by digby
You knew he’d like this about Trump:
“That speech was great, and Trump has always been this way,” Sessions, who was the first member of Congress to endorse Trump, said on the Matt & Aunie show on WAPI radio. “He bought an ad — people say he wasn’t a conservative — but he bought an ad 20 years ago in the New York Times calling for the death penalty. How many people in New York, that liberal bastion, were willing to do something like that?”
“So he believes in law and order and he has the strength and will to make this country safer,” Sessions added. “The biggest benefits from that, really, are poor people in the neighborhoods that are most dangerous where most of the crime is occurring. And I think people can come to understand that if the message continues to pound away.”
Please. That ad had nothing to do with poor neighborhoods and everything to do with hysteria over a group of African Americans accused of raping a white woman in Central Park. And Sessions, of all people, knows that very well. He’s one of the last remaining unreconstructed Southern racists
Trump spent more than $85,000 to publish controversial full-page newspaper ads calling to “BRING THE DEATH PENALTY BACK!” The five men who were sentenced for the rape were later exonerated, but only after they had served their full sentences. The men convicted were all black and Latino and in their mid-teens.
Their wrongful conviction settlement, which ran into millions of dollars, was sharply criticized by Trump. He wrote an op-ed in the New York Daily News in 2014 calling the settlement a disgrace. He later tweeted in response to criticism, “Tell me, what were they doing in the Park, playing checkers?”
This alleged play for the African American community is a blatant attempt to make it socially acceptable for white people to vote Republican again. It’s possible that some will find solace in Trump’s awkward pandering but an awful lot of racism have flowed under that bridge so if you’re the kind of person who is uncomfortable defending Trump on that basis, this is unlikely to change that.
.