Oh, Come On! This is Plainly Racist

A Wednesday commentary because I just can't stay quiet on a day like today

We knew, when Trump was elected, that he would weaponize the justice system against his enemies.

We knew, having read and written about Project 2025 (or at least heard of it from those of us who had), that the “next conservative President…must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors.”

Including anything to do with gender, race or sexuality.

We knew, the moment Coast Guard Commandant Linda Lee Fagan was fired - and then was kicked out of her house days later - that for Trump and his thugs, DEI hire meant “any woman and or person of color who holds a responsible position in government.”

Because MAGA and the Heritage Foundation cannot conceive that such a person may be qualified.

So it should come as no surprise that when Trump and Stephen Miller did come after a member of Congress, lo and behold, it was a Black woman!

Shocking.

To absolutely no one.

Except members of the national press, who cannot say the word “racist” to save their lives.

Because members of the press - white ones, anyway - think “racism” is just a “side” that conservatives believe in.

I mean, hell, look these credulous headlines about New Jersey Congresswoman LaMonica McIvers, after she was criminally charged for trying to stop ICE from arresting Newark Mayor Ras Baraka:

The charges against Baraka - which came as he was standing outside of an ICE detention center when an ICE official got a phone call ordering the mayor’s arrest - were dropped. But acting U.S. Attorney Alina “I’d rather be pretty than smart” Habba turned around and charged McIver for being part of the scrum that ICE had incited.

McIver, herself, is calling this “political retribution.” But it is pure racism. And sexism.

And she can’t say it. Because in the U.S., calling someone - or some system - racist is worse than BEING racist.

When Trump was asked about the charges on Tuesday, his answer was also incredibly predictable:

“Give me a break. Did you see her? She was out of control. Those days are over. The days of woke are over. That woman - I have no idea who she is - that woman was out of control. We’re going to have law and order.”

The days of woke are over. That woman was out of control.

Republicans in Congress echoed that sentiment. According to Politico, a hearing about ICE on Tuesday devolved into “partisan attacks” with lawmakers challenging “the other party’s narrative surrounding the events that transpired on May 9 outside the Delaney Hall detention center.

“Democrats on the panel,” wrote Hailey Fuchs, “rallied behind their embattled colleague, New Jersey Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver, arguing that the criminal charges against her were tantamount to intimidation of elected officials by the Trump administration. Republicans, meanwhile, contended that McIver’s conduct — along with that of fellow New Jersey Democratic Reps. Rob Menendez and Bonnie Watson Coleman — was ‘not appropriate’ and a dangerous political stunt.”

I have written about how phrases like “not appropriate,” “out of order” and “out of control” are used to keep women and people of color from speaking, or to dismiss them when they do speak.

In 2016, for instance, Hillary Clinton was never “appropriate.” Bernie Sanders yelled every time he spoke, but nobody said the same about him.

And “tantamount”? These charges aren’t “actually” intimidation? They just come close?

Give me a break.

Share Widely Please

The Washington Post came closer to calling out Trump in his Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa today, with this headline:

Cleve R. Wootson Jr., Matt Viser and Lesley Wroughton noted that Trump “wouldn’t make eye contact” with the South African president, but they didn’t call out the rest of his body language, which is totally disrespectful, as you can see in this video.

Wootson, Viser and Wroughton did note that “Trump amplified false claims that White Afrikaners have been victims of a genocide, even showing video of crosses and earthen mounds that he said represented more than 1,000 grave sites of murdered farmers. The mounds were in fact part of a protest against the violence, not actual graves.”

Why can’t they just say “lie”? Why can’t they say, “Trump blatantly lied about White Afrikaners being murdered”?

Thank god for Princeton professor Eddie Glaude, who once again stole the show on Nicolle Wallace’s Deadline Whitehouse today.

“We have to call this out for what it is. This is white grievance politics, this is a white nationalist agenda,” Glaude said about Trump. “Notice how many times he said, ‘white this white that’… he wants to inhabit a victim status in order to push his grievance in order to intensify hatred.

“The part I am enraged by,” Glaude continued, “is that we tend to deal with this as if it’s just Trump’s quirkiness.

“We are at an inflection point about what this country is and what it’s going to be, and dammit let’s stop dancing around what he’s doing and what he’s saying. This is a white nationalist agenda, and the question is will we accept it as such, or will we keep simply translating for him that it’s something else.”

This not calling out racism is not a new dance between politicians and the Washington press corps, but it’s gone into overdrive since Trump first took office in 2017.

Remember “shit-hole countries”?

Remember Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss?

Remember when Chief of Staff John Kelly called Congresswoman Federica Wilson an “empty barrel” in 2017 when he accused her of falsely taking credit for funding a new FBI building in Florida? Remember how video from the Miami Herald showed that she did no such thing? That, in fact, she praised FBI agents, asked law enforcement in the audience to stand up and gave credit to her Republican colleagues for working in a bi-partisan fashion to fast-track the naming of the building to coincide with the anniversary of the deaths of the two men who it was named after? And Kelly was called out on his lies?

But Kelly didn’t think he was lying. What he saw was a Black woman talking a lot. And he was “stunned.”

Which is all to say that Trump and Stephen Miller have super-charged something that was already there. As Glaude says, we have to start calling this out.

Individually.

Every time.

Without hesitation.

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