Papa Donald

A couple of weeks ago, David Frum painted a dystopian portrait of the future in which "it's 2020, and President Donald Trump will shortly be sworn in for his second term."  The nightmare includes a landscape in which

The media have grown noticeably more friendly to Trump as well. The proposed merger of AT&T and Time Warner was delayed for more than a year, during which Time Warner’s CNN unit worked ever harder to meet Trump’s definition of fairness. Under the agreement that settled the Department of Justice’s antitrust complaint against Amazon, the company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, has divested himself of The Washington Post. The paper’s new owner—an investor group based in Slovakia—has closed the printed edition and refocused the paper on municipal politics and lifestyle coverage.

If Saturday's Washington Post is any indication, it is halfway there.

At Thursday's news conference, President Trump repeatedly referred to "fake news,"  an all-purpose rationalization. Trump particularly hates one network, perhaps because it reminds him of himself: "I mean, I watch CNN, it's so much anger and hatred and just the hatred."

More so, the press is generally being scapegoated. The President maintained "Russia is fake news. Russia -- this is fake news put out by the media."  Moreover, "it was all a, you know, fake news, fabricated deal, to try and make up for the loss of the Democrats and the press plays right into it."

"Fake" evidently can be rolled out as an adjective to discredit anything, given that Trump claimed "I said to somebody that was in the room, I said 'you take a look at Reince, he's working so hard just putting out fires that are fake fires.' I men, they're fake. They're not true."

Or it can be a ready made excuse for failure, as in Vladimir Putin is "sitting behind his desk and he's saying 'you know, I see what's going on in the United States, I follow it closely. It's going to be impossible for President Trump to ever get along with Russia because of all the presure he's got with this fake story.'"

But whenever you think Donald Trump has hit rock bottom, it turns out to have been a false bottom. On Friday, he tweeted (capitalization his) "The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBC News, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy. It is the enemy of the American People!" (For NBC, it's only its news division because Trump is still getting paid from its entertainment division. The man may be ignorant, even slightly deranged, but he's not stupid.)

As Trump himself would say were it not about him- "some say" that has fascist overtones. The media may hear "nice little news operation you have there- it would be a shame if one of those Americans thought I was serious about that 'enemy' thing."

It could happen. Ryan Lizzaa tweets "Not the front-page photo I was expecting the day after Trump calls the media the enemy":

In a story which has a happy ending, Jim Rutenberg notes

This is how the muzzling starts: not with a boot on your neck, but with the fear of one that runs so deep that you muzzle yourself.

Maybe it’s the story you decide against doing because it’s liable to provoke a press-bullying president to put the power of his office behind his attempt to destroy your reputation by falsely calling your journalism “fake.”

Maybe it’s the line you hold back from your script or your article because it could trigger a federal leak investigation into you and your sources (so, yeah, jail).

Or, maybe it’s the commentary you spike because you’re a publicly supported news channel and you worry it will cost your station its federal financing.

Although the front page photo in The Washington Post probably was accompanied by the paper's usual objective, stellar reporting, the adage remains "a picture tells a thousand words." Notwithstanding the photograph showing an elderly man apparently pained to be holding the hands of two young children, the image will linger as a grandfatherly one while serving no useful journalistic purpose.  We can only hope this is but a blip because the fourth estate is one of the few institutions standing between the American people and the plans of  Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, and others for a country hitherto unimaginable.

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The Family Dodge

"I have no idea why President Trump would make up a story about me like he did today,"  countered the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.  April Ryan had asked President Trump about having a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus and the President commented

I was all set to have the meeting. You know, we called him and called him. And he was all set. I spoke to him on the phone, very nice guy.....

He wanted it, but we called, called, called and can't make a meeting with hm. Every day I walk and say I would like to meet with him becuase I do want to solve the problem. But he probably was told by Schumer or somebody like that, some other lightweight. He was proably told- he was probably told "don't met with Trump. It's bad politics.

So Donald Trump lied. Big deal- his lips moved, he lied. Nothing new there. Nor is it surprising that when African-American Ryan asked about the absence of a meeting with the CBC, Trump responded "Do you want to set up the meeting?" After Ryan started to respond "I'm not," the President interrupted with "are they friends of yours?" Appropriately nonplussed, Ryan stated "I'm just a reporter" and the President replied "well, then set up the meeting."

