Republicans don't care that Trump's a white supremacist -- just that he's indiscreet about it

[marmar]

Republicans don't care that Trump's a white supremacist — just that he's indiscreet about it
Trump's dinner with Nick Fuentes won't morally outrage the GOP, but they are worried it will hurt them at the polls

By AMANDA MARCOTTE
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 29, 2022 6:00AM (EST)


(Salon) After seven years of Donald Trump being America's main character, we've developed a tedious routine to react to fresh reminders of Trump's sympathies for neo-Nazis and other fascists. First, Trump gaslights in response, pretending any racism is being projected onto him by the "fake news." Other Republicans run from reporters or play dumb about what's going on. GOP base voters, who either fully agree with Trump's racist views or don't care enough to hold it against him, dig in their heels and refuse to reconsider their cult-like worship of the former president. Eventually, the media realizes, once again, that having an overt white nationalist leading the GOP doesn't actually move the needle much for their horse race coverage, and so they too give up on the story — at least until the next dust-up, when we start the cycle all over again.

The latest reminder of Trump's racial views: He had dinner with Ye, formerly Kanye West (whom Vox dubs "a poster child for antisemitism and white nationalism&quot and Ye's new Holocaust-denying buddy Nick Fuentes. As I write this, we're in the middle of the process where Trump pretends it's an accident he keeps buddying up with people who espouse neo-Nazi ideologies. We're also going through the motions of the media expressing outrage at GOP silence, while Republicans lay low, knowing this too will pass.

But not all Republicans are keeping mum. Indeed, a surprising number of them are going on the record criticizing Trump about his dinner with a man who declared, during the racist riot in Charlottesville in 2017, "The rootless transnational elite knows that a tidal wave of white identity is coming." But these complaints about Trump are hardly evidence that the GOP leadership has developed a conscience and now rejects the racism that fuels Trump and his movement. On the contrary, this comes across loud and clear: GOP leaders don't care about Trump's moral depravity. They only care that his indiscretion huts their party's electoral chances.

"This is just another example of an awful lack of judgment from Donald Trump, which, combined with his past poor judgments, make him an untenable general election candidate for the Republican Party in 2024," former New Jersey governor Chris Christie told the New York Times. Christie suggested that Trump had Fuentes over because it "feeds the hunger he feels for the attention he's missing since he left the presidency."

....(snip)....

Still, it speaks volumes that the few GOP leaders willing to criticize Trump at all only do so by framing him as a threat to the GOP's future while ignoring the larger threat he poses to the nation. Republican voters may drape themselves in the flag and other symbols of patriotism, but this rhetoric shows their leaders believe they will put party before people every time. For Republicans, the issue is never that Trump stands against American values like equality or democracy. It's that his authoritarian, white supremacist views offend some number of Americans who might otherwise be inclined to vote for their party. In the end, GOP leaders send the message that the problem with Trump's overt racism is not that it's wrong or damaging, but that it's inconvenient to white conservatives. .............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/11/29/dont-care-that-a--just-that-hes-indiscreet-about-it/

[gab13by13]

1. Terrible headline

the Salon author of the article should have watched Nicolle Wallace yesterday. The Republican party is the party of White Supremacists.

Period. EOM.

The story about the Trump/Ye/Fuentes dinner isn't about Trump, it's about Republicans not condemning it.

[Diamond_Dog]

2. As an Ohioan,

I wish more of this had come out before the midterms.

Jd Vance campaigned in this state at rallies standing along side the orange pus bag and the orange pus bag even stated, “JD Vance kisses my ass!”

Maybe, just maybe, we would be watching a much more credible new Senator going to Washington for our state than The Hillbilly Ass Kisser.

[republianmushroom]

3. Nailed it