Make America white again
Before Donald Trump became president of the United States, he was a failed casino magnate and middling New York real estate developer who hosted a hit reality TV show that rehabilitated his debt- mired image “bigly.”
While he couldn’t get a large bank loan from an American bank to save his life, his weekly TV show miraculously convinced people in Middle America that he was a titan of industry — and not a mere employee of NBC working for a paycheck just like everyone else in its sprawling entertainment division.
Once the audience for “The Apprentice” began shrinking, Mr. Trump was thrown into the only kind of moral panic he’s capable of experiencing — embarrassment over sinking ratings.
During a visit to “The Howard Stern Show” in 2005, the man who would inexplicably be sworn in as president of the United States a decade later told Mr. Stern that he wanted to stoke interest in the show by staging a distinctly American “Battle Royale” with race as the dramatic accelerant:
“It would be nine blacks against nine whites, all highly educated, very smart, beautiful people, right?” Mr. Trump said, adding that it would be “the highest rated show on television.”
When co- host Robin Quivers asked if “The Apprentice: Race War” might become a self- fulfilling prophecy if aired the way he imagined it, Mr. Trump answered with the same lack of self- awareness he’s always demonstrated: “Actually, I don’t think it would. I think that it
would be handled very beautifully by me, cause as you know, I’m very diplomatic.”
As ratings hungry as Mr. Trump’s corporate masters at NBC were, even they refused to greenlight something so obviously repugnant that Howard Stern couldn’t help snickering at it. Even then, no one thought Mr. Trump had enough personal integrity to referee a racially- tinged dispute between, say, rapper Lil Jon and comedienne Joan Rivers without allowing it to spiral into something truly sleazy and apocalyptic for ratings.
Still, the thing about Donald Trump is that he never lets go of what he considers a winning idea. Because everyone around him thought staging a gladiatorial blood- sport between the races was too over the top for network television, he put it in his back pocket and pulled it out for use in other contexts.
When we heard things about Barack Obama being born in Kenya, Mexican criminals pouring over the border, there were good people on both sides and “I’m a nationalist,” Mr. Trump was merely keeping his options open for future uses of the rhetoric on TV or politics. He didn’t want the copyright to expire.
In a bid to juice his numbers up with his base over the weekend, Mr. Trump combined strands from the most racist and xenophobic parts of his brain into tweets aimed at four Democratic congresswomen of color — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. It was widely considered the most blatant display of uncoded racist rhetoric from a sitting president in generations:
“So interesting to see ‘ Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world ( if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly … and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run.”
“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how … it is done,” Mr. Trump tweeted.
Two of the three congresswomen were born in states they represent in the House. Ms. Pressley was born in Ohio. Ms. Omar was born in Somalia but became an American citizen in her teens
Mr. Trump was clearly telling Ms. Omar to “go back to Africa” while the other Democrats were collateral damage he’d long ago designated as foreigners in his fevered imagination.
Mr. Trump has since doubled and tripled down on those tweets with comments at the White House on Monday. He is unrepentant and convinced that “many people” agree with him that the congresswomen “hate Israel” and the United States “with a passion,” as if that excused his racist eruption. Of course, most of the Republican caucus remained silent because he owns their constituents, too.
Donald Trump is not a creature of conscience. Empathy isn’t something that comes easily to him, if at all. He’s a populist provocateur and liar who thinks nothing of appealing to his constituents’ darkest impulses. He is laser- focused on getting re- elected, even if he has to bring the wobbling columns of the American republic down on top of him and his opponents.
Mr. Trump is not “book smart” by any stretch of the imagination, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t possessed by an intuitive genius for knowing which buttons to push to get his way. He’s not an original thinker, but when he gets an idea — like pitting the races against each other for ratings — he holds on to it and eventually takes it to the next level.
Ever the carnival barker and reality TV huckster, Mr. Trump is trying to pit four congresswomen of color against his strange fantasy of a united white America aching to get behind him. It was a bad idea when Howard Stern mocked it and NBC passed on it. Soon it will be America’s turn to say: “You’re fired.”