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A Slip Twixt the Cup and the Lip? [Updated]
This is not good at all. President Trump unleashed a series of tweets that have cut short the story about Democrats self-destructing, making him and us the targets now. I don’t know how he’s going to dig himself out of his false claim that any of the “’Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen,” other than Ilhan Omar, came from another country.
So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 14, 2019
….it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 14, 2019
They are, as they are happy to point out, “women of color,” so the race card is just too easy to play here. Indeed, President Trump knew this as he chided AOC and her “squad” for falsely accusing Nancy Pelosi of racism. Before he tweeted this Sunday, Maureen Dowd of The New York Times was attacking AOC for her false claims of racism, in a piece mockingly titled “Scaling Wokeback Mountain.” The AOC Squad was advocating “grabbing” power from the old leadership. They were busy self-destructing and President Trump had added fuel to the fire, saying “[Pelosi] is not a racist.” In doing so, the president was voicing the sensible middle of American thought.
The “Squad:” Reps. Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.)
Then he rolled out a variant of “go back where you came from.” This was a bad move. Had he only addressed Ilhan Omar (“she,” not “they”), he would be on very solid ground. Had he called out the others for loathing the country of their birth that had given them such advantages, including a path to become Congresswomen, he would have been preaching to the sensible center. Instead he created a mess.
He hates apologizing, but here he is going to have to clean up his own mess. Otherwise, he is going to lose reelection and hand the whole Congress to the Democrats. No matter how much he touts economic advances and criminal justice reform helping racial minorities, he has just made a vote for him toxic to suburban women and all the darker skinned ethnic groups he has actually dedicated his administration to helping.
Every member of the administration, every member of Congress, every state and local official, will be forced to denounce these tweets and President Trump for typing them. Time for him to show a skill he has not had to use, finding some way to turn this unforced blunder into a political win.
John Hinderaker calls this “A Blunder of Epic Proportions.” I’m not sure about the magnitude, but it certainly makes a tough reelection tougher. To get how bad the Democrats were doing before President Trump just helped them, see this: “Democrats Start to Worry.” Maureen Dowd was criticizing AOC. The “Squad” was split from Pelosi. PresidentTrump has put them back together, for now, with Pelosi defending the progressive congresswomen who had been attacking her.
When @realDonaldTrump tells four American Congresswomen to go back to their countries, he reaffirms his plan to “Make America Great Again” has always been about making America white again.
Our diversity is our strength and our unity is our power. https://t.co/ODqqHneyES
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) July 14, 2019
President Trump seems to recognize his blunder. He has already responded to responses in this way:
….and the many terrible things they say about the United States must not be allowed to go unchallenged. If the Democrat Party wants to continue to condone such disgraceful behavior, then we look even more forward to seeing you at the ballot box in 2020!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 15, 2019
The only fix, in our “Ronnie Raygun the nuclear cowboy,” “Bushitler” “pubic hair on Coke can” “high school rape” reality, is to go on offense. Yet, that offensive must be effective. Tucker Carlson was far more focused and careful in his attack on Ilhan Omar, not conflating any facts with the life stories of her allies in Congress. Perhaps President Trump should be tweeting something like this:
The other Progressive Democrat Congresswomen, who work together, aren’t in the same category as Ilhan Omar. While they all attack America and defend bad foreign governments, only Omar was born outside America…
All the other Progressive Democrat Congresswomen were blessed to be born here but show hate for our country and want to change America to be like the countries so many people are leaving to come here…
My mistake: the “Progressive Democrat Congresswomen” only sound like government mouthpieces from countries whose people these Democrats support more than our legal immigrants and long time American citizens who are ethnic minorities…
Sad, contempt for America is homegrown through our schools and media. The Progressive Democrat Congresswomen, except Congresswoman Omar, have contempt for the country of their birth and success, America. They should go to their hometowns and count the blessings of being born here.
I don’t say President Trump has thrown away the 2020 election. He continues to have strength among the “battle ground states,” with a diverse range of voters who “love him because he listens.” Indeed, there is growing bipartisan buzz that President Trump will be reelected. There is even talk of Democrats worrying about holding the House.
[Monday midday update]
To this end, President Trump has both worked and communicated tirelessly to win over voters who no Republican has ever really fought for in past elections. What do you think the president is doing when he reels off “best African-American employment rate ever, most Latinos, most women working ever?” Stop and really think on this: why does he recite these figures every week, virtually every time he steps in front of any microphone?
