It was one of those seemingly small stories that actually defined the current political era. It defined Donald Trump and the Republican Party that created him and owns him. That the NBC News headline was so simple and straightforward was chilling. It was presented as straight news:
In the dark corners of white nationalism, the talk is of Trump
ANALYSIS: After the last week, the extremists are not sure whether the president is with them or not. But they are definitely hearing him.
Nazis aren't sure whether or not the president is with them. This is not normal. This must never be accepted as normal.
President Donald Trump has put white nationalists on a roller coaster ride in the closing days before the midterm elections.
A roller coaster. This must never be understood as anything less than an outrage. This must never be accepted as anything other than the exact opposite of that for which this nation is supposed to stand. Presidents are not with Nazis. Part of their basic job description is to defeat Nazism and all its sibling iterations.
Eight days ago, Trump declared himself a "nationalist" at a campaign rally in Houston. Then, after 11 worshipers were slaughtered at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday, he condemned "the scourge of anti-Semitism." And in a snippet of an interview with "Axios on HBO" released Monday, amid a broader push to make his hard-line immigration stance a focal point of the election in a week, he announced a proposal to end "birthright citizenship" by executive order.
The dark corners of the white nationalist movement take different views of Trump: Some on the far right are ardent supporters who see him as a fellow traveler, while others believe that the president has failed to live up to his promises on immigration and has been too supportive of Israel and too close to Jewish advisers, including members of his own family.
One can understand their confusion. After first blaming the victims of the anti-Semitic massacre in Pittsburgh, Trump went through the motions of pretending to care, and then just a day later bull-horned the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that incited it. He then whined that the political fallout might hurt his Republicans in next week’s election. Because even though eleven people were killed, he is the victim. This is not normal. This is not okay. We must never accept that such hateful bigotry has become such a prominent part of our political fabric. We must never accept that a president of the United States routinely spews such hateful bigotry. Trump's entire brand is hatred and bigotry. That's it. He has nothing else.
Trump’s tax cuts went to the wealthy and exploded the deficit, the stock market is on a roller coaster of its own, and there are increasing warnings of a bear market or even recession. Employment numbers merely continue the trend of improvements initiated by President Obama, but long stagnant relative earnings have actually declined. Trump and his Republican Party are trying to strip health care from hundreds of thousands of people, and lying about it, and they intend to gut Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. They are making the nation more polluted, less safe for workers and consumers, and at greater risk of gun violence. Trump's foreign policy is a disaster, as he humiliates himself before foreign despots and could not be more subservient to Vladimir Putin if he were an actual Russian asset. Which he very well might be. But Trump's base doesn't care.
Trump brings the bigotry. Not only does he trigger right-wing domestic terrorists, but he cut funding to combat them, is having the FBI all but ignore them, and apparently won’t renew the Department of Homeland Security program that fights them. Meanwhile, he's wasting massive resources in order to promote the lie that there's an imminent threat on the southern border. Actual threats are given a pass because they are perpetrated by white supremacists, while false threats are concocted because they can be used to foment racist hatred. That’s Trump.
As I noted last week, Trump routinely attacks racial, religious, sexual and gender minorities, desperate refugees, and even the disabled. And even after his rhetoric inspired a terrorist to send bombs to opposition political leaders, and after his rhetoric incited an anti-Semitic massacre, Trump didn’t step back, self-reflect, and try to inspire calm, rather he ramped his rhetoric up. Terrorists themselves say they are inspired by Trump, and he’s deliberately continuing to make things worse. He does it because it comes from what passes for his metaphorical heart, and he does it because it motivates his voting base.
This is Donald Trump. This is the modern Republican Party. The Republican Party created Trump, and he is the culmination of its decades of courting and inflaming bigots and extremists. Trump has merely distilled the Republican Party to the essence of what it already had become.
Trump's hateful bigotry is why people voted for him. Trump's hateful bigotry was the key to his base support. For his key swing voters, Trump's hateful bigotry was what mattered most. For his key swing voters, Trump's hateful bigotry was the defining reason for their choice. And in the closing weeks of the 2018 campaign, it's the easiest and most natural way for him to try to galvanize his supporters again. It's what his supporters want. And for Trump, it's not just a political ploy, it's merely being who he is.