I read that Trump wrote on his Truth Social personal soapbox, the MAGA megalomaniac’s megaphone, on Thursday in response to the FBI raid the following:
This reminded me how much Trump likes to remind his supporters, as if they need such a reminder, that Obama’s father was a black African. Consider this from 2018:
Why Trump took a renewed interest in Barack Obama's middle name
Trump needed an issue to motivate GOP voters. He chose the one topic he sees as a life-preserver intended to rescue Republican candidates.
There's a lot of this going around. A Washington Post analysis added yesterday, "President Trump appears to be banking on his party retaining control of the Senate or even gaining seats. To do so, and presumably in an effort to goose Republican turnout broadly in hopes of averting disaster in the House, he is increasingly surfacing an often-submerged bit of political rhetoric: Vote Republican to protect white America."
At first blush, it's tempting to emphasize what electoral strategies like these tell us about Donald Trump, his character, and his years-long record of exploiting racial tensions to advance his interests.
But as important as this is, we're also learning quite a bit about what Trump thinks of Republican voters. We are, after all, talking about election-season messaging: the president has voiced public concerns for months about his party's rank-and-file supporters feeling unmotivated ahead of today's midterm elections, which led Trump to look for ways to get them excited.
The president chose one topic above all others: race. It's the issue Trump sees as the life-preserver that may rescue Republican candidates.
That says a lot about who Trump is, but it says just as much about what Trump thinks of his party's voters.
Also this from 2020: Trump again goes after Barack by calling him ‘Hussein Obama’ and saying no one went to his Biden rallies.
I think it is yet another sign of his desperation, an indication that at some level Trump feels that the walls are closing in on him, that he is resorting to the tropes of racism that were previously successful in ginning up the fears of his lily white bigoted base that America was fast becoming a multi-ethnic country where white no longer automatically made right.
These people had their fears realized when Obama was elected not once, but twice.* In a way Trump is suggesting that if a black man could take home 33 million documents, some of which were classified, (of course Obama did no such thing, this is an outright lie) certainly he, as a white man should be able to take just a few boxes.
Trump believes that when you’re the white savior you should be able to get away with anything, and his sycophants bow down to this message. Not that we need to be enlightened about this, but there are those who believe Trump is the Second Coming.
Here’s an article about the billboard which was put up in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Georgia district.
Addendum:
Not that anybody reading this has to be reminded that Donald Trump’s father Frederick was, like his son, a racist here’s an article that lays this out.
Excerpt:
Both Fred Trump, the company’s chairman, and Donald Trump, its president, were named as defendants. [U.S. vs. Fred and Donald Trump (pdf) ]
It was front-page news, and for Donald, it amounted to his debut in the public eye giving us an insight into what is now clear that Fred and Donald Trump are Racist! Period!
Footnote:
* Some of the Trump supporters probably couldn’t say that his (Obama’s) Republican opponents were Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan (2012) and John McCain and Sarah Palin (2008) but they surely know they were white.
