Donald Trump is being hugely unpresidential again. But while that’s kind of a day-ending-in-Y thing, significant moments in time provide individuals with opportunities to go bigger, for better or worse. Trump is taking a moment of reckoning for the nation’s direction and pushing us closer to the abyss, re-cementing his legacy as the president who encouraged white supremacist violence.
One of Trump’s mega-fans has been arrested for sending 14 mail bombs to prominent Trump critics. A white supremacist has been arrested after shooting two black people in a grocery store, having failed to enter a black church. And the rabid anti-Semite who killed 11 Jewish people worshiping in their own synagogue cited Jewish support for the migrant caravan Trump has been using to whip up the Republican base. But cue Trump on Twitter:
A man killed 11 elderly people in their house of worship because of their membership in a religion that’s been historically targeted for violence, after weeks and really years of Republicans using George Soros as a neat little synecdoche for “Jew.” And to bring it full circle, the Republican House majority leader tweeted that Soros was, with two other Jewish billionaires, trying to “buy” the elections a day after Soros was targeted with a mail bomb, a bomb that came from the aforementioned Trump mega-fan. But to Trump it’s “The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People.”
“We will then be able to bring all sides together in Peace and Harmony” if the media would just “stop the open & obvious hostility,” says the man who has at every turn done everything he could to stoke anger and outrage and hostility and, yes, racism and anti-Semitism. Trump’s supporter targeted with bombs people who Trump has targeted with angry tweets and words, but sure, it’s the media. Eleven elderly people were murdered in this moment in time because their killer blamed Jews for exactly the group of asylum-seeking migrants Trump had been ranting and lying about in hopes it would help Republicans win the elections. But according to Trump, the fault lies with … what, the media for reporting what he himself said?
This string of events is like someone designed a brutal, terrifying experiment to determine if there lurks anywhere in Donald Trump the ability to feel shame. The answer is no.
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