They call her the c-word, not realizing that in England it’s the equivalent of calling someone a “dick” not the grotesque epithet it is here in the US. Nonetheless, those people are truly vile. Creepy.
And then there was this from earlier in the week:
He’ll get rid of all you fucking liberals. You liberals are gone when he fucking wins. You fucking blowjob liberals are done. Uncle Donnie’s gonna take this election—landslide. Landslide, you fucking half a blowjob. Landslide. Get the fuck out of here, you scumbag.
Trump posted something that says “you liberals are gone when he fucking wins.” I don’t know specifically what he means by that but it isn’t good. And anyway, it’s not like Trump hasn’t said the same thing in public:
We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.
Recall that his spokesperson then responded to the ensuing criticism by saying:
Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump derangement syndrome, and their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.
We used to call this eliminationism and it couldn’t be more black and white today.
The news here isn’t this one man’s anger at Scarborough, it’s that Trump elevated it. And moments like these require context: This one should be placed alongside Trump’s other recent threats, such as his vow that news organizations will be “thoroughly scrutinized” if he wins, his promise to persecute his “vermin”-like political foes, and his threat to prosecute a range of enemies without cause. Looked at this way, is it really a leap to suggest that Trump is broadcasting the idea that liberals should feel threatened en masse by a second Trump term?
There is a mini cottage industry of punditry that is forever on the lookout for the merest hint of disrespect toward conservative voters, particularly rural and working-class white ones. But the fact that the GOP nominee for president approvingly posted a video that declares a large ideological subgroup of Americans “done” and “gone” if he is elected—never mind the vile epithets directed at them—appears to have garnered almost no headlines. Few if any top-shelf pundits have scowled with disapproval.
This has long been the case, even before Trump came along. It’s fine for salt-of-the-earth to grossly denigrate liberals but make a passing comment about some conservatives being in a “basket of deplorables” and it’s off with your head. It’s griped me for my entire adult life but I’ve just come to accept that this will never change. It seems that our idea of “Real America” is so tied to the image common-sense, white yeoman farmers that right wingers are granted special dispensation to be assholes for some reason. The rest of us have to mind our manners.
But as Greg points out, this is now a serious problem:
This is not intended as whataboutism. Rather, the point is that allowing such moments to remain decontextualized makes it easier to evade grappling with their true underlying intent. After all, it is undeniable that a central rationale of Trump’s presidential run is the threat to use state power to persecute and target—in a newly aggressive way—a large, albeit ill-defined, class of Americans who are designated as enemies of Trump and his MAGA movement.
It’s not just talk anymore. If we didn’t know that before January 6th we certainly should now.