Sunday, July 14, 2019

Still (And Always) A Birther

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These Tweets should remind us the Donald Trump is always going to be a birther because 

1) it works for him, 
2) he's racist and 
3) the truth means nothing to him

but as needed, he will direct his birtherism to new targets, in this case, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, all of whom were born in the USA. 

It's really the Ur-"Ugly White Racist" stereotype he's leaning on here: "If you don't like it here, go back to Africa! (or wherever)".  He's deflecting criticism by implying that these people of color have no right to speak about this country's policies (even though they have been elected by their constituents to do so) because their experiences make them "migrant sympathizers"--in rather the way birtherism, and its companion, the "secret Muslim" hoax, were used to imply that President Obama's experiences made him sympathetic to Islamic nations to undermine his foreign policy goals

The simple message--they care more about "those people" than they care about American people. As if it were impossible to do both. And also, implicitly, that what you care about tells us how American you are, for a definition of American that is a certain shade of skin tone and a certain flavor of Christian. 

He lashing out with this particular viciousness because VP Pence's photo-op didn't shift the optics on migrant detention in the way Trump hoped. So, in his typical fashion--he smears the critics, in the same way he smears real journalists as "fake news".  

It's grotesque and overt, and exactly the sort of thing Trump's biggest fans are likely to applaud. 


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