Trump's Administration is in such disarray that he can't get his people to set up a simple meeting. And he thinks all black people know all other black people.  And Saturday follows Friday.

Lamentably less controversially, the President claimed

So here's the story, folks. Number one, I am the least anti- Semitic person that you've ever seen in your entire life. Number two, racism, the least racist person. In fact, we did very well relative to other people running as a Republican -- quiet, quiet, quiet.







Famously, the Office of the White House lost track of six million murders on Holocaust Remembrance Day, wiping out the genocidal nature of the Nazi regime.  When the White House recently released its list of "underreported" acts of terrorism it somehow omitted what by one account  are the "350 terrorist attacks — including stabbings, shootings, vehicular ramming attacks and a bus bombing —" targeting Israeli victims, most of them Jews, since September 13, 2015. Jacob Weisberg reminds us that President Trump declared "a position of 'America First' in his inaugural address. He either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that was the slogan of America’s pro-Nazi isolationist movement, which accused Jews of drawing the country into war."

And who can forget this tweet during the campaign, from a white supremacist's website?

Fewer than can recall, from the campaign's final week, the arguably anti-Semitic ad which famed white nationalist Richard Spencer labeled "powerful,"

Trump has an all-purpose answer whenever he is charged- and when he is not- with anti-Semitism.  Wednesday was typical, when he responded to a question about national disunity by saying "Hopefully, I'll be able to do something about that. And you know it's something that was very important to me. As far as people, Jewish people, so many friends, a daughter who happens to be here right now, a son-in-law, and three beautiful grandchildren."

Thirteen months ago, American Jew and Haaretz columnist Peter Beinart warned

For years, Benito Mussolini carried on an affair with a Venetian Jewish woman named Margherita Sarfatti. He nevertheless boasted about his hatred of “these disgusting Jews,” a hatred that he claimed long preceded Italy’s implementation of anti-Semitic legislation in 1938. 

In his book, The Captive Mind, Czeslaw Milosz describes an anti-Semitic writer in 1930s Poland who “had many Jewish friends, and the very day he published his racist statements, he would come to these friends…and falling on his knees, would declare his love for them.” Notorious anti-Jewish polemicists of 16th Century Central Europe, Johannes Pfefferkorn and Anton Margaritha, were both Jewish converts to Christianity. Even Hitler himself expressed deep affection toward Eduard Bloch, a Jewish doctor from Vienna who had treated his mother. Calling Bloch a “noble Jew,” Hitler instructed the Gestapo to protect him even as Nazi forces sent other Austrian Jews to their deaths. 

Skepticism should ensue when someone touts his personal affection for individuals while indentifying them by their religious, ethnic, or racial group.  Many people have black friends or have even voted for black political candidates while believing the latter are anomalous.  Decades ago, in Donald Trump's formative years, it was not uncommon to hear "some of my best friends are colored." It was a tip-off, even as it was sometimes accurate. "Personal behavior," Beinart observes, "often contradicts public ideology."

Beinart adds

Lueger, the notoriously anti-Semitic turn-of-the-century mayor of Vienna who inspired Adolf Hitler, had numerous Jewish friends. Asked to explain the apparent contradiction, he declared, 'I decide who is a Jew.'" 

It is not hard to imagine that Donald Trump believes his daughter, son-in-law, and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin are Jewish while believing other Jewish people.  Scapegoating those Jews he reviles because, or independent, of their religious affiliation also is not a stretch.

We know Donald Trump is narcissistic and dishonest.  We do not know that he is a racist or anti-Semite, or has other characteristics seemingly on display.  But just as he undoubtedly has black friends while he fans the flames of racial animosity, sincere affection for his daughter and the man she married, as well as their children prove little.







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Upon Further Review...

President Trump may have gotten religion (not Christianity, Judaism, or Islam), switching gears on the USA's traditional "one  China" policy. And in what has been seen as an effort to avoid a trade war with the mainland Chinese, the Trump Administration recently has altered its approach toward alleged currency manipulation by Beijing. On Feburary 14, Slate's Jordan Weissman explained

According to the Wall Street Journal, the White House's National Trade Council is eyeing a plan that would address currency manipulation generally without aiming at China specifically by deeming the practice an unfair subsidy. That will allow individual companies that feel they've been hurt as a result of currency manipulation by China, or by any other country, to bring complaints before the Commerce Department and ask for countervailing tariffs.

