Watching Tuesday night’s coverage of the primaries in FL, OH, NC, MO and IL on MSNBC made me so angry that I was sorely tempted to throw something heavy at my TV. Once again here was another GOP pundit, Nicole Wallace and an MSNBC talking head Chuck Todd, trying to explain that the reason no other GOP candidate could topple Trump was that they were making no effort to reach out to the Trump voter to find out what it is they want. Wallace went so far as to say that she believed that Trump’s supporters are so attracted to Trump’s honesty, that they support him in spite of all the awful things he says, not because of them.
Rachel Maddow tried bravely to interrupt this little fairy tale that Wallace was spinning but like a cheerleader on steroids, Wallace talked right over her, giddily explaining that Trump’s big gift is that he not a politician but someone real to whom the voters can relate. While she doesn’t like him herself, she can see how the fact that he shares their frustration and feels their pain is so appealing.
Chuck Todd added insult to injury by drawing a contrast between other GOP candidate’s failure to reach out to Trump’s supporters with Hillary Clinton’s much more successful attempt to reach out to Bernie Sanders’ voters. Of course he ignored the obvious, which is that Bernie’s supporters are intelligent, thoughtful, tolerant and motivated by a true desire to make life better for the poor and middle class. I’m not sure what the other GOP candidates could to do to show that they can connect with Trump voters, burn a cross in someone’s lawn?
Please, let’s not pretend that Trump supporters are anything but what they are, ignorant, intolerant, furious, white people who deeply distrust the government. In overwhelming numbers they believe President Obama is a secret Muslim who was born in Kenya. They think homosexuality should be punished, if not by death, then by permanent stigmatization and enforced isolation from “normal” people. Trump devotees are not only not troubled by his plans to both build a giant wall between the U.S. and Mexico and round up 11 million people for mass deportation, they think those are brilliant ideas. All you have to do is watch the anger and violence at one of his rallies to know that Trump supporters are A-OK with his white supremacists and Ku Klux Klan endorsers. In fact, the robo calls white supremacists made on Trump’s behalf probably helped get out the vote for him..
As Nicole Wallace delivered her inane analysis essentially sugar-coating the ugly, mean-spirited, and quite frankly terrifying motives behind the Trump voter as some kind of legitimate voter unrest, and as Chuck Todd added his brainless observation about the need for Cruz and Kasich to connect with the Trump voter, I wondered when someone was going to say to either of them “are you out of your f*^king minds?”
Alas, Rachel Maddow, who I credit for at least looking pained, was too polite to get into an on-air scuffle, and Brian Williams was too busy listening to instructions on his earpiece, so Wallace and Todd were allowed to spout their ridiculous theories with almost no push-back.
I think we all, Democrats, Republicans, Independents and everyone else who wouldn’t be caught dead voting for Trump need to push back hard. Trump supporters are no different than George Wallace supporters in 1968. His campaign was also based on fear, hatred and bigotry. The difference is I don’t remember any journalists or party pundits trying to make it sound normal.