It seems clear to me that the Trump administration has a new message: “We hate Native Americans.”
It’s not just Trump spouting random nonsense. His cronies are also putting this forth.
So why has this become the new cause of the Trump administration? What’s the hidden agenda here?
The Trump cult seemed to have found a group it could hate with Hispanics and had invested some effort into setting up a system to attack Hispanics. So why suddenly invent a new enemy?
Was popular support for anti-Hispanic hatred on the decline among the base? Did they need a fresher target? If so, why were Native Americans chosen, rather than some more traditional target like Communist or Blacks or Jews or Asians?
Is this wave of anti-Native American hatred cover for some financial motive? Is Trump looking to revive his casino business and wants to eliminate the competition? Did somebody pay off Trump to allow taking mineral rights away from reservations?
Trump’s having problems with the Epstein accusations. Did he feel he needed some new issue to divert public attention and somebody in the White House basement spun a wheel and “Stir up hatred against Native Americans” was where it landed? Or did Trump watch an old western recently?
If I had to hazard a guess, Trump happened to catch Fort Apache on TCM or some other channel and couldn’t stand the way Henry Fonda was treated by those awful Indians.
MAGA doesn’t really see it as two different groups. They see people with darker skin that comes from indigenous genetics. And to them darker skin indicates inferiority. Simple as that.
Since it was very plausibly rumored that trump came up with the idea to reopen Alcatraz after a late-night showing of the movie 'Escape from Alcatraz", this is actually believable, sadly. Let’s hope he never watches ‘Dr. Strangelove’.
Native Americans have frequently been ‘relocated’ (read: forcibly removed) to what were presumed to be agriculturally useless reservations only to later discover that these lands had valuable mineral resources or throughways for petroleum and gas pipelines and are now in the way of development of such projects such as the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines or copper, uranium, and lithium extraction without safety and environmental protection assurances. They are now in the way of ‘progress’ as defined by extracting all available resources as fast as possible with as little governmental oversight or regulation so we can “Drill, baby, drill!”
That’s “what’s up with Donald Trump and Native Americans”; they’re in the way of the extraction agenda as well as serving as a good target for racial discrimination and bigotry by the White Christian nationalist contingent who doesn’t regard them as native-born Americans, and for many probably not even as real human beings.
My understanding is that Native Americans were pretty far down on the maga hate list. They hated Native Americans less than they hate Blacks, Jews, Hispanics, Asians, Muslims, Gays, Foreigners, Communists, Liberals, Women, Hippies, Atheists, New Yorkers, Californians, City People, Politicians, Teachers, Hollywood, People With High School Diplomas, the Media, the Illuminati, and Lizard People. So I was surprised to see Native Americans jump to the front of the line.
I saw a video on Reddit of Trump in some hearing (gaming board?) ranting about Native American casinos as being a scam.
Bush had his moment where he tried and failed to articulate what “sovereign” meant.
Used to be that racist whites would try to attribute some Native American lineage to themselves to give them a more solid claim to being “American” than immigrants who came after the era of trappers and frontiersmen breeding with Native American women.
It’s all about casinos. Reservations don’t have to follow the same regulations as “real” casinos (like Trump’s) and that is UNFAIR (one of the big baby’s favorite rallying cries).
MAGA has plenty of room in its collective heart for hatred of all kinds of people. They can hate Canadians, Greenlanders, Panamanians, most Europeans (except the Far Right kind), so they can certainly find a little corner for hating on Native Americans, especially those standing in the way of ‘progress’. Most of them aren’t even Real Christians, even the ones where were coerced into believing, which you can tell because their skin hasn’t lightened up.
The Trump Organization and the various wholly owned Trump hospitality properties don’t even operate casinos, and haven’t for over a decade. I don’t think there are even any Trump-branded properties that still operate casinos now that the Taj Mahal and Plaza Hotel went defunct and the Trump Castle/Marina rebranded as the Golden Nugget. Trump casinos were somehow some of the least successful of his businesses despite having a statistically guaranteed return provided you can get asses in seats, and with a couple of exceptions were never in direct competition with Indian casinos.
The scourging of Native Americans is all about tribes standing in the way of oil and gas pipelines or protesting against mineral extraction.
Yup, his casinos all failed. And there has to be some reason for that, other than Trump’s an Idiot. So he came up with a scapegoat: They failed because of competition from Indian casinos.
Yes. But they don’t have room in their collective heads for holding multiple thoughts. So I’m wondering why this particular one was what they were told to think this month.
I don’t know what you are talking about. Just the other day he stood up for the millions of Native Americans who are demanding to fet the Washington Redskins back.
Trump wants to distract his minions from listening to any of his critics. This is all about shiny objects. By distracting MAGA to hate yet another innocent group, they can’t focus on Epstein or whatever else he doesn’t want them to look at.
BTW, how can someone be more “American” than a 100% native American? Compared to them, everyone else is an illegal immigrant. I lived near the Flathead Indian reservation in Northwest Montana, and when we met, and not wanting to insult them, I would ask what they preferred to be called. To a person they said they wanted to be called Indians and not native Americans. When I asked one of them why, he said “if it’s good enough for Columbus, it’s good enough for you.” I think it’s really because they consider themselves part of a sovereign nation, and not part of the US per se.
They’re Asian immigrants who snuck over via a concealed ‘land bridge’ to avoid coming in through official ports of entry and applying for citizenship to the United States of America.