Of all the big chips on liberals’ shoulders related to Donald Trump’s election to the presidency, the biggest one tends to be the accusation that Trump is a racist and supports white, hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).
Nothing could be further from the truth. And yet, it’s a smear the mainstream media loves to run with, to the delight of progressives, who seek to elevate it to mythic status.
So insidious is this claim that a simple Google search of “Trump racist” turns up over 81 million results, with the top hit being an archetypal Huffington Post article entitled, “Here Are 13 Examples of Donald Trump Being Racist.”
Whether it’s true or not, liberals repeat this chestnut over and over and over again, to the point where both words have become inextricably fused. If Trump seeks to clear his reputation, this vicious smear needs to be fought with all the might conservatives can muster, and the sooner, the better.
Fortunately, to his credit, there are MANY examples of Trump repudiating racists, racism and racist organizations, both personally and via spokespeople, and there are almost countless examples where he’s given interviews and said directly to reporters and television hosts that he condemns racism in all its forms and disavows any association with racist groups and individuals.
One such individual is disgraced former KKK leader and Holocaust-denier David Duke. While disavowing the Klan himself, Duke is nonetheless considered radioactive in the media world for his incendiary anti-Semitic rants and racially charged discourse.
Duke is cynically aware of his own media self-image, but then, his efforts at rehabilitating that image over the last 20 years have been tempered by a worldview that’s still considered by many people to be extremist and unacceptable. Duke had unofficially endorsed Trump earlier in Trump’s campaign, in 2015 and in late February of this year.
Famously, Trump did not repudiate Duke’s endorsement proactively until three days after Duke’s comments, which was widely reported in the press and was one of the first pieces of evidence writers seized upon to “prove” that Trump did indeed harbor prejudices and identified with Duke and his followers.
But, the truth is that when Trump originally was questioned about the matter by CNN’s Jake Tapper on the Sunday “State of the Union” show, the President-elect hadn’t heard the question properly in his earpiece and had misunderstood the specific part about hate groups.
For three painful days, the media badly wanted Trump to clarify his stance on Duke and the KKK, but Trump didn’t realize the latter was of greater importance than simply denouncing Duke. However, on March 3 on MSNBC’s Morning Joe show, Trump at last said that he also disavowed support from the KKK.
Now, the liberal press twisted the story to say that the length of time that passed before Trump disavowed Duke’s and the KKK’s support was the proof of Trump’s racism; according to liberal editors, Trump had intended to send a message to Duke’s supporters and those in the KKK by claiming ignorance about them, which supposedly was an acknowledgement that Trump valued their support.
But again, the media had misinterpreted Trump’s response and judged him before the Republican candidate even realized what was being said. Tapper had asked Trump in his interview point-blank if the candidate disavowed Duke, and Trump said in no uncertain terms, “yes.”
In the following weeks and months, Trump reiterated his statement countless times, and today, you can go on YouTube and see a clip entitled “Donald Trump DISAVOWS David Duke/KKK again and again and again” and see many of these statements spliced together (the video is actually over eight minutes long).
Another incident the media has magnified out of all proportion to its size was a rally held by discredited racist Richard Spencer — the man who coined the term “alt right.” Spencer appeared at a conference in Washington, D.C., and at the end of the meeting, he requested attendees to give a Nazi-style arm salute to “Hail Trump.”
Predictably, the media had a field day with this action, smearing the new president, even though he had nothing to do with the conference. Rapidly, Trump’s team condemned both the event and Spencer. Trump himself said, “I condemn them. I disavow and I condemn.”
Some progressives like to deal with ancient history, pointing to supposedly discriminatory conditions and a resulting government lawsuit over a Queens, New York housing development that Trump’s father built in the early 1970s.
But these same progressives overlook the fact that all tenant qualifications were based on income, not on race — which was entirely legal. The government settled the Queens case without finding Trump guilty of any wrongdoing.
Its incidents and reports like these that have given Trump a bad rap. There’s nothing Trump can do if racist people choose to endorse him. Just because they endorse him doesn’t mean he endorses THEM. In fact, it’s almost always exactly the opposite as Trump has repeatedly said he doesn’t want their support, not does he want to “energize” their groups.
If a liberal or progressive person you know is trying to make the claim that Trump is a racist, remind them of the time Trump campaigned at an all-black Baptist church in the Deep South. In his campaign speech there Trump explains his “New Deal for Black America.” Observers have said Trump is both passionate and serious about his commitment to better jobs, higher wages and more opportunities for African-Americans.
Trump met with black leaders before and after the meeting, and his belief in new choices for minority schoolchildren and incentives for large companies to relocate workplaces to blighted neighborhoods is proof that he doesn’t want to leave anyone behind in his quest to raise incomes for all Americans.
The claims of racism against Trump are neither new nor original. But what they all have in common is they have no foundation in the reality; they’re distortions, exaggerations and twisting of the truth.
Liberals would love for these charges to be true and for them to stick; they’d like nothing better than for their accusations to be correct, so they wouldn’t have to discuss jobs, wages, incomes or the economy. The fact of the matter is they need to cover for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama stealing from the pockets of poor people for the last 25 years.
But at the end of the day, all the finger pointing and charges of racism in the world won’t put money in people’s bank accounts; it won’t put food on their tables. The Democrats’ lies are ill-founded, ill-considered and “Trumped-up,” to use a catch phrase.
They’re a poor excuse to cover their real crimes, and they’ll evaporate like condensation on a bathroom mirror. Watch these baseless insinuations fade away as Trump’s new plans and policies get put into effect. The Democrats are digging themselves into a deep hole with this strategy, and it doesn’t seem like they know how or when to try something new.
~Conservative Zone
