Yesterday, from a Harris campaign event in Atlanta, Georgia, Atlanta reporter Tariro Mzezewa noted that the crowd of 10,000 people “was ecstatic. There was chanting, cheering, singing, and dancing for hours in the lead-up to and throughout the event,” Mzezewa wrote today in Slate. Mzezewa reported that rapper Megan Thee Stallion told the audience “I know my ladies in the crowd love their body. And if you want to keep loving your body, you know who to vote for,” before performing her hit “Body.” Georgia Democratic politicians showed up in force: voting rights advocate and former state representative Stacey Abrams, senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, state Democratic Party chair Representative Nikema Williams, and Atlanta mayor Andre Dickens. “What you’re seeing is very real,” Mzezewa wrote, and she quoted an attendee who said: “it’s nice to witness history, but getting to be a part of it from the ground up is a whole other level.” Certainly, the grassroots enthusiasm for Harris’s presidential candidacy is palpable. More and more self-identified groups are launching fundraising calls for Harris; yesterday the Latter-day Saints for Harris—Mormons—announced that they, too, are “putting [their] shoulders to the wheel!” Today the executive board of the United Auto Workers also endorsed Harris. At last night’s event, Vice President Harris noted that Trump has pulled out of the September debate to which he had previously agreed. “Here’s the funny thing about that,” she said. “He won’t debate, but he and his running mate sure seem to have a lot to say about me,” After hitting the campaign’s refrain that marks MAGA Republican behavior as “weird,” she added to applause: “Well, Donald, I do hope you’ll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage because, as the saying goes, if you’ve got something to say, say it to my face.” Trump did not say it to her face, but today he unloaded spectacularly on three Black female interviewers at a meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) in Chicago. When ABC News senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott began the interview by quoting a number of his racist statements about Black Americans and asking why, given that history, Black voters should trust him, he lost it. “I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner,” he began. “You don’t even say ‘Hello, how are you?’ Are you with ABC? Because I think they’re a fake news network, a terrible network.” He went on to try to dominate Scott, listing the policies he claimed to have put into place, and to attack the people who organized the event before saying, “I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln. That’s my answer…. And for you to start off a question and answer period…in such a hostile manner, I think it’s a disgrace.” As the session began, so it continued, with Trump questioning Harris’s Black identity—while also mispronouncing her name—and warning the attendees that they need “to stop people from invading our country that are…taking Black jobs.” NBC News correspondent Yamiche Alcindor told MSNBC that during the interview, “people were stunned, people were gasping, there were some people who were shouting back at him saying ‘That's a lie!’” Attendees laughed and jeered at Trump throughout the 37-minute session; his handlers made him leave early. Scott accurately summed up Trump’s long history of racism, but lately he has been advertising it. In an interview with Fox News Channel personality Laura Ingraham aired last night, Trump said that Harris would be “like a play toy” for world leaders. “They look at her and they say we can’t believe we got so lucky. They’re gonna walk all over her.” “I don’t want to say as to why,” he said to the camera, “but a lot of people understand it.” It is unlikely that his insults and naked racism will appeal to anyone but his base, making his performance, as Jessica Tarlov put it on the Fox News Channel, “a complete, absolute dumpster fire.” It is possible that Trump has lost the ability to read a room and reassure his audience that he’s a good bet. But it is also possible that Trump cannot bear to see the enthusiasm building behind Harris, not only because of its electoral meaning, but also because it reveals how small his own following is and how much people loathe him. Aaron Rupar of Public Notice, who produces wonderful video threads of important events, “put together an 11-minute supercut of Trump angrily self-immolating at the NABJ before his handlers pulled him from the stage.” Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo analyzed Trump’s meltdown in Chicago this way: “I think we’re getting the first view of imploding Donald Trump as he realizes that what was his for the taking ten days ago is slipping away and he’s likely to go to prison rather than the White House. He [is] being dominated and humiliated by Harris and he’s losing it.” His post after the interview, in which he boasted “[t]he questions were Rude and Nasty, often in the form of a statement, but we CRUSHED IT!” seemed an attempt to reassert his old pattern of simply declaring things to be true that…aren’t. Indeed, one of Trump’s answers to the journalists in Chicago revealed that he cares only about getting elected, rather than governing. It also suggested that his camp is trying to reassure him that his pick of Ohio senator J.D. Vance to be his running mate will not hurt their chances, even as more and more videos of Vance attacking women become public and as he is historically bad in front of television cameras. Vance has only 18 months of experience in elected office, making him one of the least qualified candidates for vice president in U.S. history. When asked if Vance would be ready “on day one,” to assume the duties of the presidency if necessary, Trump answered a different question altogether, revealing what is uppermost in his mind. “I’ve always had great respect for him…but…historically, the vice president in terms of the election does not have any impact, I mean, virtually no impact. You have two or three days where there’s a lot of commotion…and then that dies down and it’s all about the presidential thing. Virtually never has it mattered…. Historically, the choice of a vice president makes no difference.” The Harris campaign responded to Trump’s performance by saying: "The hostility Donald Trump showed on stage today is the same hostility he has shown throughout his life, throughout his term in office, and throughout his campaign for president as he seeks to regain power and inflict his harmful Project 2025 agenda on the American people…. Today's tirade is simply a taste of the chaos and division that has been a hallmark of Trump's MAGA rallies this entire campaign,” while “Vice President Harris offers a vision of opportunity and freedom for all Americans.” It urged Trump again to “stop playing games and actually show up to the debate on September 10." Trump’s petulant fury at the Black journalists today suggests just how dangerous it would be to put him in control of the nation’s law enforcement and military capabilities a second time. We were given a glimpse of how eager he was to turn those capabilities against American citizens in his first term when the Department of Justice today released the report of the department’s inspector general