The Trump presidency has been an precedented mix of norm-breaking, unethical behavior, racism, anti-Muslim bigotry, and basic incompetence. Indeed, looking back to the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump said things that seemed unimaginable for a mainstream candidate to say and still get elected: calling Mexicans rapists and suggesting a Mexican-American judge was prejudiced because of his heritage; calling for the murder of the families of terrorists; inciting violence against protestors at his rallies. And since his election, it has felt that every day has brought a new affront to basic decency, core American values, and our sense of a shared reality — from Trump’s complaints about misreporting of election day crowds and his lies that millions of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election, to his obscene profiting off the office of the presidency, to the Muslim travel ban and his firing of James Comey, to his insane bluster towards North Korea in recent weeks.
Over the last several months, there have been many points that part of me imagined that THIS must be the straw that broke the camel’s back, that woke the collective conscience of Trump and Clinton voters alike, that would cause his poll numbers to sink, Congressional enablers to slink away, and resignation or impeachment to grow imminent. But these hopes of course have always came to naught, for reasons that had everything to do with why Trump was elected to begin with — because enough people have lost faith in political business as usual, are worried about their economic prospects, and are comfortable with Trump’s role as avatar of a white backlash against America’s growing diversity. Because the very things that I and many other people thought would ensure that he would never be elected were what led people to vote for him. They wanted a disruptor in the White House — and hoo-boy, did they get it.
But the events in Charlottesville last weekend and Trump’s response are a turning point for this presidency, because of the way they fundamentally re-frame the Trump administration for all Americans, supporters and opponents alike. Until now, Trump supporters who embraced Donald Trump for his pro-white agenda could tell themselves that this was not the same as embracing a white supremacist agenda. They could tell themselves that white people were being taken advantage of by minorities, that the government was favoring minorities at their expense, and still tell themselves that they weren’t racists themselves. They just wanted a fair shake, and putting minorities in their place was the way to get that.
The violent eruption of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and neo-Confederates in Charlottesville last weekend — groups irrefutably emboldened by and adoring of Donald Trump — has exploded the idea that Donald Trump can assert the primacy of white needs and the need to put minorities in their place without encouraging the evil and stupidity of outright white supremacism. No one can pretend any longer that his appeals to a white backlash don’t partake of the darkest and most ignorant strains of American history. This isn’t simply because we’ve now seen the clearest evidence that these anti-American forces have found encouragement in Trump’s election to come roaring out of the shadows. It’s also because, in his response to their appearance on our collective scene, the president has clearly signaled that he’s on their side.
Despite the death of a counter-protestor and the clear intent of the white supremacists to intimidate and cause mayhem in the name of hatred, the president initially attempted to blame both sides, and refused to call out the neo-Nazis and their ilk by name. After severe and sustained criticism, he made a second statement days later that finally called out these hate groups, but still in a hedged fashion. And then, of course, came Tuesday’s press conference at Trump Plaza, at which he blew up any pretense that he’d believed what he’d said the day before. He not only doubled down on the grotesquely false equivalency between the right-wing hate groups and a newly conjured “alt-left," he asserted that there were “fine people” among the right-wing protestors.
By this point, the president’s delays in condemning them had already been read loud and clear by white supremacist groups as the president’s blessing of their cause. His subsequent remarks at Trump Tower should have made this clear to the rest of America. But this is hardly the end of the tale — because in the ensuing days, Donald Trump has referred to Confederate monuments as “beautiful” and made it clear that he opposes their removal. In a move straight out of white supremacist talking points, for example, he falsely equated Robert E. Lee and George Washington — both were slaveowners — and suggested that removing Confederate statues will inevitably lead to removing statues of actual American leaders. The big difference between Lee and Washington, of course, is that Washington founded our country, while Lee is a traitor and tried to destroy it. For not simply an American politician to say such things, but for an American president to attempt to blur the distinction between traitorous, racist, secessionists and the man who led the American army to victory over the British, is so far beyond the pale of reason, not to mention basic moral acceptability, that even as I write this I find myself mentally spluttering at the does-not-compute-ness of what is happening in 21st-century America.
I think it is a reasonable concern that Trump may be trying to distract people from his association with neo-Nazis and white supremacists by emphasizing the Confederate statue issue, and trying to spin this into “merely” a North-versus-South conflict. But Charlottesville made it impossible for the president to ever disentangle these various sordid strains of anti-Semitic, racist, and revanchist movements as a valued part of his base. When Donald Trump celebrates the statues dedicated to the glory of the Confederacy, he effectively celebrates the cause that was the proximate reason for Heather Heyer losing her life in Charlottesville. The planned removal of the Robert E. Lee statue was the reason the right-wing hate groups were there. They are the reason her killer was there.
When we have a president who has put himself on the side of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and neo-Confederates — enemies of not only common values like racial equality and religious freedom, but of our democratic system of government itself — then Trump supporters can no longer lie to themselves about what the president really stands for. The president has given them a white backlash, and then some. He has lent his support to the idea that the white backlash needs to be a white tidal wave, a white rebellion, that can absurdly encompass even avowed enemies of America — so long as they are white.
At this point, supporters of Trump cannot credibly claim that they are not also supporting the most extreme vision of white supremacism imaginable, because Trump has lent these groups his presidential seal of approval. Either they begin to examine their values more closely, and turn against the president, or become complicit in a level of widespread race hatred, anti-Semitism, and anti-democratic outbursts that we have not seen for decades. It really is time to re-consider whether the diminished status they feel is because African-Americans are doing so amazingly well that their average net worth is a tiny fraction of white Americans’, or because the economy and political system have been systematically failing ALL working and middle-class Americans, no matter the color of their skin. Perhaps this won’t happen. Instead, maybe Jeet Heer at the New Republic is correct, and that “[as] long as Trump knows that most Republicans are on board, he’ll believe he’s on the right path and continue to appease white supremacists. In doing so, he and his base are ratcheting up extremism in America.” Perhaps things will get even worse.
But I think this severely underestimates the possibility of arousing what I like to think of as a “patriot-lash” — Americans recognizing that allowing such hatred into our politics will destroy this country. Because after Charlottesville, anyone in the middle or on the left can no longer not fully grasp the stakes of stopping this presidency in its tracks, and sending Trump home to Trump Tower for good, either via forced resignation or impeachment. People like just-fired presidential advisor Steve Bannon think that fanning the waves of racism will win them elections, by firing up white voters. I’m hoping this is much too static a take on American politics, and too cynical a bet on the consciences of people not wired in the same way as the execrable Mr. Bannon.
