If you haven’t read the recc’ed diary entitled The One Word That Could Take Down Trump (www.dailykos.com/...), please do so and keep it recc’ed up. Put it on Twitter and Facebook if you can. In it, BorderGal argues that Democrats uniformily and relentlessly should use the word ‘coward’ to describe Trump.
I think it’s brilliant. It will easily get under Trump’s thin skin. It also happens to be 100% true (see cowering Trump in meeting with Mexican President; see cowering Trump when confronted by Flint Pastor).
But this isn’t just a Trump issue. This was brilliantly illustrated by Chris Hayes through a recent interview of a Republican strategist.
It’s an 8-minute clip but well worth watching. www.msnbc.com/...
In it, Chris Hayes has Sam Nunberg, Republican strategist and a former Trump aide, and Nina Turner as guests. Chris confronts Nunberg’s personal role in advancing Trump’s birther movement. Nunberg tries to deflect the discussion but neither Hayes nor Turner were having any of it. Turner in particular called it what it was: racist.
Nunberg’s efforts fell completely flat — even resorting to excusing the “Obama is Muslim” meme as understandable because of President Obama’s name — I kid you not. Then Chris Hayes puts him in his place, reading disgusting Facebook posts that Nunberg himself had made and making it simple by saying it is an act of moral cowardice not to own up to his role in promoting these falsehoods. That finally caused Nunberg to express some regret, halfheartedly.
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But Hayes’ message goes well beyond Nunberg.
When Trump relentlessly pushed his Birther lie, the Republican Party, including its entire leadership, sat back and stayed silent. By failing to call out Trump’s racist, xenophobic lies, they were complicit. Dan Gerstein, in a 2009 Forbes article, reported:
Indeed, not one of high-ranking House Republican came to the president’s defense or issued a public statement to debunk the loony birther accusations.
This got me wondering: What would it take to get top Republican leaders to take a public position on the matter? So I called the press offices of House Minority Leader John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and RNC Chairman Michael Steele. I asked them if they had made any public statement affirming the president’s citizenship and denouncing the birther movement that I might have missed–and if not, whether they were prepared to do so now.
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Here you may have the most breathtaking testament yet to how broken our political system remains, and how deep the partisan blood lust runs. Here you may have the most breathtaking testament yet to how broken our political system remains, and how deep the partisan blood lust runs. Given the chance, the top three Republican leaders in Washington were not willing to go on the record affirming without qualification that the president of the United States is an American citizen.
www.forbes.com/...
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. It is now a matter of public record that the Republican Party, as a whole, doubled down on this extraordinary act of moral cowardice by allowing a known race baiter, Donald Trump, to become its nominee for President of the United States. And both Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell have demonstrated their personal cowardice by endorsing this person.
These repeated acts of moral cowardice cannot be walked back. They own it.
Thank you Chris Hayes for correctly framing it this way.