A resurfaced clip of established racist Donald Trump being an unabashed bigot at a South Carolina rally is infuriating the masses, but its still not enough to disqualify him from running for office.
The current presidential candidate and unsolicited-d*ck-pic-incarnate has long been known as a blatant xenophobe, but he typically conceals his racism beneath bawdy words and false flags. That wasn’t the case at a late February rally in South Carolina, however, and a freshly circulating clip from the event is stoking entirely-warranted fury among American voters.
Leaning on the same tactics that got him elected the first time, Trump is relying largely on bluster and the widespread resentment of the American public to secure another presidential victory. Americans — joined by people literally everywhere — are struggling to survive in an overpriced world that underpays, overworks, and ignores our needs in the interest of profit, and Trump is capitalizing on all that discontent.
Somehow, people miss the part where Trump, from his gold-gilded tower, has done exactly nothing to help with the issues that plague American citizens on a daily basis. He, and his GOP sycophants, have in fact made the financial situation of most Americans worse, yet he promotes himself as the “everyman’s president.”
That everyman apparently includes the very people Trump has spent a bulk of his time disparaging, but only when it suits him. In the most mind-bending mental gymnstics of his career thus-far, Trump tried — at that February South Carolina rally sponsored by the Black Conservative Federation — to lean on white supremacist rhetoric to bring none other than Black voters into the fold.
Make it make sense.
Saying the quiet part out loud with a clear absence of shame, Trump told an audience of largely Black voters that he thinks “they want the white guy.” He was in the midst of disparaging former President Barack Obama over the cost of a new Air Force One when the comments were made, and asked voters “would you rather have the Black president, or the white president who got $1.7 billion off the price? I think they want the white guy.”
That wasn’t even the worst thing he said that night. Utterly tone deaf and so accustomed to his own racism that he no longer sees it as racism, Trump tried to link his non-existent popularity among Black voters to his new presence as a criminal. Because, in the mind of a bigot, Black people and crime are intertwined, and Trump is King Bigot.
Indicating that his 91 criminal indictments and recent mugshots are the culprits behind the fictional support of Black voters, Trump claimed “that’s why the Black people like me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against.”
Is that… an attempt at rapport? Needless to say, Black voters were unconvinced. Even ahead of his remarks, Trump boasted support from an understandably meager 12% of Black voters, and I can’t help but imagine that number dropped in the wake of his utterly sickening remarks. Numerous people have stepped up to criticize his unabashedly racist statement in the wake of the South Carolina rally, including former opponent Nikki Haley, and former Congressman Cedric Richmond, who’s currently serving as co-chair of the 2024 Biden-Harris campaign.
“Though I may be disgusted, I am not at all surprised that Donald Trump would equate the suffering and injustice of Black people in America to consequences he now faces because of his own actions,” Richmond said, in a statement. “Donald Trump claiming that Black Americans will support him because of his criminal charges is insulting. It’s moronic. And it’s just plain racist.”
