Is Donald Trump embracing the Alt-right?
Politics –
Alt-Right Rules Trump;
Black Outreach A Sham!
Donald Trump claims he is sincere in his outreach to African-Americans, Mexicans, and other minority voters. However, several prominent Democrats are crying foul, saying Trump is so closely linked to the Alt-right that his alleged minority outreach is an outright sham!
Politics
In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, “Alt-right” relates to the “alternate right,” which is the bigoted/racist fringe wing of the GOP that’s even further to the right than most conservatives. For months, Donald Trump has stirred up Alt-right bias against Mexicans, Muslims, African-Americans and more, and now, Hillary Clinton is among those who says enough is enough!
Democrats have been waiting for Hillary Clinton to take off the gloves and engage in a street-fight with Donald Trump. Last Thursday, they got their wish as Hillary attacked “The Donald” for his divisive rhetoric and for being the poster boy for the Alt-right.
“From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia,” she said to a crowd at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada. “He is taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party. His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous.”
Hillary went on to describe Donald Trump as a candidate “with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of the supermarket tabloids and the far, dark reaches of the internet.” She then reminded voters how Trump launched his campaign by suggesting that undocumented immigrants from Mexico were rapists and criminals. She also seized on Trump’s hiring of Steve Bannon, the former chairman of the “Alt-right” leaning Breitbart News, as his campaign’s chief executive.
Mrs. Clinton noted that Trump has brought a hate movement into the mainstream; has embraced admirers who are members of the Ku Klux Klan; was slow to disavow praise from former KKK leader David Duke during the Republican primaries; has retweeted comments from white supremacists online; and that he is in bed with white nationalists, racists, misogynists, and anti-Semites — which is the traditional audience of a news site such as Breitbart.
“Through it all, he has continued pushing discredited conspiracy theories with racist undertones,” she said.
Her words came in tandem with a New York Times article describing the racist practices Donald Trump learned from his real estate father, Fred Trump, who regularly refused to rent apartments to non-whites.
‘Take the application and put it in a drawer and leave it there,’” real estate agent Stanley Leibowitz recalled the senior Trump frequently telling him whenever a black person applied for a vacancy.
This racist mentality was ingrained into Donald Trump from a very early age. Now, it has found its way into his run for the presidency and has encouraged an island of misfit bigots to rally behind him.
Politics
Despite Trump appearing to adopt a more inclusive tone through a recently staged minority outreach plan, not everyone is convinced his motives are genuine.
NY Times Op-Ed columnist Charles Blow is calling Trump’s alleged outreach to black voters “The most insidious kind of bigotry.”
“It is the kind of bigotry that says I will knock you down while I pretend to pick you up,” Blow said in a diatribe on CNN. “It says that I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to the guy behind you or over your shoulder. It’s the kind of bigotry that says I’m urinating on you and telling you to dance in the rain. This is the most horrible kind of bigotry. And the fact that people keep asking the same question, particularly to black commentators like me, is he reaching out to black people — he is not reaching out to black people.”
Blow continued explaining his belief that Trump’s “minority outreach” is actually directed toward moderate white voters who are uncomfortable with his campaign’s racist tone.
“It is the moderate ones who say, ‘I don’t want to be the woman, man who votes for the racist guy. And if this guy can now change his opinion, I do want to be a conservative, but I don’t want to be a conservative who votes for the racist guy. And now he’s different.’ Well, actually, he’s not different,” Blow continued. “He’s not talking to us. He’s pretending to talk to us as he talks to you. And this is an insult to all people of color, both black, Hispanic, and otherwise because he is using us as pawns to get to you. You do not get an out. Know the guy was a bigot yesterday. He’s a bigot today. He will be a bigot tomorrow, and if you vote for him, you’re voting for a bigot. That’s it.”
Ouch!
In defense of his motives, Trump claimed he doesn’t want white supremacists to vote for him, saying “This is not about hate, this is about love. We love our country; we want our country to come back; we want our country to be strong again.”
He then attempted to reject the notion that he has embraced the Alt-right movement.
“Nobody even knows what that is,” Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “There is no alt right or left.”
However, when Cooper noted that Trump’s new campaign chief executive Steve Bannon has frequently used the term “alt-right,” Trump professed ignorance.
“I don’t know what Steve said,” Trump claimed, before quickly changing the subject and pivoting back to Hillary Clinton and her email controversies.
“She’s a third-rate politician,” he barked. “She is all talk, no action. … She should be ashamed of herself.”
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Despite Trump appearing to adopt a more inclusive tone through a recently staged minority outreach plan, not everyone is convinced his motives are genuine. […]
HAH. That's an understatement DJ…lol .And Charles Blow is absolutely right on the money. Trump's so-called Black outreach is a cynical, deceptive and quite racist gimmick. I think most Blacks figured it out from jump.
But also- the other day I watched an interview of some former Trump supporters who expressed their deep regret for having ever voted for that disingenuous and dangerous fool during the GOP primaries. They made it very clear, they're done with Trump's endless BS and won't be voting for him in the general election. Period.
Which (I think) points out an important distinction between actual Conservatives vs Alt-right extremists (White Supremacists)
DJ wrote:
….the term, “Alt-right” relates to the “alternate right,” which is the bigoted/racist fringe wing of the GOP that’s even further to the right than most conservatives. [….]