concerning the Trump administration’s response to the Black Lives Matter protests in Washington, D.C., in summer 2020. The authors of the report emphasized that they were unable to compel the testimony of officials including then–attorney general William Barr, his chief of staff William Levi, FBI deputy director David Bowdich, and FBI Washington Field Office assistant director in charge Timothy Slater. But what they were able to put together even without their information was that, although the protests were largely peaceful, Trump was desperate to get 2,000 federal officers into the area around the White House on June 1, 2020, to increase federal control of the city. To the frustration of the people in charge of the agencies, he could not articulate a mission, only that he wanted 2,000 people around him. With only about 90 officers from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the Bureau of Prisons, and the U.S. Marshals Service on hand early on the morning of June 1, Barr told a conference call with Justice Department leadership that Trump wanted “max strength” on the streets, and to “dominate the streets.” Trump then echoed that language in a call with the nation’s governors, saying, “If you don’t dominate your city and your state, they’re [going to] walk away with you. And we’re doing it in Washington, in D.C., we’re going to do something that people haven’t seen before. But you’re going to have total domination.” Then, the report says, the administration began to prepare to invoke the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that authorizes the president to deploy the U.S. military and federalized National Guard troops within the United States to suppress civil disorder, insurrection, or rebellion. At 4:48 that evening, lawyers from the Office of Legal Counsel, who advise the president, received an email that the president was going to address the nation at 6:00 and that a proclamation invoking the Insurrection Act should be “ready for signing” before then. Shortly after, additional officers from the Bureau of Prisons—without names on their uniforms because they do not usually wear them, if you remember the concern over those nameless uniforms—arrived at the White House. Barr was in charge of clearing the streets, and ultimately, by about 9:00 he felt things were calm enough that he advised Trump against invoking the Insurrection Act. But it was evidently a close thing. — Notes: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/31/donald-trump-nabj-interview-00172104 https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/reports/24-085.pdf X: joshtpm/status/1818721994017587698 LDS4Harris/status/1818460852799889846 atrupar/status/1818714028488745015 atrupar/status/1818714787624124416 atrupar/status/1818747273804751198 KaivanShroff/status/1818721120138543230 7Veritas4/status/1818743668947533863 Acyn/status/1818741261177962888 kylegriffin1/status/1818741096165363973 TheTNHoller/status/1818740206285255084 You’re currently a free subscriber to Letters from an American. If you need help receiving Letters, changing your email address, or unsubscribing, please visit our Support FAQ. You can also submit a help request directly. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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Wednesday, July 31, 2024
July 31, 2024
He's a Racist
By now you've probably seen clips from the interview Donald Trump gave on stage at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago today. It was appalling. The only thing worse than the overt racism that came out of his mouth was his apparent belief that he could get away with it.
The amazing Aaron Rupar put together an 11-minute cut of the interview that you might want to watch if you haven’t seen enough already. Trump’s people cut off the interview early, just as Project 2025 was raised as the next topic. On Twitter, Trump supporters tweeted things like, “show me the racist part," and “I don't see what's racist about it.” The rest of America shook its head in disgust. Tonight, speaking at a Sigma Gamma Rho event in Houston, Vice President Harris called Trump’s comments “divisive and disrespectful” and said “the American people deserve better.” Earlier in the day, immediately following Trump’s abrupt departure from the stage at NABJ, the Harris campaign was quick to give a long-form response: "The hostility Donald Trump showed on stage today is the same hostility he has shown throughout his life, throughout his term in office, and throughout his campaign for president as he seeks to regain power and inflict his harmful Project 2025 agenda on the American people. Trump lobbed personal attacks and insults at Black journalists the same way he did throughout his presidency – while he failed Black families and left the entire country digging out of the ditch he left us in. Donald Trump has already proven he cannot unite America, so he attempts to divide us. Today's tirade is simply a taste of the chaos and division that has been a hallmark of Trump's MAGA rallies this entire campaign. It's also exactly what the American people will see from across the debate stage as Vice President Harris offers a vision of opportunity and freedom for all Americans. All Donald Trump needs to do is stop playing games and actually show up to the debate on September 10." Trump did not try to walk his comments back. He doubled down on social media.
Some folks have argued that Trump should not be given a public platform, that what he says is too vile to expose people to. I understand that, but I disagree and have since the start of his candidacy. People need to understand just how bad he is, and there is no way to understand that like hearing it come out of the man's mouth. His own words. He can only say “I never said that” and get away with it if people haven’t heard him. Bringing the receipts is important. Hold him accountable for what he says. Whatever else happened today, everyone will see it, and he will not be able to say he treated Kamala Harris with respect. Trump has repeatedly criticized Democrats for calling him racist. He does not like to hear that and responds by calling other people racist (President Obama, Journalist Yamiche Alcindor, Spike Lee, Senator Elizabeth Warren) or claiming that he did more for Black people than any other president, like reducing unemployment. The truth is important. Trump pretended birtherism directed at President Obama wasn’t racism. He’ll deny being racist, and in fact blame his racism on Kamala Harris as he did today. Don’t let him get away with it. It’s okay to call the racist a racist. In fact, it’s something we’re morally obligated to do. The fact that Trump doesn’t like it makes it all the more important to speak truth to would-be power, especially when the racist wants to be president. Ultimately, Trump’s own people took him off the stage today. But it’s up to us, the voters, to do that in November. Let’s take him off the stage. The American public, in Kamala Harris’ words, deserves better. We’re in this together, Joyce You're currently a free subscriber to Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance . For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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Growth Newsletter #325
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