You will not get the obvious answer from conservative talk radio or pundits, entrenched in what has always worked for them with their audience. Indeed, Monday morning found talk show hosts pretending President Trump was only tweeting about one congresswoman (don’t believe your lying eyes), or waving it off as Trump being Trump (no big deal if he scratches an Archie Bunker itch), and after all the congresswomen had it coming. The messaging only reinforces core support while amplifying the old message that minorities don’t matter to Republican election plans. Contrast this response to Tucker Carlson getting fired up and hectoring the administration anytime he senses the president steering foreign policy towards the dreaded “neocons.”
Sadly, there is no public voice, besides the president, invested in expanding the electoral coalition, in confounding the Democrats’ plan for long term demographic dominance. President Trump has sought to do well by doing good for demographic groups long written off, taken for granted, by both parties. Now, as he seeks to close the deal, he has made a misstep with people who have never voted for a Republican before, but who he is striving to sell on himself.
I do say President Trump put words on virtual paper that will be rammed down every Republican’s throat. He needs to turn the conversation, again, and not in the good loser direction. Roll out a string of tweets like I suggest above and everyone can say “I don’t need to defend the President’s tweets; President Trump has corrected them completely.”
Published in Politics
I am late to this party, and I certainly agree that there is a lack of wisdom from Trump in not understanding how comments can be portrayed in a media where anti-Trump coverage is about 9-1. But let’s go to the videotape. Trump appears ignorant of certain facts in not knowing where some of these congresspeople are born. Unfortunate. This could be contrasted with the number of examples in which the four have proven themselves ignorant of any number of significant facts. Is this in fact even close to comparing the southern border with Auschwitz? I guess what I’m getting at is what is the “this” in supporting someone “who says something like this”?
In my view it is because he tripped on his own best line – defending Pelosi. The Democrats are having their own dumpster fire. Let it burn uninterrupted. Trump needs to persuade some % of persuadable voters that, even though they may dislike him, that the Dems are even worse in so many ways. Everything he does along these lines (1) makes that harder and (2) puts people who support Trump on the back foot in first having to defend him before attacking. I hate playing defense.
For all my frustration about this, I am coming to accept that this is just part of the whole Trump package and unlikely to change. With an economy like this and record low unemployment for African Americans and Hispanics, and no new wars (which I know the Bulwark crowd is particularly upset about) this should not be a close election but it is going to be.
I think there are a lot of African Americans who agree with Trump about these four squad members. If they hate the United States so much, maybe they should consider living someplace else where they would feel better about their country. It’s common sense. If I felt about America the way the squad members feel about it, I would give it some serious thought. It’s a big world out there.
It’s like that Cat Stevens song, “Ooooo baby, baby it’s a wild world….”
First thing is to admit that Trump is racist. If you’re incapable of that, none of your other policy explanations will matter to anyone. Then you say that none of Trump’s actual policies are racist…..so, his Twitter racism is something you just have to accept, since Democrats are worse. Still a tough sell, but it beats outright denial, which won’t fool anyone.
Trump is getting destroyed by the Democrat frontrunners in polls. So, he desperately wants to run against fringe House members instead. Its the strategy of a loser. It won’t work. Pelosi isn’t that stupid. The “squad” will be marginalized. Pelosi has done a great job of it so far. She knows FOX is trying desperately to elevate them.
I’ve been wondering about that too. Excellent point.
I think that this doesn’t make sense, but it’s hard to argue against something that doesn’t merit the degree of consideration it would take to figure it out. But congrats on working two “racists” and a “racism” into a short paragraph. Welcome to the Democratic party.
Arguing that Trump’s tweets are not 1) damaging politically, and 2) often uninformed, is a fool’s errand. That certainly applies here. My issue is that the tweets are being interpreted as saying something of substance that should be condemned on substantive grounds. That, IMO, is a narrative designed to distract from the substantively reprehensible comments of those to whom he was addressing.
Andrew McCarthy, again
I’m sure it is hard to argue that Trump isn’t a racist. Calling me a Democrat is a lame attempt, no doubt. Sad. Richard Spencer has called Trump’s tweet racist, but I’m sure he wasn’t thinking of the great 3D chess political strategy of it all.
It wasn’t racist. It was immigrantist, to coin a new word. He did not refer to the women as being anything other than immigrants (which of course, only one of them actually is). He did not mention any other characteristic about them.
Marci’s right, but there’s got to be a better name for this. Maybe it’s not “racism”; it ain’t beanball either. There’s something screwed up about the President tweeting before he got somebody to tell him that most of these women are from here, and two of them are Christians. Nobody likes them. He keeps this up and nobody will like him either. When George Allen called a (legitimate on both sides) oppo cameraman “macaca”, it wasn’t racist, exactly, but was it? “Moronic” fit pretty well. And so the GOP lost.