Hopeful but appropriately skeptical, Weissman acknowledged "if China ever did start manipulating the value of its currency down again, letting companies complain about it to the Commerce Department might be an inadequate response."

Well, well.   The day after the piece from the somewhat prescient Weissman, The Associated Press reported

The government of China awarded U.S. President Donald Trump valuable rights to his own name this week, in the form of a 10-year trademark for construction services.

The registration became official on Feb. 14 and was published in a trademark registration announcement on the website of China's Trademark Office on Wednesday.

This may well be the first foreign trademark to be handed to Trump during his presidency, but is unlikely to be the last. In China alone he has 49 pending trademark applications and 77 marks already registered in his own name, most of which will come up for renewal during his term.

It's the same old tune, played over and over again in this Administration, now applied to the world's (still) pre-eminent totalitarian regime:

Critics say Trump's global intellectual property interests could be used by foreign states as leverage over the president and may violate the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution, which bars public servants from accepting anything of value from foreign governments unless explicitly approved by Congress. These concerns are particularly sharp in China, where the courts and bureaucracy reflect the will of the ruling Communist Party.

The registration this week came as a surprise win for Trump after a decade of trying — and failing — to wrest the rights to his name back from a man named Dong Wei. The abrupt turn in Trump's bureaucratic fortunes once he declared his candidacy has raised questions about the extent to which his political status may be helping his family business.

Questions, indeed  Norman Painter, along with President Obama ethics lawyer Norman Eisen, represent Citizens for Responsiblity and Ethics in Washington in its lawsuit filed in January against Trump. Eisen calls Painter "the Number 1 scholar in the country on government ethics" and

Any special treatment from China would mean that Trump effectively accepted a present from Beijing, an act that would violate the Constitution, Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said in an email. "A different conclusion might be reached if Trump had been treated like everyone else seeking a trademark, but the evidence does not point in that direction."

The Trumpists still maintain that President Trump would never, ever have any connection with his businesses while he is President. And so

Alan Garten, chief legal officer of The Trump Organization, said Trump's trademark activity in China predates his election. Trump has turned management of his company over to his children and a team of executives in order to remove himself from his business and its trademark portfolio, he added.

China's State Administration for Industry and Commerce, which oversees the Trademark Office, and the foreign ministry could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

David Frum tweeted about last week "one aide violated ethics rules to enrich Trump's family; and then lied about deal to lift sanctions on pro-Trump espionage." (Conway understands well the purposes of this regime.) By all means, investigate thoroughly any connections between General Flynn- and all other individuals in this Administration- and the Kremlin. But also and always, follow the money.  And get those tax returns released.











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Russian Ties Are Not Ties From Russia.

David Frum has explained that Donald Trump

has repeatedly and emphatically rejected criticism of Vladimir Putin’s methods of rule, including his murders of journalists.

He has called NATO obsolete because it is too focused on the threat from Russia. At his own convention, he told The New York Times he would not defend small NATO countries like Estonia against a Russian attack.

Trump’s convention team, largely indifferent to the work of the party-platform committee, acted decisively to strike pro-Ukraine language. Trump himself has urged decreased U.S. support for Ukraine as it resists Russian invasion.

And at this most recent press conference, he indicated openness to recognizing Russia’s conquest and annexation of Crimea—and expressed opposition to maintaining sanctions against Russia. That statement would have topped the news on any day except one in which a candidate for United States president openly invited foreign espionage against his political opponent.

That's a pretty good summary- or was a good summary, when Frum wrote it on July 27, 2016. The latest is The New York Times' discovery that

Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.

American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee, three of the officials said. The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.

And Frum's bill of particulars came more than two months before the office of National Intelligence, after months of speculation about Russian involvement in the USA election, stated the DNC emails "thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process.  We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”

(For extra credit: what other election campaign news hit on the same day, on October 7?)

Ten days ago- or two days before the current Michael Flynn saga began- the NYT reported

President Trump cast doubt on whether Moscow is backing separatists engaged in the recent escalation of fighting in eastern Ukraine, appearing to side with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has long denied involvement in the conflict despite evidence to the contrary.

Mr. Trump said he did not take offense at the outbreak of a lethal bout of fighting in Ukraine that came within a day of a phone conversation he had with Mr. Putin, saying of the recent clashes, “we don’t really know exactly what that is.”

