The Washington Post editorial board clutches its pearls after years of excusing the Republican right wing extremism and insisting that "both sides do it."
DONALD TRUMP’S rapidly expanding catalogue of bombast is already a weighty tome, and it’s a fool’s errand to take each of his utterances seriously. Still, his loathsome comment on Wednesday, in which he excused violence against a Hispanic man in Boston as “passionate” acts of “people who are following me,” taps into a dark vein in American history and merits special attention.
In the Boston incident, two brothers were charged with using a metal pole to assault a 58-year-old Hispanic man. The man, who was homeless, was left with a broken nose and other injuries to his face, arms and chest. “Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported,” one of the brothers, Scott Leader, told police, the Boston Globe reported.
When Mr. Trump was told of the incident, in which the brothers also are alleged to have urinated on the man before beating him, he said the following: “It would be a shame. . . . I will say that people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate.”
[...]
The truth is that Mr. Trump deliberately whips up popular rage for political advantage. By spewing hatred on the stump, Mr. Trump encourages it in the bleachers and on the streets, then sanctions it when it occurs. Remember: He also minimized the death threats Ms. Kelly received after his dustup with her, telling the Hollywood Reporter, “I’m sure they don’t mean that,” then pivoting to stress his “respect for the people that like me.”
Mr. Trump is not the first politician to inspire and then explain away crimes of hatred; he’s just the most recent one. Recall the Southern politicians of the past century who were apologists for lynchings. Rep. Charles E. Bennett of Florida, who said he condemned such violence, nonetheless explained that lynchings occurred because Southerners were aggrieved at the meddling of Congress. Others, more coarsely, cited the rape of white women by black men as having naturally incited a lynch mob.
Mr. Trump’s immigrant-bashing rhetoric is intended to galvanize political anger and win Republican primaries, not incite a lynch mob. The trouble is that his contempt-filled hyperbole appeals not to rational discourse but to passions — passions that can and do get out of hand.
Excuse me, butwhat did they think was going on when people were cheering the deaths of sick people who have no insurance and throwing dollar bills at Parkinson's victims? What did they think this whole confederate flag flap was all about?
And while I'm sure it's nice of them not to take his nativist bigotry seriously and give The Donald the benefit of the doubt, I don't know for sure he isn't inciting a lynch mob. Do they listen to what he's actually saying? This was from Derry, New Hampshire on Wednesday:
…we have crime all over the country, we have … the borders, the southern border is a disaster…The other night a 66 year old woman, a veteran, raped sodomized, brutally killed by an illegal immigrant. We gotta stop we gotta take back our country. We’ve gotta take it back!
Last night in Mobile Alabama he said it this way:
“Between what happened in San Francisco….The other day in California, last week, a woman, 66 years old a veteran was raped, sodomized, tortured and killed by an illegal immigrant. We have to do it. We have to do something.”
That's in his standard stump speech and he gets huge cheers every time. If he doesn't want people to take the law into their own hands he certainly isn't explicit about it.
What did these handwringing elites think has been going on these past few years? They so dizzy with visions of crazy 1960s hippies dancing in their heads that they failed to notice the rise of the extreme right.
Update: The New York Times noted last week that he's forcing all the other Republicans in the race to join his crusade:
[A]s Mr. Trump swells in the polls, his diminished opponents are following in his wake, like remoras on a shark. Several have shuffled onto the anti-birthright-citizenship bus, including Rick Santorum, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ben Carson and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. Even Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who once fought for smart bipartisan immigration reform, wants to repeal birthright citizenship. As does Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a birthright citizen himself. As for Mr. Trump’s other restrictionist proposals, several are firmly lodged again in the playbook of a Republican Party that briefly tried to reform itself after the Mitt Romney debacle. Some candidates are even willing to try to trump Mr. Trump in xenophobia: Mr. Carson is talking about using armed military drones at the border. That’s right-- bombing Arizona.
Jeb! can't even think of another word for "anchor baby." (Apparently, "American children of undocumented workers" is too complicated.)