Yep. and Erick Erickson (formerly of RedState) goes just a bit further in his description:
"The Alt-Right Is Neither Christian Nor Conservative"
To be a member of the alt-right is to see a world of RACIAL grievances where it is the white man’s turn to play victim.
The alt-right is also not conservative. It is more alt-Reich, which is just a nationalist, socialist movement that in this country hides behind rudimentary populism that blows in the wind. [….] at The Resurgent
As I shared last Friday (in response to a related post) I watched Hillary's speech last Thursday evening and YES. It was a sight to behold. She tore him up one side and down the other. She painted a true picture of Trump and she did it with Facts.
"“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” ~Maya Angelou
…and as proof of Trump's so-called "Black Outreach" there's THIS:
"Trump Uses Shooting of Dwyane Wade’s Cousin to Peddle Dangerous Stereotypes"
Has there been a more feckless, disconnected and intellectually lazy major party nominee for president in the modern era? By any measure, the answer is no.
Donald Trump, a man known for hurling racially-charged brickbats of intolerance, spent recent days spewing vile stereotypes in a ham-fistedattempt to appear more sympathetic to African-American voters and blaming Democrats for the social maladies that tend to plague many of nation’s largest cities.
But, Saturday morning, in a uniquely craven and breathtakingly vulturistic social media post, Trump proved—once again—that he knows no boundaries.
Linking the shooting death of NBA superstar Dwyane Wade’s cousin to his own recent rhetorical flourishes about so-called black-on-black crime, the former real estate developer seemed to say: I told you so.
“Dwyane Wade’s cousin was just shot and killed walking her baby in Chicago,” Trump said, in a tweet he deleted, then reposted with the correct spelling of the NBA star’s name. “Just what I have been saying. African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP!”
The fact that the one-time reality television personality originally misspelled Wade’s first name, did not mention Nykea Aldridge by name and failed to extend condolences to the family was largely greeted with derision. As the nation grapples with meaningful solutions to some of our most pressing dilemmas—including how to stem the tide of gun violence—and a family was dealing with a tragic loss, Trump was taking a victory lap. [….] Goldie Taylor, writer at The Daily Beast
…..and Trump's tweet re: the murder of D. Wade's cousin triggered THIS response from Mika Brzezinski (of "Morning Joe*) first thing this morning:
"A psychiatrist needs to examine Trump"
The time has come for a mental health professional to take a look at Donald Trump on the air, MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski said Monday during a frank discussion of the Republican nominee's well-being.
Brzezinski began "Morning Joe" by noting tweets sent from Trump's account Saturday over the death of basketball star Dwyane Wade's cousin from gun violence in Chicago in which he declared that African-American voters will support him, pointing to the shooting as a symptom that he will solve.
"Morning Joe" devoted a significant portion of its opening block to discussing Trump's mental health, a day after President Barack Obama's former campaign manager David Plouffe described him as a "psychopath."
"You know, I think at other stages of other campaigns a network might be snarky and like get a psychiatrist out," Brzezinski said, after former Vermont governor and Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean said Trump exhibited traits of narcissism. [….]
H/T: Politico
LOL oh boy keep em coming DJ. Because everyday their is something new with this fool. Yes Charles Blow got it exactly right on the money when he said Trump is using black people to appeal to whites. He's not fooling no one though because my people are smart. No matter how many times he keeps saying it he is not getting us to vote for him, end of discussion. Now about Hillary, all she has to do is keep using his own words against him. DJ I like the featured video in the left column this week. Hillary just used fact to make a mockery of old Donald.
"LOL oh boy keep em coming DJ. Because everyday their is something new with this fool. "
You got that right BD.
And it appears, that by the time this whole fiasco (his candidacy) ends he will have destroyed even more than what little is left of the Republican Party.
"Donald Trump broke the conservative media"
Excerpt:
"We have reached the bizarro-world point where, for all intents and purposes, conservatives are RINOs," said John Ziegler, a nationally syndicated conservative talk show host who called Andrew Breitbart a friend.
"There is no place now for real conservatives. We've also reached the point, I say, we've left the gravitational pull of the rational Earth, where we are now in a situation where facts don't matter, truth doesn't matter, logic doesn't matter."
Ziegler said he wanted to see the entire system torpedoed and rebuilt.
"I think the conservative media is the worst thing that has ever happened to the Republican Party on a national level," he said.
"Now, this is not Rush's fault, but if you look at the presidential elections before Rush Limbaugh became nationally syndicated, I believe Republicans won five out of six," he said. "After Rush Limbaugh became truly nationally syndicated … if you start in 1996 and what I anticipate will happen in 2016, Republicans will have lost five of the seven presidential elections once he became syndicated."
Ziegler said that if there is no price to pay for Trump's most enthusiastic backers in the conservative press, then "it's over."
"The conservative establishment that needs to be gotten rid of is the conservative media establishment. Sean Hannity needs to go. Bill O'Reilly needs to go. Sadly, Rush Limbaugh needs to go," he said.
The talk show host concluded: "Here's what I'll be very disappointed in: If Trump does lose, as I am very confident that he will, and let's say it's not super close, if he loses by a significant margin and Sean Hannity and people like him have not experienced some significant career pain, if not destruction, because of their role, then it's over. It is over."
"Because if there is no price to pay for conservative-media elements having sold out to Donald Trump, then guess what? It's going to happen again and again and again. … If that doesn't happen, then I think we're done. It's over. […] Oliver Darcy, Business Insider
H/T: Charles Sykes (aka RightWisconsin)
THIS is a lengthily but great read.