They’re pro-forces,” Mr. Trump said of the Ukrainian separatists in an interview that aired on Monday on “The O’Reilly Factor,” on Fox News. “We don’t know, are they uncontrollable? Are they uncontrolled? That happens also. We’re going to find out; I would be surprised, but we’ll see.”

The report unavoidably suggested "Mr. Trump’s comments were the latest indication that his desire for warmer relations with Russia may be coloring his view of the conflict in Ukraine..."

Of course, "warmer relations with Russia" mat be a euphemism for "toady" (video below from late September).  And yet, President Trump has tweeted (capitalization his)  "Crimea was TAKEN by Russia during the Obama Administration. Was Obama too soft on Russia?"  Politico notes

Trump’s tweet follows comments from White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who said on Tuesday that the president will take a harder line against Russia and expects the country to withdraw from Crimea in the future.

Everyone is a comedian.  And Donald Trump is a comedian whose stock in trade is diversion and dishonesty. Still, nothing should be assumed. When he tweets "was Obama too soft on Russia?" we should ask " what is your answer, Mr. President?"












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Urge To Intimidate

"Our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see," argued Trump senior policy director Stephen Miller," as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.”







A cynic might suggest there is only one word to describe a president as Miller has. That word would be "despot."  However, "autocrat" also would do quite nicely.

Steve Miller should have stuck with music, but is not alone in his regard for presidential authority. The Washington Post reported Monday that Assistant to the President and Director of Communications for the Office of Public Liaison Omarosa Manigault

got into a heated argument with a White House reporter just steps from the Oval Office last week, according to witnesses. The reporter, April Ryan, said Manigault “physically intimidated” her in a manner that could have warranted intervention by the Secret Service.

Ryan also said Manigault made verbal threats, including the assertion that Ryan was among several journalists on whom Trump officials had collected “dossiers” of negative information.

Manigault, a onetime friend of Ryan’s, declined to address Ryan’s accusations on the record, offering only this emailed statement: “My comment: Fake news!” She did not specify what she considered false.

The incident occurred

outside White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s West Wing office late Wednesday. Among the witnesses were White House press office staffers and a Washington Post reporter, Abby Phillip.

Phillip said she didn’t hear every word of the women’s exchange but said Ryan told her afterward that she felt Manigault’s behavior was so threatening that it was “Secret Serviceable,” meaning that it rose to the level of law enforcement intervention.

Ryan, a veteran White House correspondent for the American Urban Radio Networks, used the same phrase repeatedly in an interview. “She stood right in my face like she was going to hit me,” Ryan said. “I said, ‘You better back up.’ . . . She thought I would be bullied. I won’t be.”

This did not spring up out of nowhere.  Rather (not Dan)

The argument apparently stemmed from emails that Manigault sent to Ryan during the presidential campaign.

In October, Manigault sent Ryan an email raising questions about whether Ryan was being paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign — a claim Ryan vigorously denies. Manigault included a link to an article from the Intercept, which covers national security issues.

The article detailed the Clinton campaign’s effort to secure favorable media coverage by “manipulating” reporters; it included a list compiled by Clinton staffers of TV surrogates who were part of the campaign. It published a separate list of journalists, including Ryan, whom the campaign hoped to influence but were not paid by the Clintons.

“This story suggests that as a reporter, you are (or were) a paid Clinton surrogate,” Manigault wrote in the email. “I pray this is not true! This could be hurtful to your legacy and the integrity of your work.”

The article did not imply Ryan was a paid Clinton surrogate, but facts are elusive things to the crowd now polluting Washington, D.C.  Not content with confusing surrogacy with uh, er, objectivity

Manigault sent a second email to Ryan a few minutes later. It read, “Protect your legacy!! You have worked too hard to have people question your ethics as a journalist. People talking trash about the reporters on that list having NO integrity. It’s hurtful to hear people say those things about you.”

Ryan said she was devastated by any intimation that she was unethical. “It’s just ugly,” she said. “She’s trying to harm my integrity and my career. I’ve been [covering the White House] for 20 years. I plan to be here for the next 20 years. You don’t mess with someone’s livelihood.”

During their altercation, Ryan said Manigault told her that she was among several African American journalists who were the subject of White House “dossiers.” Manigault has previously said that Trump is keeping “a list” of opponents, though at the time she was referring to Republicans who voted against Trump.

