TRUMP RALLIES AS AMERICAN POLITICAL DIVIDE DEEPENS
Like The Beach Boys, Deftones and Guns N’ Roses, former President Donald Trump is back on tour this summer.
I streamed his latest stop in Sarasota on Saturday night, and let’s just say I’ve had better Fourths of July.
It was promoted as “45 Fest — A Save America Rally.” It comes on the heels of a rally the week before in Ohio and a speech scheduled this weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas.
Oh, yeah, he’s back out there, and we need to pay attention.
I would love to see Trump marginalized to the point where no media outlet provides the kind of uncritical coverage of him that channels like Newsmax do. But until that happens, it is important for those of us in the mainstream media to monitor what he is saying, if nothing else to try to counteract his smears.
As much as I hated going down the demented rabbit hole with Trump and his more fervent followers, I am glad I did. Despite all the troubles facing Trump from his social media bans to employee and company indictments, he is still trafficking in reckless, belligerent and even dangerous talk. The more I listened, the more obvious it became that for all of President Joe Biden’s talk of healing, there will be no healing in this country as long as Trump is out on the stump preaching his gospel of lies to his army of aggrieved disciples.
“Free speech is under assault like never before,” he said in his 90-minute speech Saturday. “Religious liberty is being crushed. Nobody took care of religious liberty laws like we did. Dissenters are being persecuted. Our streets are being overtaken by vicious thugs and bloodthirsty criminals. Democrat cities. Our border is being erased before our very eyes. It was never stronger than the border we created just a few months ago.”
Even a cursory review of his characterization of American life today shows how false it is. Where is free speech under assault like never before? Is he talking about Twitter banning him and Facebook suspending him? That’s one of his favorite things to be aggrieved about.
But neither the suspension nor the ban keeps him in any way from exercising a right to speak freely. Facebook and Twitter are only exercising their rights to say, “Not on our platforms. We don’t want your disinformation, propaganda, lies and slander on our platforms.”
And would the dissenters “persecuted” be those fine “patriots” he said he “loved” so much after they stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 leaving five dead in the wake of their attempt to block the peaceful transition of power to Biden?
But the part of the speech that really makes me angry is his claim that “our streets are being overtaken by vicious thugs and bloodthirsty criminals.” In case the dog whistle was not sounded clearly enough with the word “thugs,” he doubles down with the words “Democrat cities.” That would include Baltimore, of course, one of Trump’s favorite targets. I am only surprised he failed to throw in a reference to rats as well.
This is the kind of talk that I find so dangerous, the kind of language that seeks to divide us based on appeals to fear and differences. The reference to our border being “erased” is just a continuation of him stoking fear and blaming the Democrats for not protecting us from immigrants as well as the “vicious thugs and bloodthirsty criminals” in Democrat cities.
In November, I wrote that Trump’s presidency might be ending, but his media presence will remain. Indeed it has. And it will only grow as we approach the 2022 midterm and 2024 general elections. One can only wonder how profoundly divided the nation will be by then.