i always found this argument lacking, like what is that supposed to show me... that there were these 20 times he denounced them and then this VERY publicly one time he didn't?
like imagine this was like child trafficking or something. you denounce that shit heavily each and every time, no ambiguity, no question. even if you're asked to do it 50 times it should be 50/50. the fact that people have to pull that as a "defense" is ridiculous lol.
The clips are almost exclusively him denouncing it in response to being criticized for not denouncing it. It's like a child that will say anything to get out of time out by the time he gets to it. It shouldn't take so much work.
> I always found this argument lacking, like what is that supposed to show me... that there were these 20 times he denounced them and then this VERY publicly one time he didn't?
Yes. This tells you his public stance is that he's anti white supremacist and willing to denounce them.
Do you honestly think he chose the debates as a the best time to secretly signal his base that he's a closet KKK member?
> like imagine this was like child trafficking or something. you denounce that shit heavily each and every time, no ambiguity, no question. even if you're asked to do it 50 times it should be 50/50. the fact that people have to pull that as a "defense" is ridiculous lol.
If my wife asks if I love her 50 times and I say yes 49 times, but once I get distracted. Which is more likely I secretly hate my wife or I just got distracted.
So explain to me how do you get distracted in a presidential debate and when asked to condem a white supremacist group you say "proud boys stand back and stand by" that's not how you get distracted and forget to say something, that is how you talk to what you consider "your troops/team".
You're in your 70s and coming down with covid, the moderator asks you to tell white supremacists to "stand down". You ask the moderator who should you say that to? Biden interjects "proud boys". You try to repeat what the moderator told you but instead tell them to "stand back"/"stand by" instead of stand down.
Literally one of the people explaining how trump supports white supremacists to me made this exact same mistake despite him being in his 30s and not coming down with covid.
Trump is a terrible president for plenty of reasons, we don't need to make ones up.
"I love being white and I think it's something to be very proud of"
- Gavin McInnes, the founder of Proud Boys
The group claims to not be racist, yes, and they do have non-white members. However, their specific stances on various issues do add up to a white supremacist group in practice. As for non-white membership, it seems to be more along the lines of "honorary Aryans".
If your wife keeps showing up with black eyes muttering that she fell down the stairs, it merits asking every day. If Trump stopped pandering to white nationalists, people would stop having to ask.
> The results are sobering. We began by asking eligible voters how “convincing” they found a dog-whistle message lifted from Republican talking points. Among other elements, the message condemned “illegal immigration from places overrun with drugs and criminal gangs” and called for “fully funding the police, so our communities are not threatened by people who refuse to follow our laws.”
> Almost three out of five white respondents judged the message convincing. More surprising, exactly the same percentage of African-Americans agreed, as did an even higher percentage of Latinos.
> These numbers do not translate directly into support for the Republican Party; too many other factors are at play. Nevertheless, the results tell us something important: a majority across the groups we surveyed did not repudiate Trump-style rhetoric as obviously racist and divisive, but instead agreed with it.
If the media had any self-awareness, it wouldn’t automatically label points a majority of non white people “agreed with” as “obviously racist and divisive.”
As someone from a third-world country I felt this way over the pearl-clutching when Trump said “s—thole countries.” It’s a crass and very cruel thing to say. Definitely offensive. But not racist. People don’t leave Bangladesh because they’re racist, they do so because of the poverty, arsenic in the water, etc.
Is it hard? It seems to me he does it quite plainly. I feel like people who reach for defense of this man are having to face their own biases and demons and it's ugly.
This is a naive take on it. When someone asks you a question they know the answer to, because you have answered it before, they’re not trying to enlighten themselves. They are accusing you of something. In the case of Trump, they’re accusing him of being a white supremacist. In fact, Chris Wallace asked Trump the exact same question during the 2016 election debate, and he condemned white supremacy in no uncertain terms.
A diplomatic person would break out the canned condemnation for the 50th time. Trump is not a diplomatic person.
When you repeatedly go through the cycle of blaming "both sides" and telling white supremacists to "stand by", and then making your press office issue a correction after the fact when enough people complain about it, that doesn't count as condemning white supremacists.
Do you really really think he supports white supremacists while having a Jewish son-in-law?
Do you think actual white supremacists are dumb enough to accept that? I accept that actual white supremacists aren't the brightest souls on this planet, but seriously?
Or is it just the general problem of
- taking things out of context
- using "white supremacist" as a general slur for people one doesn't like?
Because if all the people I see named as white supremacists were that then I think 2020 would be the year were white supremacists stood up for the Jews and that would be quite a news story for anyone who dared to break it :-)
