Yep, she did just that.
“When Democratic policies fail, they are left with only this one tired argument: 'You’re racist, you’re racist, you’re racist,” he said. “It’s a tired disgusting argument.” Said the Orange Demagogue totally oblivious to the things he’s done.
Trump will lose his cool in the debate, and Hillary is finding all the buttons beforehand.
Poor, poor Donald Trump! He’s perfectly happy to court the vote of, and pander to the fears of White Supremecists, but gets all feely when this is spoken of aloud.
It isn’t just Trump.
The GOP in general has been pursuing the racist vote as part of the Southern Strategy for generations now. The outright ties to the Klan and Neo-Nazi organizations are new, but that’s just because Trump can’t dog-whistle and refuses to take advice. Back in the old days, the GOP could reliably signal those groups with coded language like “welfare queen” and “urban” and similar, and make the people who called them on it look like crazy conspiracy theorists imagining the GOP was pandering to racists.
These days, there are no more dog whistles. Everything is out in the open. The only ones who look like the crazy conspiracy theorists are the ones who persist in denying it.
None of this is new. It’s just more blatant now because Trump’s doing it.
I get your point about not naming names. But Trump has already said she lied and made everything up. She has put up a cite by cite response for each quote in her speech.
If she wasn’t specific it would’ve been more “Hillary lies” crap.
Trump specifically is also the leading voice of the most widespread racist attack on President Obama – birtherism, which he never retracted or apologized for. That alone would be enough for accusations like this.
Yeah, that’s right. Who cares if they get free publicity? It’s like refusing to read what the opposition is saying because they might get $0.0001 out of it.
I feel even better about supporting her after watching this speech. She seems to be hitting her stride.
If anyone missed it:
Birtherism’s another dog whistle. It’s another plausible deniability smokescreen, such that the followers can derail the discussion about it into an endless tangle of pointless law-wank and technicality, while distracting people from the simple fact nobody made a big deal over this when the President was white. The additional fact some people really, honestly believe the smokescreen portion is real is another distraction from that simple fact.
A lot of conspiracy theories work like this: There’s a core belief, usually unstated, and a smokescreen of stated beliefs, which are endlessly, needlessly complicated. The best example is the endless variations on the Sovereign Citizen/Freeman On The Land family of conspiracy theories: The smokescreen is a whole system of pseudo-laws, complete with underlying pseudo-legal principles and philosophy, and encompassing reams of nonsense documentation, meaningless forms, and spurious incantations. The core belief is that there’s a way to live in a society while ignoring most or all of its rules without being punished. Stated baldly, the core belief is obviously nonsensical to the average person; when clothed in the smokescreen, however, it looks lush and ornate and purple enough to seem like there must be something to it.
Of course, Trump has explicitly expressed racist sentiments so often that he either doesn’t understand dog whistling or doesn’t think it applies to the biggest, best, classiest Presidential candidate in the history of mankind. It’s possible he’s one of the dupes who actually believes the smokescreen, at least to the extent he believes any proposition aside from his core faith, “Trump Is Great”.
I think the bit about hiding the black workers when he came down to the casino floor is particularly damning. You want to be the leader of all the people when you can’t stand to have certain of them in your presence? You think you’re going to get 95% of the black vote when you did your damndest not to rent to them? And now because you’ve adopted Jeb Bush’s immigration platform you think moderates are going to be fooled? Bravo to Hillary for taking off the gloves and landing one haymaker after another. This punk needed a beating.
Exactly.
By all means, Urbanredneck. Let’s do talk about Trump’s policies and issues. Where would you like to begin? Immigration?.. Foreign policy?.. Domestic policy?.. Economy?.. Educations?..
I recommend you start a new thread for each so we can really get into details on each without getting into tangents.
His policies are great! He’s going to create more jobs than anyone! He knows how to defeat ISIS better than all the generals. He’s got the best words! He knows words! His policies are the best because they come from his brain and he’s speaking with himself and he’s said a lot of things… Make America Hate Again, Build the Wall!!!