Ryan laughed off the claim of dossiers and Manigault, a friend of Trump from "The Apprentice" days, may have been making it up. However, keeping dossiers on reporters is a staple of police states, as is claiming the immunity from criticism Miller does for President Trump.

In his recent piece "How Donald Trump Could Build an Autocracy in the U.S.," David Frum explains

The rulers of backsliding democracies resent an independent press, but cannot extinguish it. They may curb the media’s appetite for critical coverage by intimidating unfriendly journalists, as President Jacob Zuma and members of his party have done in South Africa. Mostly, however, modern strongmen seek merely to discredit journalism as an institution, by denying that such a thing as independent judgment can exist.

It doesn't have to be the ruler himself trying to intimidate unfriendly journalists. He has Manigault to do it individually. Smearing the press generally may be left to Miller or to Kellyanne Conway, who has accused the press of being "the Opposition Party. Not the Democratic Party. You're the Opposition Party."

With the explosion of the Flynn story, there was insufficient note taken of the Trump regime's response to criticism of Stephen Miller.  In a normal Administration, there would have been an effort to allay fears with a statement of regret, a claim that the comment was misintepreted, or at least an assurance that the statement applied only to the issue of the day, in this case refugee policy.

But nothing ensued, nothing to clarify, re-word, tone down, or assuage anyone's concerns. Not coincidentally, there is only (Dear Leader) "will not be questioned."  Frum observes

A president who plausibly owes his office at least in part to a clandestine intervention by a hostile foreign intelligence service? Who uses the bully pulpit to target individual critics? Who creates blind trusts that are not blind, invites his children to commingle private and public business, and somehow gets the unhappy members of his own political party either to endorse his choices or shrug them off? If this were happening in Honduras, we’d know what to call it.







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Breaking News: Melania Trump Is Not A Prostitute

It can now be told:  Melania Trump is no prostitute.

You probably assumed that anyway but now, in defense of Mrs. Trump, supermodel, actress, and Bernie Sanders supporter Emily Ratajkowski wants you to know it. Politico reports

Editors at the New York Times have reprimanded a reporter for referring to first lady Melania Trump as a “hooker” at an event Sunday night, calling the remarks “completely inappropriate.”

The reporter in question, who has not been identified by the paper, came under fire Monday morning after supermodel Emily Ratajkowski made the reporter’s remarks public in a series of tweets. Ratajkowski, who said the reporter made the remarks while sitting next to her at a New York Fashion Week event, called the comment “disgusting sexist bull---t.”

Keep it classy, Emily. Continuing

“At a party last night, a Times reporter who does not cover Washington or politics, referred to an unfounded rumor regarding Melania Trump,” a Times spokesperson said in a statement to POLITICO. “The comment was not intended to be public, but it was nonetheless completely inappropriate and should not have occurred. Editors have talked to the reporter in question about the lapse.”

In one tweet, Ratajkowski contended "what it is: slut shaming. I don't care about her nudes or sexual history and no one should."

There is almost no information available, so we don't know about what precisely was said, to whom, in what volume, in what context, and whom else was in a position to hear the reporter's remark. Those are mere inconsequential details to Ratajkowski.  Consequently, we can't even be sure whether the reporter was referring to Melania's previous work as a model, speculating about her once being an escort, or something else entirely.

The problem is exacerbated by use of the word "hooker," which literally means "prostitute," but like "racism" or "slut-shaming" is bandied about loosely.

We can, though, speculate about two things. One is that Ms. Ratajkowski has made discussion (hopefully, limited and brief) about Mrs. Trump's character a possible topic of discussion in the context of "slut-shaming," which appears to have been her motive disguised as concern about the First Lady.

The other is that the press is running scared of a President of the United States who pursues personal vendettas. The Politico article concludes

Trump is suing the U.K.-based media company Daily Mail for running an article that included the unfounded rumor that she had once been a “high-end escort.” Trump recently settled a defamation suit with a Maryland-based blogger, who has since retracted and issued a lengthy apology for repeating two rumors about the first lady on his blog. 

We now know, from Emily Ratajkowski's tweeting, that some people (erroneously) consider Melania Trump a "hooker," or alternatively, an ex-hooker. More disturbingly, an offensive, off-hand (as far as is known) comment which would have remained obscure can now be reported broadly and come back to haunt the speaker. Expect more of this sort of thing. Bashir Assad, a fan of Donald Trump, would be proud.











