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Feeding his empty soul with hate and fury

Published by digby on August 23, 2017

Feeding his empty soul with hate and fury

by digby

I wrote about the Arizona rally for Salon this morning:

On Monday night Washington Post reporter Phillip Rucker tweeted this:

This is a tiresome cliche at this point (“tonight he became president,” “he’s pivoting” etc.) and Rucker was, for good reason, immediately barraged with criticism. But when asked how long he thought this new Trump would last, he answered this way:

The assumption on the part of well, everyone, even those who complimented him for his presidential mien, was that teleprompter Trump was not permanent and he was going to immediately revert to his natural state: racist, immature and crude.

This is progress. It took the media and the establishment over two years to absorb the fact that the Trump we saw on the campaign trail was the real Trump. There is no hidden statesman, his antics weren’t an act. And just because he is capable of woodenly delivering an unconvincing speech written by someone else, it doesn’t mean that he will stop tweeting every outrageous thought that passes through his mind while watching Fox and Friends during his obviously elaborate morning hair and man tan ritual.

Trump made the decision to go to Arizona solely to bathe himself in the febrile adoration of his followers after a tough couple of weeks defending Nazis from the hostile elites in Washington. Many people were aghast that he was going to hold one of his raucous campaign rallies in the wake of those odious comments about Charlottesville where he was sure to employ his usual divisive rhetoric and protesters from all sides would undoubtedly gather outside and possibly mix it up with one another.

Phoenix mayor Greg Stanton took to the pages of the Washington Post to beg Trump to let feelings cool before coming back to his town:

America is hurting. And it is hurting largely because Trump has doused racial tensions with gasoline. With his planned visit to Phoenix on Tuesday, I fear the president may be looking to light a match.

That’s why I asked the president to delay his visit. It’s time to let cooler heads prevail and begin the healing process.I’m not optimistic the White House will heed that call.

They did not. Trump chose Arizona for a reason. Signaling last week that he planned to pardon the notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a staunch Trump supporter, who has just been convicted of criminal contempt in federal court for violating a judge’s order to stop profiling and illegally stopping latino drivers, Trump obviously needs to get back in touch with his anti-immigrant base where he feels he can let his racist flag fly more freely. He touched a third rail with his defense of Nazis and got zapped.I think most of us expected that he was reminded by that experience that the politically correct right wing way to express those ugly sentiments in America today is to slag immigrants and Muslims and let people sublimate their loathing for blacks and Jews within those categories. Everybody gets the message and you don’t have to overtly side with Nazis and the KKK.

Well, he did slag immigrants, as usual. And while he didn’t literally pardon Arpaio, he made it very clear that he intended to do so saying, “I’ll make a prediction, I think he’s going to be just fine. But, but I won’t do it tonight because I don’t want controversy.” He didn’t say it was because Arpaio is an old guy who deserves mercy after years of public service or something like that. He said it was because Arpaio did the right thing in defying the court. So much for the president defending the rule of law.

And in what was probably the most substantive piece of news, he said in passing “if we have to close down our government, we’re building that wall.” (No “who’s going to pay for it? Mexico!” call and respond in the rally.) That has been mentioned in the press as a possible Freedom Caucus tactic but it appears the president is eager to join that nihilistic band of miscreants. He said that the Democrats have “nothing but socialism” and “maybe a step beyond socialism from what he’s seeing.”

He never mentioned the 10 sailors who died two days ago in the Singapore straits, not even another “oh that’s too bad” which is truly sad considering that he constantly uses veterans and active duty military as his favorite prop.

But all that was just the tip of the iceberg. He gave a rousing 2016-style campaign rally that was as angry, divisive, unrepentant and crude as anything he did during the campaign. His attack on the media was fierce and sounded even more threatening than usual. There was even a “lock her up chant” just for old times sake. What set this one apart was the 42 minutes he spent recapitulating his response to Charlottesville and throwing salt into the still raw wounds of that ugly episode. He just cannot leave it alone.

He tediously repeated verbatim what he insisted was his message of love and unity in the wake of that Nazi and neo-confederate rally, interspersed with commentary about how the press never covered what he said .He completely elided the fact that he had blamed “many sides” and called those who marched with Nazis and the KKK “good people.” He could barely find a moment to mention that the killing of Heather Heyer was “terrible” before he moved on to how the media had unfairly crucified him and pointed more fingers at the counter-protesters. It was all about him.

He said that “they” will not stop until they take down the statues of George Washington, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt (for whom they said they are still looking for an excuse.) And then he went all in saying: “they are trying to take away our history and our heritage.”

Of course nobody’s trying to take down statues of Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt. There is a movement to remove the statues of confederate leaders who fought a war to defend slavery, most of which were erected nearly a hundred years after the war was over to protest civil rights for African Americans. Our president stood before a crowd of cheering supporters and claimed that noxious “history and heritage” for them and for himself.

We always suspected that when he said “Make American Great Again” he meant “Make America White Again.” After last night in Phoenix, there’s no longer any doubt.

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