I was in Atlanta, Georgia, three years ago for Netroots Nation. (Totally bummed we had to cancel in Denver this year.) It was during this time that a young activist was brutally murdered at the white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia to protest the removal of a Confederate statue. Trump held a press conference to discuss some stupid executive order he signed, but all the reporters were asking why his response to the Neo-Nazi’s violent protest was so… lacking.
Trump decided this was time to let his racist flag fly:
"You also had people that were very fine people, on both sides."
At that moment, America dropped their collective jaw when Trump lumped the murderous Klansmen and Nazis with the protesters of symbols of white supremacy.
This happened right before Al Gore, a guest at Netroots Nation, was interviewed on stage. Al Gore was trying to give the president the benefit of the doubt, and was pretty measured in his response, saying he urged Trump to “try again.”
Well, it’s been almost four long, miserable, race-baiting years. Four years of waiting for Trump to “rise to the occasion” or some other BS. Four years of chances to prove that Trump isn’t a hardcore white supremacist piece of trash. For four years, violent racists have been emboldened from Trump’s rhetoric, from "s***hole countries" , to "go back to their huts", to the more recent "Kung Flu." We’ve had to endure his anti-Semitic retweets from Nazi accounts like “whitegenocideTM” to insisting that judges with Hispanic heritage can't rule on his scam businesses. There’s also the whole Central American babies in cages thing, but I don’t have time to go down a full list. The point is the press and even our Democratic statesmen gave him way more leeway than he deserved, and he just kept sinking lower.
First, Trump sent out this tweet:
The minorities are coming! Trump doesn’t do dog whistles.
His favorite “nasty” reporter asked him what he meant by that. Trump responded just like you thought he would:
Every f-ing day with this racist a-hole.
The Daily Show put out an ad for Trump:
Let’s make sure Trump isn’t around for the next anniversary.