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A Disguise

In an article originally appearing elsewhere but on February 9 in Salon, law school administrators Erwin Chemirinsky and Howard Gillman defend the University of California-Berkeley against charges it denied Milo Yiannopopulos freedom of speech when his appearance there was cancelled on February 1, 2016.

The highly controversial and stridently right-wing opportunist Yiannopoulos had been invited by the college's Young Republicans.  However, his appearance sparked a black Bloc outburst of approximately 1500 individuals, roughly 10% of whom wore black masks and other black garb, in some cases throwing fireworks and rocks at police and Molotove coctails which resulted in fires.

Berkeley ultimately had little choice but to cancel the event in consideration of the safety and security of everyone, even though it had, as Chemerinsky and Gillman note, employed "extensive security arrangements, including bringing in dozens of police officers from nine other UC campuses."

The university's effort to uphold the principle of free expression did not impress President Trump, who early the following morning irresponsibly tweeeted (capitalization his, of course) "If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view- NO FEDERAL FUNDS?"






If you thought the tweet was hypocritical, you've been paying attention; surprising, you have not been.

On July 11, 2016 Politico had reported that earlier that day Donald Trump had

bestowed another moniker upon himself:  "the law and order candidate."

"We must maintain law and order at hte highest level or we will cease to have a country, 100 percent," he said during a speech in Virginia Beach,Virginia, in which he heaped praise upon America's law enforcement officers.  "We will cease to have a country. I am the law and order candidate."

In an issues paper appearing shortly after taking office, the President struck the same tone, and with the same language. "The Trump Administration," it went, "will be a law and order administration (which) wll honor our men and women in uniform and will support their mission of protecting the public."

There was no mention of the "men and women in uniform" nor of "protecting the public" in Trump's response to the organized mayhem at Berkeley.

Nor was there any mention of the "law and order" George Corley Wallace and Richard Milhous Nixon had effectively invoked in campaigns long past and which Trump had reclaimed in his run for office. That was no coincidence because Trump's rhetoric of, and expressed concern for, law and order always has been a sham.

His outrage was belied, obviously, by the dozens of lawsuits pending against Mr. Trump, the dalliance as a real estate mogul with La Cosa Nostra, and his involvement in a myriad of financial deals sure to enhance his personal and family wealth while he is President.

Trump's rantings about law and order always have been both strategically motivated and a disturbing reflection of his character.  Among other indications, racial discrimination appears to have been a hallmark of his business career. He condoned the beating at one of his rallies of a Black Lives Matter protestor, is comfortable with the support of white supremacists, and stereotypes "the blacks," sometimes treating them as tokens,  There are other signs and your mileage may vary.

Yet, perhaps the most dangerous manifestation of Trump's racial hostility can be found in the image (below, from FactCheck) he tweeted in November of 2015.

Politifact rated the chart as "pants on fire" and explained

None of the numbers are supported by official sources. The figures on black-on-white homicides and white-on-white homicides are wildly inaccurate. And, as several news organizations quickly noted, the "Crime Statistics Bureau" doesn’t exist. We looked for that agency as well and the closest we found in San Francisco were a number of crime scene clean-up services...

The most glaring inaccuracies have to do with white homicide victims. Trump cast blacks as the primary killers of whites, but the exact opposite is true. By overwhelming percentages, whites tend to kill other whites. Similarly, blacks tend to kill other blacks. These trends have been observed for decades.

A couple of numbers are so clearly out of whack that Trump must have strongly suspected they were inaccurate. Politifact found that 82%, rather than 16%, of white victims were killed by other whites; and that 15%, rather than 81%, of white victims were killed by blacks.

The grotesquely inaccurate and deceptive statistics Trump relayed inspire generalized fear by encouraging the misleading impression that violence is perpetrated by strangers, rather than acquaintances. Further (and more obviously), they prompt whites to distrust and even fear (in fewer cases to dislike) blacks.

For Donald Trump, law and order is, as it was for George Wallace and Richard Nixon, more than a slogan. It represents a bulwark against disruption of the social order by undesirables- liberals, the media, immigrants, and especially blacks, a useful slogan for a bitter and hateful authoritarian.







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