Well, at least you’re trying. Now, all you have to do is ignore that he’d never say that to white immigrants, and that only one of them is an actual immigrant, and that they actually are elected politicians representing thousands of brown people with ancestors from poor countries……and you could almost make that excuse work. Not with me though. Probably not with Richard Spencer either.
You should post in The_Donald.
It seems to me these tweets were not (surprise!) about rational argument, they were about semaphoring a position concisely.
Bringing up rational arguments about why Trump’s tweets are racist or not racist (I think technically certainly not) misses their point and the reaction to them.
From Slate:
Now I think that a place in America is indeed the American people’s to give, and
I’m not sure thatI certainly don’t agree with everything in that somewhat overwrought article, but I think this excerpt might capture how the issue is perceived.As part of the struggle over who makes up the American People. Who decides what American values are?
Does everybody who disagrees with the Right ‘hate America’? Or do they just disagree with the Right?
Someone said it was a ‘bitter clinger’ moment. Perhaps?
Everybody? No. Just those that subscribe to Marxist, Intersectional, or Islamist ideologies. There might be residual feelings of patriotism when such perspectives are initially, incrementally embraced (assuming one is not raised in them), but by their very nature such ideologies promote spiraling anti-Americanism, both in terms of founding principles, native-born cultures, and in the case of intersectionality, flat-out ethnic bigotry against the majority population.
This is a political Rorschach test and it is brilliant.
Sez who?
Are you kidding us?
Um… he’s married to an immigrant.
The President is simply working to make sure the all Democrat leaders own these four and their policy positions. Trump is destroying the notion that they can occupy a position that is just a little bit Left. Nancy Pelosi has tried to be in that position for a long time. Remember when ObamaCare was being forced through the House and a reporter asked her about how that legislation comported with the Constitution – she acted as if she didn’t even recognize the existence of a Constitution. We all know where her district is politically and the state of California. She is far Left herself and Trump will uncover for 2020 that the Democrat Party occupies far Left space.
I know. He’s not against immigrants either.
It was flip remark people used to make two and three generations ago about immigrant groups such as ethnic neighborhoods who complained about life in the United States.
My point was that there is not a racist word in that tweet. Yet all of the headlines I’m seeing are calling it and him a racist. It’s wild.
I was execrated when deleted an early post, so I am not taking it down now that others have commented on it. Why they did not come here after I indicated that this was a better post, I do not know.
Thank you so much for your suggestion that I do an original post. I did do one at http://ricochet.com/652894/trumps-tweets/comment-page-2/#comments, however when i was directed to your post, I felt that it was far better and referred people to it. However, that suggestion didn’t take, and that post is raging on.
White immigrants who were radicals have historically been criticized. Here check out: “Rosenow on Bencivenni, ‘Italian Immigrant Radical Culture: The Idealism of the Sovversivi in the United States, 1890-1940’”
I’m Italian-American. You better believe there were Italian-American immigrants who were radicals and yes they ought to have gone back to their own country too. This is not racist. This is criticizing people who ought to be grateful they are here and are not. Just the opposite. Your NeverTrumpism drives you to see racism in every time Trump makes a comment.
That’s right. The common denominator with the fab four is that they are ungrateful, anti-American radicals.
And that, right there, is the most important point of all.
Race was not mentioned in the tweet. Directly or indirectly, or hinted, or suggested.
Any use of the word racist to describe the tweet is a maliciously deceptive falsehood.
… and hatin’ on the Jooooos.
Exactly.
I’m very frustrated about it.
Trump left the party of Patrick Buchanan because he thought Buchanan was extreme. Trump is many things, but he is not a racist.
I just saw this hit piece about Trump in the Atlantic Monthly for June 2019.
These are respectable publications pushing this racism accusation.
We’re in deep trouble if we cannot live by the rules of evidence. There will be no justice in America if this keeps up. I don’t think anyone–certainly not today’s editors–even knows what valid evidence is anymore.
You’re seriously comparing people that barely can stitch together a sentence in English to actual US Congresspeople that probably know more US history than Trump? Still weak stuff. Rashida Talib was born to immigrants in Michigan 40+ years ago…..just like me. And we both hate Trump. Difference is, I’m white and won’t be told to “go back home” (to a homeland I’ve never even visited).
Ayanna Pressley wasn’t even born to immigrants. She’s just black. Telling these people to “go back home” while the white criminals that Trump has hired get to stay….is straight up racist. I haven’t called Trump racist before…..but as of this week, its now clear he is.
Yes, and all the NeverTrumpers just all buy in to the Liberal talking points.
This is an interesting thread: