"I have a great relationship with the blacks. I've always had a great relationship with the blacks."
- Donald Trump

The outrage at Donald Trump's outrageous and flailing response to the violence and hatred of white supremacists at a demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, has been powerful and sustained.
But much of the response is curious, especially from those who have long known of Trump's vile racism and xenophobia, but who continued to embrace or too easily tolerated him in ascent to the presidency.
Because Trump championed their ideology and policies, many Republican leaders and voters gave him a pass, and wished he had been more politic and nuanced in his racism.
There is nothing new here in American politics, in a nation which suppresses the history of genocide and slavery perpetuated by white supremacist ideologies. Trump is simply the more rhetorically blatant manifestation of white supremacy and populism.
When Trump watched events in Charlottesville he saw something different than many others and responded from his gut. His views were so clear in his mind that he was unable to sustain the public relations and political advice of his minders.
Trump could not see the distinction between violent racists and those who came out to protest against hatred and intolerance. This is the blinkered mindset of a supremacist.
Trump saw in the nationalists marching with torches in Charlottesville those who helped him to become president. He was psychologically and emotionally incapable of issuing a blanket condemnation of those marching in support of white supremacy.
That many white nationalists and Klansmen have praised Trump's statements in the aftermath of Charlottesville demonstrates their belief that Trump is sympathetic to their cause.

Incapable
White privilege and supremacy react violently when challenged, especially when challenged by black people. One of the supremacists allegedly used his vehicle as a murder weapon against a counter-demonstrator. Yet Trump remains incapable of moral clarity.
Another president could have visited Charlottesville, condemned the violence, and offer healing and moral leadership. Barack Obama would have risen to the occasion. Sadly, Trump inflamed an already incendiary environment.
Donald Trump is not an aberration in the history of the politics of racism. The blanket coverage of him makes for good television. But the bigger story is the entrenched racism and white supremacy which allowed him to become president as a Republican in the second decade of the 21st century. Diabolical racism is very much alive in America.
Even now, many of those who have criticized Trump's false equivalencies and excuses for white nationalists are unable to name Trump. Many Republicans in the U.S. Congress have remained mum or have offered generalized criticism. Trump remains popular in many congressional districts.
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Paul Ryan tweeted: "We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity."
Yet Ryan has not specifically condemned Trump for making such "repulsive" remarks. This smacks of moral ambiguity.
We knew the virulence of Trump's racism long before he announced his bid for the Republican nomination for president of the United States.
The son of a Klu Klux Klansmen, who reportedly adored his domineering father, Trump Jr. has a long history of racial animus.
In "Trumped!" John R. O'Donnell, former president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, wrote that in reference to a black accountant at Trump Plaza, Trump thumped: "Laziness is a trait in blacks."

Anti-semitism
O'Donnell reports Trump as saying: "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." He managed to express his racism and anti-Semitism in a single vulgar statement.
Following the rape of a female in Central Park in New York City in 1989, Trump took out full-page newspaper ads pushing for the death penalty for the black teenage suspects. The suspects were later exonerated. In keeping with his pathological inability to admit error, Trump never apologized.
Marcus Barum, senior editor of Huffington Post, writes: "Yet the most damaging episode in the saga of Trump's fractured relationship with the black community came in 1973, when his family's real-estate company, Trump Management Corporation, was sued by the Justice Department for alleged racial discrimination. At the time, Trump was the company's president.
"The case alleged that the Trump Management Corporation had discriminated against blacks who wished to rent apartments in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. The government charged the corporation with quoting different rental terms and conditions to blacks and whites and lying to blacks that apartments were not available, according to reports of the lawsuit."
Lydia O'Connor and Daniel Marans writing in Huffington Post note: "Workers at Trump's casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, have accused him [Trump] of racism over the years. The New Jersey Casino Control Commission fined the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino $200,000 in 1992 because managers would remove African-American card dealers at the request of a certain big-spending gambler. A state appeals court upheld the fine.
"The first-person account of at least one black Trump casino employee in Atlantic City suggests the racist practices were consistent with Trump's personal behavior toward black workers.
"'When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,' Kip Brown, a former employee at Trump's Castle, told the New Yorker for a September article. 'It was the eighties, I was a teenager, but I remember it: they put us all in the back.'"

Vicious
One of his most vicious and sustained racial assaults was on former U.S. President Barack Obama. Trump famously, and falsely, joined the birthers claiming that Obama was not a U.S. citizen. Message: this black man is not one of us. The birther movement was loathed to see a black man in their White House.
Fast forward to Trump's announcement of his presidential bid infused with racism: "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
He has attacked a judge of Hispanic origin. He took a long time to disavow David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan. He also failed to disavow other white nationalists who campaigned for him. He has trashed Native Americans. He treats ethnic and racial groups as monoliths: "the blacks", "the Hispanics", "the Muslims".
America has a president who blatantly shows off his racism and white privilege and supremacy. The issue is not only how to deal with Trump. The broader issue is how white America and the Republican Party will respond to Trump as a loathsome incarnation of America's original sin.

o frontporchguardian@gmail.com, www.bahamapundit.com.

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