Donald Trump pandering to the Religious Right

An interesting perspective published in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Trump manipulates his right wing base’s fear of Black men

http://www.phillytrib.com/commentary/how-trump-manipulates-his-base-s-fear-of-black-men/article_55bac494-7866-5c79-b095-b4ed4ce59033.html

Surely, there can be no confusion as to why President Donald Trump so regularly winds up and takes swings at Black Athletes from the safety of his (cowardly) Twitter feed: he feeds on fear.

A full year after his 2016 election, and it is clear that Trump is only capable of (and only interested in) communicating with a base that is the unquestioned safe place for white supremacists, such as David Duke, Jared Taylor, Richard Spencer, Matthew Heimbach and others who are his vocal supporters. 

These are Omega-level racists, figure heads of large “organizations” that today view Blacks, Jews and anyone else not of European origin as inferior and deserving of less. 

As flawed as the Democratic Party may be, nowhere in its ranks can a roster of similarly vile human beings be identified.

Right wing groups that are cloistered in Trump’s base won’t say it, but they have bought into the wrong minded stereotypes of Black male physical superiority, that were conceived in the minds of wealthy (slave owner) plantations owners, of centuries ago and still exist today, in "white supremacy" rallies.

But, four hundred years ago it was the belief that superior sexual potency, an ability to work from sun up to sun down, and a certainty of a higher threshold for pain — something wealthy southerners in the New World convinced themselves that they lacked but existed in abundance in the people of the Ivory Coast — was just a boat ride away.

Science has never proven these false “attributes.”

Fast forward to April 30th, 2014, when unarmed Dontre Hamilton was shot 14 times and killed by a white cop in Milwaukee. 

The officer testified that Hamilton had a “muscular build” and “most definitely would have overpowered me or pretty much any officer I can think of, to tell you the truth. He was just muscular.”

Hamilton was autopsied by the medical examiner at 5’7” and 169 pounds.

Hamilton was the case lead in research published earlier this year by the American Psychology Associated that found that people have a tendency to perceive Black men as larger and more threatening than similarly sized white men. This speaks to a fear — masked by his faux blustering — that Trump certainly shares with many of his supporters who are publicly hateful but privately petrified of Black men.

This explains why over this past weekend Trump knew he needed to tweet brashly and defiantly about the Black basketball players at UCLA whom he helped get out of China – kudos to him – after they were accused of shoplifting. For a man who who is under investigation by the Justice Department for what he might know about Russian meddling in our elections, has ramped up tensions between the United States and a mad dictator in North Korea looking to nuke us, and as a president who supports a suspected pedophile running for the Senate in Alabama, one might think Trump would have handled this low-level international incident and moved on to more pressing matters.

But the fragile psyche that makes up much of his base sporadically needs the red meat that is their leader lording over people of color, so Trump made sure to unashamedly on question on Twitter if the student-athletes would thank him, which they did.

With his dark skin, hardcore Oakland, California accent, locked-up hair and bruising running style, I’m pretty sure that Marshawn Lynch probably reminds many Trump supporters of Mighty Joe Young unchained. Lynch’s Raiders played in Mexico City over the weekend, and after standing for the Mexican anthem, Lynch, who has sat for the U.S. anthem this entire season, did so again on Sunday. Oakland’s Democratic Mayor Libby Schaaf, recognizing Lynch’s freedom of speech, tweeted her support for him

Not to miss out on this dog-whistle opportunity, Trump, knowing exactly what it takes to get basket “basket of deplorables” frothing at the mouth, tweeted that Lynch should be suspended for the rest of the season for standing for the Mexican anthem while sitting through the Star-Spangled Banner.

If you think you’ve seen this in some form before it’s because if you are of a certain age you have. 

Think of it as an update on Willie Horton, the Black criminal who while out on furlough from a Massachusetts jail raped a woman and pistol-whipped her fiancée.

George H. W. Bush campaign manager Lee Atwater masterfully attached the story to Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, the governor of Massachusetts at the time of the crime, convincing voters by playing on their unwarranted fears that a Dukakis’ victory would turn lose legions of marauding Mandingos across the country, and it is one of the primary reasons Bush captured the White House in 1988.

Trump has taken this horrible strategy to Twitter, and he even weaponized it. 

Get used to it; you will see it again, and Donald Trump will be ceratin that we see it often.

John N. Mitchell has worked as a journalist for more than a quarter century. He can be reached at jmitchell@phillytrib.com and Tweet at @freejohnmitchel.