The Editorial Board, USA Today, July 15, 2019<\/p>\n
In the not so distant past, politicians would reach racist voters through what are sometimes called \u201cdog whistle\u201d comments. These are cautious, subtle statements that most people hear only as policy mumbo jumbo \u2014 criticizing affirmative action, say, or activist judges \u2014 but which others hear as reaffirmation of their bigoted worldviews.<\/p>\n
How utterly different things are now, with the president of the United States deploying the oldest racist trope in the book by calling on four congresswomen of color to go back to where they came from. (Never mind that all four are U.S. citizens, and three were born in the USA.)<\/p>\n
In so doing, Donald J. Trump is replacing the dog whistle with a bullhorn. He is all but declaring: I am a racist. I will advocate racist policies. I will redefine the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan as the party of white grievance against a changing America.<\/p>\n
To anyone who has been paying attention, Trump\u2019s offensive comments, tweeted before a Sunday golf outing, were shocking but not surprising. Trump has trafficked in bigotry throughout his career in business and politics.<\/p>\n
Way back in 1973, the Justice Department sued him and his father for systematically discriminating against blacks in housing rentals. Trump called for the death penalty for minority youths accused in the 1989 \u201cCentral Park Five\u201d case. For five years, he fanned the absurd \u201cbirther\u201d movement that falsely questioned the legitimacy of the first African-American president, Barack Obama.<\/p>\n
Trump launched his presidential campaign by whipping up resentment against Muslims, Mexicans and migrants. He characterized poorer countries run by blacks as \u201cs—holes.\u201d After a deadly neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va., he said there were \u201cvery fine people\u201d on both sides. And so on.<\/p>\n
Responding to Trump\u2019s stink bombs can be exhausting, and it\u2019s tempting to just ignore them, especially when he\u2019s trying to change the subject from topics such as migrant children locked up in detention centers, sex-trafficking charges against former friend Jeffrey Epstein and deportation raids that didn\u2019t live up to their advance billing.<\/p>\n
In this case, Trump undoubtedly also saw an opportunity to exploit divisions in the Democratic Party between old guard leaders such as Nancy Pelosi and the \u201csquad\u201d of four outspoken first-term representatives: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib.<\/p>\n
Yet some comments are too offensive to be ignored, and Trump is making it impossible to overlook his racism in all its grim venality. As if his original schoolyard tweet calling on the four congresswomen to go away wasn\u2019t enough, the president \u2014 who campaigned for office painting a dark picture of \u201cAmerican carnage\u201d \u2014 dug himself in deeper Monday by saying that they hated their country. \u201cIf you\u2019re not happy here, you can leave,\u201d he added for good measure.<\/p>\n
For Republicans, Trump presents a Hobson\u2019s choice of jumping into the moral cesspool with him, or facing the wrath of Republican primary voters who\u2019ve convinced themselves that Trump is worthy of support.<\/p>\n
As of Monday evening only a handful of Republican members of Congress had spoken out against Trump, just as only a handful objected when he violated the Constitution to divert money without an appropriation, or when he attacked judges and prosecutors he did not like.<\/p>\n