This morning President Trump retweeted a video of his supporters in the Florida retirement community The Villages. Trump described them as "great people".
One of these "great people" shouted "white power".
Trump subsequently deleted the tweet.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere claimed, "President Trump is a big fan of the Villages. He did not hear the one statement made on the video. What he did see was tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters."
As The Church Lady used to say, "Well, isn't that convenient?"
So the White House would have us believe that Trump saw every second of that video except for the second his supporter chanted "white power".
I believe this about as much as I believe that he wasn't briefed on Russia military intelligence paying bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers.
President Trump has done more to legitimize white supremacy since Woodrow Wilson screened Birth of a Nation at the White House more than 100 years ago.
The simple fact of the matter is that a critical mass of his support comes from people who harbor racist, anti-Semitic (notwithstanding his pro-Israel posture) and anti-Muslim sentiment and Trump has given such attitudes a measure of social acceptability.
The fact Trump deleted the tweet is immaterial. Given the prolonged period in which Trump has publicly engaged in overtly racist rhetoric can anyone be surprised his supporters are comfortable in publicly engaging in it themselves?
Perhaps if this event was in isolation people would soon forget. But in a country where in less than five months nearly 2.5 million have been inflicted with COVID-19 resulting in nearly 125,000 deaths, more than 40 million losing their jobs, the social unrest which followed the murder of George Floyd and Trump's efforts to inflame the unrest while looking the other way as Russia pays the Taliban to murder U.S. soldiers, this act of indecency is the icing on a cake made of shit and American voters do not want another bite.
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