Trump has repeatedly rejected the notion that he is playing to racial fears in his campaign. “I am the least racist person that you’ve ever encountered,” he told The Washington Post on Thursday.
I’d never heard this phrase “trickle-down racism” before yesterday. Whether it has been used before or not, good-on Mitt, it is one of the best and most accurate attacks at Trump anyone, especially any Republican, has leveled at the divisive racist candidate. (
below from The Washington Post)
The furor over Trump’s assaults on the impartiality of a Latino judge had just begun to subside when he lobbed two tweets Friday morning responding to Warren, who had lambasted him as a “thin-skinned, racist bully” in a speech the previous evening.
“Pocahontas is at it again!” Trump wrote in one. “Goofy Elizabeth Warren, one of the least productive U.S. Senators, has a nasty mouth.”
“No, seriously — Delete your account,” Warren tweeted back. One of the senator’s supporters secured Pocahontas.com and redirected it to Warren’s campaign site.
Joy Reed and her guests are discussing the Pocahontas this morning. They replayed him saying this again, pointing out the crowd reaction of Indian whoops, and noted that the boy in the background is making Indian war-crys. Way to influence our youth! So much for a “Trump pivot.”
The “Pocahontas” line spurred chatter at former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s ideas summit Friday in Park City, Utah, where some attendees said they were aghast at Trump’s many race-based lines of attack. Romney told CNN on Friday that he was worried Trump’s language could lead to “trickle-down racism” in the country.
Of course, even though it has been pointed out that the use of Pocahontas is an offensive term if used to describe female Native Americans, Trump in his usual manner flails out with what he proudly likes to brag is a counter-punch. Message to Trump, you’re no Muhammad Ali. Hell, he’s no Ingmar Johanson what least had some knockouts.
Hours later, Trump reiterated the swipe. “I’m doing such a disservice to Pocahontas, it’s not fair,” he said sarcastically during a rally in Richmond.“Mr. Trump’s comments reinforce broad stereotypes of Native Americans as Indian chiefs, mascots and princesses, rather than contemporary people who are contributing to society,” she said, adding: “He’s not using the term in any way to be honorific. He using it to mock her.”
His racial attacks again Indians aren’t new:
Trump has been accused of peddling Native American stereotypes in the past. In 1993, he created an uproar at a House subcommittee hearing by testifying that “organized crime is rampant” in Indian casinos around the nation. At the time, the developer was fighting the expansion of gambling on tribal lands, a direct threat to his casino empire.
Ditching a seven-page statement he planned to deliver as too “politically correct,” Trump claimed that he could keep mobsters out of casinos but that Native Americans would not be able to.
“That an Indian chief is going to tell Joe Killer to please get off his reservation is almost unbelievable to me,” he said, prompting objections from lawmakers and indignant scoffs from the audience.
Trump also questioned the legitimacy of the Mashantucket Pequots, who operate the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut.
“They don’t look like Indians to me,” he said. “And they don’t look like Indians to Indians.”
In 2000, he secretly financed newspaper ads in Upstate New York warning that a casino sought by the St. Regis Mohawk nation would attract criminals and drug users.
Republicans are talking about Trump needing to pivot, to become Trump 2.0, to look like a serious candidate, to think before you speak, to get on script, and on and on. Do they really think they can make this bespeckled orange beast can change his spots?