The racist game sucks. Let’s play Hungry Hungry Hippos!
I finally got a chance to watch Clinton’s speech. The content of her speech was good (I still find her delivery to be a little wooden, but I’ve been spoiled by 8 years of Obama). I also really liked the forcefulness and very clear presentation of the case against him.
And I’m glad that Clinton seems to be going all-in on the “Trump is a racist” attack. With the “KKK” ad and this speech, it looks like she’s really enthusiastically lowering the boom on him.
Trump’s response that he doesn’t know what “alt-right” is, and “no one knows” is ridiculous after Clinton just explained what it is. Of course, a lot of people won’t have watched the whole speech and will accept Trump’s claim that Clinton is just making up a term to slander his supporters. But I do see some news articles this morning explaining the “alt-right” and showing how the movement crawled out of the woodwork, so hopefully the facts will get through to at least some voters despite Trump’s insistence that they plug their ears and loudly hum.
I think Clinton will probably win the election, although I will probably need a straightjacket before it’s all over. Still, the fact that we’re having this kind of election in the United States in the 21st century is deeply depressing to me. I always knew, of course, that there are a shitload of racists in the US and that there is a lot of systemic bias and discrimination here. But I would not have thought that a guy who has absolutely no coherent policy agenda other than stoking openly racist resentment would get within shouting distance of the goddamn Presidency. That this guy can get even 30% or 40% support in the US moves my opinion of us from “pretty racist but getting better” to “holy fuck, what kind of people are we”.
Trump can always ask his campaign chief, whose own Breitbart did a fawning defense of the term and the “movement” of white patriots back in March.
The presentation of the KKK ad matters. It’s bad form to slag your opponent’s supporters as a group, so you have to use an extreme example. You could go out and find some fat fuck in a dirty t-shirt and cargo pants, and he could utter the same words as the KKK guy and mean the same thing by it, but it wouldn’t come across the same
So Trump’s response yesterday, and he did it multiple times at a rally, was to point at the crowd and say she’s talking about YOU.
Which is basically correct (she aiming both at him AND his supporters and undecideds), and someone told him to do it (and I think it was a mistake) but the fact is, it just further makes her unstated point for her and accomplishes part of what she wants to do without her having to do it.
I’ll echo others. I’m glad she did it and I’m a little surprised she actually called Trump what he is. Usually these sort of things are just alluded to, but she totally went for the jugular and I think that’s important.
“Yesterday, Louisiana-based white nationalist and U.S. Senate candidate David Duke reacted to the news of Hillary Clinton’s upcoming speech about Donald Trump’s ties to the alt-right, a racist movement championed by Duke, by noting that Trump speaks just like alt-right leaders.”
Thank you Urbanredneck for giving me my morning laugh!
Clinton, the policy wonk whose detailed positions on issues are posted and have been gone into by her in detail that gets most listeners eyes to glaze over, is being accused of not presenting issues by the poster boy for attempted insult comedy and name-calling as substitute for a real campaign?
That is a very good one! Thank you!
Meanwhile, yes, the fact that Trump has a long history (predating this campaign and continuing throughout it) of promoting racist crap, has a staff that trawls alt-Right White supremacist sites for material that they then retweet, sometimes forgetting to edit out its explicitness, and whose core appeal is the demonization of various “Others”, is material to his being or not being someone to elect as president of our pluralistic country.
Obviously.
Thank you again for the performance art!
As someone who really doesn’t like Hillary for a wide variety of reasons, I have to say that I really like this speech. It’s highly factual, hits on a real, serious issue, and is well-delivered. I’m not really sure what Urbanredneck is objecting to about it, it’s about actual substantive things that Trump has done, said, and who he ties himself to. I think it’s also smart because I don’t think she’s going to attract a lot of supporters through talking about how great she is, but pointing out that this time the greater of two evils is really, really evil can discourage republicans from voting and encourage independents or third party voters to vote for her against Trump.