in association with and support of his campaign and remember these words from Rosenthal:
Trump has given them permission to shout their hatred from the rooftops.