No Racist Bones In This Body

The man who doesn’t “have a racist bone in his body” has made the 2020 presidential election about race in the most open and starkest way since the days of George Wallace.

The “bone” comment was The Don’s attempt to neuter his outrageous “send them back” racist comment about Representatives Omar, Talib, Pressley and Ocasio-Cortez.

After making the bone comment, The Don turned to one of his staffers and befuddled said, “What’s with the bones stuff anyway? It doesn’t make sense to me. But I guess the bone thing is good, because bones can’t be racist, and if I am saying I don’t have any racist bones, it means that I am telling the truth, about not being racist, as bones are just bones, right? By the way are African American bones white or black? Can you imagine having black bones?”

Then he smiled and said: “All this media attention gives me a big boner.” His entire staff laughed hysterically. Mitch McConnell opined that the president “was on to something.”

The Don, in a moment of brilliance, summoned Ben Carson, his lone black cabinet member, to be the black face of the administration and run interference for him on Fox News.

Not sure Carson was the best choice.

If you recall Carson once referred to Africans ripped from their homeland to be sold as slaves as ‘immigrants.” He waxed poetically: “That’s what America is about, a land of dreams and opportunity…There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great-granddaughters, might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.”

God Bless America!

At a cabinet meeting after the “send her back” comment Carson and The Don had this interaction:

Secretary Carson: Thank you, Mr. President. And just before I talk a little bit about what’s going on at hud, I just want to thank you for your incredible courage—

The president: Thank you.

Secretary Carson: —and stamina and resilience with un-whithering criticism, unfair criticism, all the time. And I would just, sort of, sum it up by saying: Would you rather have a non-politician whose speech is unfiltered, who gets a lot of stuff done? Or somebody with a silver tongue who gets nothing done?

The President: But I thought I had a silver tongue. [Laughter.] I heard that so often. I always thought I had a silver tongue. [Laughter.] But I agree with you.

Secretary Carson: But, you know, as I told you before, I think God is using you.

Is that the same God that allowed America to wipe out the Native Americans and enslave millions of black folk from Africa? Gee, that’s some “land of dreams and opportunity.”

After the conversation, Carson stroked The Don’s boner, which prompted The Don to talk more about bones.

Can you imagine having black bones? That’s as bad as black people counting your money*”; or having to live in one of those “shit-hole countries;” or being as “low I.Q.” as Maxine Waters, or being a “rapist from Mexico,” or being a president who wasn’t born in this country, or renting apartments to blacks* or “sons of bitches” black athletes who dare to protest police violence.

No racist bones in this body.

Ask Kip Brown, a driver who worked at one of Trump’s casinos in Atlantic City, who told Nick Paumgarten in The New Yorker, “When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor. . . . I was a teenager, but I remember it: they put us all in the back.”

No racist bones in this body.

Just last week, the President invited to the White House leading members of the far-right social-media crowd, including one “Carpe Donktum,” who recently made a nasty altered video of Joe Biden; Bill Mitchell, who ladles out the latest QAnon conspiracy theories; the oppo-research operative James O’Keefe III; and Ali Alexander, who, like the President’s own son, recently shared a tweet that called into question Kamala Harris’s racial background. A sterling bunch. At the meeting, Trump expressed the full knowledge that cyber-fueled hatred and racism had helped him win the election. He honored the group with a White House invitation in the hopes that it will be there for him again in 2020. “The crap you think of is unbelievable!” he told them in bemused admiration. These were his people.

No racist bones in this body.

But wait, as maybe The Don doesn’t care if he has a racist bone in his body.

When confronted that his tweets were racist he stated ‘it doesn’t concern me… because many people agree with me. ”

And: “I do think I’m winning the political fight. I think I’m winning it by a lot. “I’ll never change.”

The Don had this to say about his “send her back” chanters. “Those are incredible people. Those are incredible patriots.”

One of my favorite responses of support from his soulless and  Republican sycophants comment came from Mike Kelly, Congressman from Pennsylvania: “I think we’re going way beyond the pale right now. They talk about people of color. I’m a person of color. I’m white. I’m an Anglo-Saxon.”

Mike, if you are a person of color, you better watch out as maybe ICE is going to round up your white ass and deport you. Just sayin.

So what does America think of all this? According to USA Today/Ipsos poll that was taken on a few days after the rally, sixty-eight per cent said the call to send the four congresswomen “back” was offensive, and fifty-nine per cent said it was un-American. Sixty-five per cent of respondents said that telling minorities to “go back where they came from” is a racist statement. As usual, the responses to the pollster’s questions broke down along partisan lines, but Democrats weren’t the only ones to take issue with Trump’s statements. More than half of Independents said Trump’s screed was un-American, and one in four Republicans agreed.

Given the above numbers it augurs well for Democrats in 2020. However, we should never underestimate The Don’s capacity to divide through hatred and fear. We should never underestimate the power of racism. The fact that The Don, a man with every racist bone in his body, has a fair chance of being reelected, says all you need to say about racism in America.

 

* A book by John O’Donnell, former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, quoted Trump’s criticism of a black accountant: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.” Trump at first denied the remarks, but later said in a 1997 Playboy interview that “the stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true.”