By Dan K
Community
REPUBLISHED BY:
The title quote is from Eugene Robinson’s column in this afternoon’s WaPo: Trump’s most racist supporters are coming to his defense:
Meanwhile, in Atlanta, Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis, who filed a massive racketeering indictment against Trump and 18 co-defendants on Monday night (and is African American), also has received racist threats that include pictures of gallows and nooses.
And the names and purported addresses of the grand jurors who returned the Fulton County indictment were doxed on a pro-Trump fringe website, according to NBC. The network said one of the responses to the list read: “These jurors have signed their death warrant by falsely indicting President Trump.”
I remember back in the good old days (before the 2016 election) when many commentators tried to soften Trump’s pretty obvious racism by excusing it as politics or by saying we can’t know what’s in his mind. We, BS on that. We can know and we do know.
On Tuesday morning, Trump wrote that he will present an “irrefutable” report about election fraud that he alleges took place in Georgia next Monday.
“Based on the results of this CONCLUSIVE Report, all charges should be dropped against me & others – There will be a complete EXONERATION,” Trump wrote. “They never went after those that Rigged the Election. They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!” www.dailydot.com/…
(I’m not an African-American, but I’m still sensitive to racial and other epithets. Somehow, though, I missed this one, though it puzzled me why tfg put in that last sentence, since it made even less sense than his usual rants — until Robinson explained it. I can only plead that the flood of other news overwhelmed me.)
Robinson quite rightly focuses on the attacks on African-Americans (and other people of color), especially, who as prosecutors and judges are preparing to hold Trump accountable for his actions. But I want to address another aspect that Robinson only touched on:
It was always just a matter of time before threats against the public officials and everyday citizens who are holding Trump accountable became explicitly violent and racist. The only question is whether the Republican Party is going to pretend not to notice — which is the same thing as actively joining in. [emphasis added]
There was always an implicit racist aspect to Trump’s threats against anyone who stood in his way, and Robinson is correct to say it is now explicit. But Trump’s habit of calling for violence has always been explicit. During the 2016 campaign, he called on his supporters to beat up protestors and “promised” he would pay their legal bills. (I don’t recall that anyone actually took him up on it, but if so, they would have found his promise was worth what his other promises were — bupkes.)
Political violence has a long history in this country. Just ask Alexander Hamilton. Or Huey Long. Or the four assassinated presidents (plus a couple who almost were). But in general, this political violence has been directed at specific individuals in public life. This threat to the grand jurors, ordinary citizens who stepped up to do their duty to the country and Constitution, represents a new depth that we have rarely if ever seen before. We protect our presidents; we can, when necessary, protect public servants like Judge Chutkan and DA Willis. We simply do not have the resources to protect every private citizen who serves for a moment, much less the multitude of other citizens who do nothing more than express an opinion that Trump doesn’t like.
And Trump knows that. He’s counting on it.
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