Horowitz: Trump Amps Up the Racism

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Rob Horowitz, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

Rob Horowitz

When the ‘Mooch’ and Geraldo--two usually passionate and reflexive defenders of the president--can no longer go along, that is as good a sign as any that President Trump reached a new low last week in his constant efforts to mine our nation’s racial divisions for his own political benefit, no matter how high the cost.

Both businessman and short-time White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci and Fox News personality Geraldo Rivera sharply criticized the president for his tweets urging four progressive Democrats of color, Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (MN.) Ayanna Pressley (MA.) and Rashida Tlaib (MI), to go back to the countries they came from. President Trump’s use of this age-old racist trope reached a crescendo when he basked in his supporters loudly and repetitively chanting ‘Send Her Back’ at last week’s re-election rally in North Carolina.

To their credit, Scaramucci and Rivera minced no words, calling the President’s tweets plainly racist. Nearly all the rest of the president’s supporters, whether in Congress or the media, unfortunately, did not follow suit. Ranging from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (CA) to The Five’s Greg Gutfeld, Trump’s allies twisted reality beyond recognition as they attempted to argue that the “Send her back’ chant was somehow divorced from the Trump tweets that triggered it or that Trump’s attack on the four Congresswomen was about policy and ideology, not race and nationality.

It is certainly the case that the Democratic Representatives who call themselves ‘the squad’ are ripe political targets. Their political views on some topics are out of the mainstream, they have said a number of unwise and provocative things and have been highly critical of Trump, If the president was going after them on their views that is fair game and elevating them through his criticism to be more visible symbols of the Democratic Party is no doubt good politics.

But the president is not mainly attacking them for what they believe, but for their racial and ethnic identities, returning to his crabbed and narrow blood and soil vision of the nation. In Trump’s thinly veiled, if veiled at all, opinion, white people automatically belong and everyone else is ‘’other’’-- people who must demonstrate their gratitude and don’t really have the same rights to offer criticisms and ideas for how to make our nation better.

This racial division is Trump’s go to move time and again, even though for a general electorate it is a dead solid loser. It is how he spent the last two weeks of the 2018 mid-terms, moving suburban voters in swing districts away from the Republican candidates, resulting in the largest Democratic pick-up of seats since the 1974 post-Watergate election. Polling done in the aftermath of Trump’s ‘go back to where you came from’ tweets and comments last week showed similarly negative results, with an overwhelming majority of Americans expressing their disapproval.

Most Americans understand that our exceptionalism is derived from the fact we are a nation founded on an ideal that ‘all men are created equal’ and that throughout our imperfect history we have progressed towards this goal, striving for ‘a more perfect union’ They also understand that immigrants renew our nation, strengthening us economically and culturally.

On this question, they stand with President Reagan--not President Trump--in the true American spirit he expressed in his farewell address, where he explained why he believed our nation was a Shining City on a Hill. “After 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.”

That is the unifying vision that implicitly grasps that our diversity is one of our main sources of strength-- a vision that President Trump in his ugly actions and racially incendiary words rejects every day. It is one of the prime reasons he is manifestly unfit to hold the office and incapable of governing this great nation.

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.