The republican President Donald Trump and his GOP cronies in the White House and the US Congress are reaping what they’ve sown for years, the seeds of racism. These seeds were watered and strengthened with the echo chamber from right-wing media outlets like Breitbart News and the FOX TV famous hosts.
As per 7/19/2019 Guardian News report, “Fox News’s star names excuse the inexcusable after Trump’s latest racist attack” by David Smith illustrates this point:
“Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a watchdog that frequently criticizes Fox News, wrote in a blogpost on Thursday: “You don’t get frothing crowds chanting ‘send her back’ without Fox News. This is clear on the micro level.”
“He said: “You can draw a straight line from Tucker Carlson’s xenophobic attacks on Omar last week to Trump’s racist Sunday tweets – likely spurredby a Fox & Friends segment that morning – that Omar and three other Democratic congresswomen (all women of color born in the United States) should ‘go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,’ then ‘come back and show us how it is done.”
Those tweets had also caused widespread revulsion, but not on Fox. The hosts of Fox & Friends laughed and joked about Trump’s posts. One presenter said: “Someone’s feeling very comedic today.” There was more levity on the afternoon show The Five.”
“On 9 July, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, known to have a strong influence on Trump, delivered an on-air diatribe about congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who was born in Somalia and is now a US citizen. “After everything America has done for Omar and for her family, she hates this country more than ever,” Carlson said.”
“He added: “Ilhan Omar is living proof that the way we practice immigration has become dangerous to this country.”
Link to entire report: theguardian.com/ Fox News’s star names excuse the inexcusable after Trump’s latest racist attack | US news…
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The seeds bore fruit with the most recent mass shooting on 8/3/3019 in El Paso, TX, an act of White Nationalism/ White Supremacists’ domestic terrorism. (Using the definition of where a shooter’s actions result in more than 3 fatalities, there have been 32 mass shootings this year in 2019.) This same tragedy has been inflicted on our nation 250 times this year alone. The El Paso mass shooter’s ramblings posted on-line before he went on his killing rampage, were almost identical to the Twitter racist rants issued by our president on a regular basis.
UPDATE ON 8/6/2019: As per the 8/6/2019 NYT report, The F.B.I. said it had opened a domestic terrorism investigation into the 7/28/2019 California Gilroy Garlic Festival mass shooting, and into the fact that the 8/4/2019 Dayton mass shooter had been exploring “violent ideologies” before his shooting.
Within a few hours after the 8/3/2019 El Paso mass shooting tragedy, the president and his GOP sycophants working in the White House and the US Congress could be observed obeying their marching orders by spreading the GOP familiar, tried and true talking points along the lines, that these mass shootings were executed by young men with “mental health” issues; and/ or who spend too much time playing violent video games.
Around July 23, 2019, the FBI Director Chris Wray did warn the American public during a US congressional hearing that there’s been an increase in domestic terrorist crimes since 2017, and most have been committed by those motivated by White Supremacist type thinking.
“We the People” who have been resisting the developing authoritarian type governing style of President Trump’s administration, have been predicting that the GOP’s trafficking in hate would inevitably lead to demonstrations of violence by those who are brain washed to where they blame whoever the president targets with his racist rhetoric, like Mexicans and Central American immigrants of color, Muslim Americans, and our Black brothers and sisters.
But President Trump is simply the front star sales person representing those GOP donors with tons of dark monies, trafficking in hate, racism, and anti-immigration sentiment, especially against peoples of color and of the Muslim faith. They are fighting against the inevitable, the reality that the USA is not going back to the days when White Protestant males ruled the roost.
The racist/ White Nationalist/ White Supremacists’ White House with President Trump at the helm was predictable with signals like the GOP US Senator Jeff Sessions from Alabama, the first congressional Trump supporter, signing up to be a part of President Trump’s campaign early on. The former GOP US Attorney General and US Senator, Mr. Session’s history is one steeped in racism/ White Nationalism/ White Supremacy.
For example, “Senator Sessions was denied appointment as a federal judge in 1986 for a slew of racist comments, including calling the work of the NAACP and ACLU ‘un-American.’ He has also repeatedly spoken out against the federal Voting Rights Act.”
— NAACP statement, Nov. 18, 2016
See Haaretz.com article: For Jeff Sessions, the Bible Justifies Separating Children From Parents – and Authoritarian Rule in America
Before joining the Trump campaign, Stephen Miller had worked for the former US Senator and US Attorney General Jeff Sessions as his communications director. As an aide to Senator Sessions, Mr. Miller had been instrumental in defeating a proposed bill for immigration reform.
Mr. Miller has become infamous as the author of President Trump’s original Muslim travel ban, the policy of separating children from refugee families who were legally seeking asylum at the US SW border; the changing of asylum rules, and President Trump’s current racist diatribes, a central theme in the president’s campaign to win a second term in 2020.
