Congressman Steve King is racist, but he's merely following his leader Trump - New York Daily News
By now, you've surely heard about Iowa Congressman Steve King's racist tweet last weekend. "We can't restore our civilization with someone else's babies," King wrote, in support of a right-wing politician in the Netherlands who has proposed limiting Muslim immigration and shutting down mosques.
The Internet lit up with angry replies to King, including a few from his own party. "What exactly do you mean?" tweeted Florida GOP congressman Carlos Curbelo, who is of Cuban descent. "Do I qualify as 'somebody else's baby?’ "
But here's what almost no Republican was saying: Donald Trump has made remarks that are just as racist as Steve King's. But Trump is President, of course, so he generally gets a free pass from his cowardly compatriots in the GOP.
Start with Trump's relentless questioning of whether Barack Obama was born in the United States. Trump latched onto this racist lie in 2011 and maintained it until last September, when he invented yet another lie: the whole thing was Hillary Clinton's fault.
Trump, leader of the worst inside all of us
And he helped bring an idea that had lurked in the darker corners of the internet into everyday Republican discourse, as Trump confidant Roger Stone admitted in a 2016 interview. Many GOP voters "believe the President is foreign-born," Stone noted, "and Trump has an ability to interject any idea that is outside of the mainstream into the mainstream."
And he could insinuate birtherism — and its attendant racism — into anything. Following last year's Orlando massacre, he even hinted that Obama might sympathize with Islamic terrorists. "He doesn't get it," Trump said, "or he gets it better than anybody understands."
A few months later, after the Democratic convention, Trump implied that the mother of a deceased American Muslim soldier — who stood next to her husband's side, as he delivered an anti-Trump speech — hadn't spoken herself because Islam prevented women from doing so. "If you look at his wife, she was standing there," Trump said. "She probably, maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say."
The "probably, maybe" formulation is classic Trump double-speak, letting him insert racist innuendo while denying racist intent. Another is to smear a whole group of people, then claim that he's only smearing some of them.
Upstate N.Y. Republican threatened to deport ‘Muslim' Obama
Witness his notorious statement about Mexicans, during the 2015 speech where he announced his bid for the presidency. "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best," Trump said. "They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
President Trump latched onto the racist lie that former President Barack Obama may not be born in the United States in 2011 and maintained it until last September,
(Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
Then there's the opposite kind of bigotry: assuming that everyone in a given group thinks or acts in the same way. Consider Trump's absurd comment to a black journalist back in February, suggesting that the reporter set up a meeting with his "friends" in the Congressional Black Caucus.
And last May, Trump said that a judge presiding over the Trump University class action suit couldn't be impartial because he was "Mexican." Actually, the judge was born in Indiana. But his parents are from Mexico, and that's enough to render him biased in the bigoted mind of Donald J. Trump.
Unlike most of his other racist remarks, Trump's attacks on the Mexican-American judge drew criticism from his fellow Republicans. House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, GOP National Committee Chair Reince Priebus and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich all denounced Trump's comment.
But they also confirmed that they would continue to support him in the November elections. And after Trump won, Priebus was rewarded by being named his chief of staff. So whatever racist drivel Trump spewed, it apparently wasn't bad enough to disqualify him from being president.
Now these same Republicans are piling on Steve King, for saying the same kind of things that the President has said. Trump himself has remained quiet thus far, although his grammatically-challenged press secretary did issue a tepid statement separating him from King. "The President believes that this is not a point of view that he shares," Sean Spicer said. "He believes that he's a President for all Americans."
Let's be clear: Steve King deserves all of the condemnation that he is receiving, for his bigoted remarks about other people's babies. But the entire Republican Party is Donald Trump's baby right now. And the only way it can grow up is by distancing itself — firmly, consistently, and resolutely — from every prejudiced comment that Trump makes.
Don't hold your breath for that. It's so much easier to heap ridicule on a hapless congressman from Iowa than it is to criticize the guy in the White House. But they have more in common than anyone in the GOP has the courage to admit.
Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of "Campus Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know."
Uncategorized
#Uncategorized
No comments: