When Jason330 wrote the other day that Ken Simpler must be a racist simply because he’s a Republican, I probably wasn’t the only reader who winced. But Jason isn’t the only one who has put two and two together. Laura Ingraham brought it out into plain view earlier this week when she went on a panicky rant about immigration changing the country’s demographics. Digby points out that Ingraham’s xenophobia is all the GOP has left to run on. If the rant sounded familiar, that’s because it’s almost word-for-word the same kind of anti-immigrant spewing in the 1920s that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan.
Trump himself underscored this reality this morning by again attacking NFL players for kneeling for the national anthem, claiming falsely that most don’t even know why they’re doing it. He’s obviously going back to that well because it’s proven an effective distraction from his real problems before.
Chauncey DeVega considers Trump’s attack on LeBron James and Don Lemon in light of James Baldwin’s articulation of America’s racism, demonstrating that Trump’s fear and loathing have roots deep in the white man’s insecurities.
Then there are the people who are just fine with American racism — Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, for example, who thinks Alex Jones deserves to use his platform despite being a vile sack of whatever’s worse than shit. Dorsey claims Jones does not violate the platform’s standards. Then again, he won’t pull Trump’s account, either, and Trump violates those standards routinely. Let’s face facts: Without its audience of mouth-breathers, Twitter collapses.
With the midterms approaching, Mother Jones looks at the re-election prospects for the Trumpiest members of the House. Spoiler alert: Only a few appear to be in trouble.
I keep reading stories about how the federal courts can’t be counted upon to stand up to Trump, but I also keep reading stories about the federal courts overturning capricious decisions made by him or his cabinet. Yesterday an appeals court overturned ex-EPA chief Scott Pruitt’s order that kept Dow’s Lorsban on the agriculture market despite its known dangers; it was banned from consumer use back in 2000.