See: David Horowitz Created Map For Today’s Racist White House
Mr. Miller while being a student at Duke University who exhibited all the attributes/ promise of becoming an effective White Nationalist/ White Supremacist communicator, was first discovered by David Horowitz, the founder of the “Freedom Center which markets in the hate-filled world of racism, anti-immigration, anti-Muslim sentiment with the associated conspiracy theories, misinformation and propaganda. He’s also the conduit for GOP White Nationalist/ White Supremacist members and the “dark money” donors who exhibit a similar world view.
According to the SPLC (Southern Poverty law Center), “David Horowitz has become a driving force of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black movements.”) Mr. Horowitz has known well other like-minded officials including the familiar names of Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, as well as Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller.
The thought that President Trump knowingly and willingly incites domestic act of terrorism by his continuing to frequently traffic in racism, anti-immigration tropes against peoples from sh*t hole countries and anti-Muslim rhetoric is made worse by knowing that there are millions of our American neighbors like our White Evangelical brothers and sisters backing him, as the Racist-in-Chief living in the White House.
Note that the White Supremacist type folks have become aligned with those White Evangelicals who comprise about 35% of the president’s reliable base of voters, along with 2nd amendment zealots; CEOs of companies like the fossil fuel industry who’re not above using racism to further their aims. Heck, these motley factions would even support President Trump’s ties to Russia and other suspect foreign governments, as long as their interests continue to be served.
As per a 4/30/2018 VOX article, “The racial demons that help explain evangelical support for Trump” by Nancy D. Wadsworth, “Debating the question of why white evangelicals hold so fast for Trump has become a pastime for commentators, given that the president’s values and behavior would appear to be anathema to conservative Christians.”
“Among political evangelicals, at one ideological pole stand those who purport to see a seamless connection between their agenda and that of the current chief executive. “I think evangelicals have found their dream president,” Jerry Falwell Jr. gushed last May. An oft-heard variation on this view is that Trump may be a sinner, but he’s one chosen by God for a providential mission.”
“It is an abandonment of the evangelical path, these writers argue — to varying degrees and with different emphases — for believers who claim to care about the poor, the suffering, and the outcast, not to mention sexual morality and civic virtue, to line up behind a belligerent boor who bullies women, Mexicans, and Muslims and who has a manifestly feeble understanding of religious texts and history. It’s not that evangelicals are personally prejudiced, these writers claim; nonetheless, they find it disturbing that such voters would overlook Trump’s racism and misogyny for short-term political gains.”
“But these sympathetic critics fail to grapple with the idea that Trump’s racism and misogyny might actually resonate with the evangelical base, which happens to constitute about 35 percent of the GOP coalition. In fact, racism and intolerance are more woven into the fabric of evangelicalism than these Christian critics care to accept.”
“Evangelicals’ tenacious affection for Donald Trump is not a bug driven by expediency. Instead, it reflects defining features of American evangelicalism that become clearer when we examine the historical record. Doing so reveals that when white conservative evangelicals feel threatened by cultural change, the old demons of racism and misogyny, which lurk at the heart of the American evangelical tradition, return with a vengeance. Trump is just another chapter in that story.”
Link to entire article: The racial demons that help explain evangelical support for Trump
Gronda Morin 
Gronda, thanks for sharing. Three comments.
1) I posted a posthumous editorial from a gun owner which should be required reading by all Republicans and Americans.
2) while we all have flaws, I mentioned to Roger it is hard to single out the worst of Trump’s characteristics. One of them is lack of accountability. I mentioned before the person in the movie “The Caine Mutiny,” who instigated the mutiny with his words, but denied any accountability on the witness stand pretending to know nothing about it. That is Donald J. Trump, per his biographers, and in this instance. That characteristic is appropriately termed “weaseling out.”
3) I have been watching the Showtime miniseries called “The Loudest Voice,” about Roger Ailes and his creation of Fox News. The miniseries is based on a book by the same name. It indicates that Ailes met with Roger Stone, who he knew from his Nixon days, and asked him to encourage Donald Trump to run back in 2013. In the show, Ailes (played by Russel Crowe) tells Stone that Trump will have the full backing of Fox News if he does.
I do not know if the latter is true, but it is not a hard stretch. Ailes controlled everything – the news that was covered, how it was covered, and how it was presented. He wanted an antagonistic style. Sadly, he started believing his own BS.
Keith
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Those of us who cannot tolerate what this nation is becoming under Trump must work diligently over the next 15 months to convince every eligible person to VOTE in November 2020. It is the only way this is going to change, for if Trump can be re-elected next year, this nation will no longer be a democratic republic, but rather a tinpot dictatorship. It’s already well on the way …
Hugs!
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