[h=3]What are the odds on the American presidential election?[/h][FONT="]It has long been said of predicting sporting outcomes that the bookies don’t get it far wrong, working out probabilities with complicated mathematics based on the choices of their thousands of paying punters.[/FONT] [FONT="]After last year’s surprise General Election result, many political followers have lost faith in pollsters and prefer to look at the odds to predict the future.[/FONT] [FONT="]Hillary Clinton has been odds-on favourite since the end of February, but Trump has steadily caught her up as his Republican rivals dropped out. Last July he was a 25/1 shot while Hillary was already at evens.[/FONT] [FONT="]Ladbroke's latest odds for the next US president are:[/FONT]
In 2000, DonaldTrump boldly toldFortune magazine, “It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.” Sixteen years later, he’s structured an entire presidential campaign around making good on that boast. While Trump is turning out to be a disaster for the Republican Party, the real estate magnate is pretty much guaranteed to come out richer. That was the plan all along.And conservative voters, conditioned by decades of right-wing politicians and media exploiting and enhancing their gullibility, make the perfect victims for his ruse. Not so long ago, in the days before Marco Rubio endorsed Trump, the Florida senator called him a “con artist.” It’s hard to imagine how anyone could dispute Rubio’s evaluation. Theoperations of Trump University alone paint the convincing portrait of a swindler. Yet the deeper question is how such an obvious mountebank could win the majority of a major party’s delegates. Is there something in the nature of the Republican Party and its conservative base that made them particularly vulnerable to Trump’s deceptions? Trump continues to baffle pundits and politicians alike, because most can’t yet bring themselves to believe that the presumptive presidential nominee of a major party is running a Potemkin campaign—an elaborate ruse that looks like one thing but is actually another. But there is no other way to make sense of Trump’s bizarre campaign—his amateur-hour fundraising, his spending nearly 20 percent of his meager campaign funds on businesses owned either by himself or his family, his refusal to run ads in swing states. Is there something in the nature of the Republican Party and its conservative base that made them particularly vulnerable to Trump’s “scampaign”? Republican strategist and Never Trump stalwart Rick Wilson hit upon the perfect coinage when hedescribedTrump as running a “scampaign.” It’s not that Trump doesn’t want to be president. It’s that the real objective, win or lose, is relaunching his lucrative brand. In recent years, Trump was getting diminishing returns with his main reality-show career, with The Apprentice facing dwindling ratings despite Trump’s false claim that it was the number-one show on TV. So his move to politics was a way of revitalizing his celebrity and opening up a new revenue stream. And now with talk about creating Trump TV, which he plans to launch in the wake of the election (whatever the result) to monetize the ratings that are currently being enjoyed by CNN and FOX, Trump looks to have a financially rewarding future even after his likely defeat. The move toward Trump TV will be especially helpful since his other traditional brand—as a hawker of high-end goods—has been tarnished by his political escapades. In effect, Trump’s campaign amounts to a very public re-branding maneuver.
That makes Trumpism something genuinely new in American politics. To be sure, there have been corrupt administrations in the past—the presidencies of Warren Harding and Richard Nixon being the most notable. There have been ex-presidents who have enriched themselves by dubious means, as the George Bushes and Bill Clinton have by giving high-dollar speeches to plutocrats. But there has never been a presidential nominee whose primary raison d’être is to make money, and who has organized his or her campaign around that goal. The nub here is the pinnacle Trump has reached as the presumptive presidential nominee. Below that august level, there have been many operators and less successful candidates who have paved the way for Trump by showing that the campaign trail can be a yellow brick road leading to an Emerald City of riches. William Jennings Bryan, the “Great Commoner” and three-time Democratic nominee, ended his days promoting a disastrous real estate bubble in Florida. Following in that venerable tradition, Republican candidates like Mike Huckabee, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich have converted their 2008 and 2012 campaigns into running scams. But Huckabee and company are relatively amateur and benign flim-flam men compared to their successor. If Cain can be compared to someone trying to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge, Trump is the real deal, a Bernie Madoff-level political master of chicanery. In a sense, conservative voters have been groomed for Trump since the 1960s. As the historian Rick Perlstein wrote in The Baffler and The Nationin 2012, the American conservative movement has become more and more amenable to get-rich-quick schemes, snake-oil salesmen, and confidence men. Direct-mail barons like Richard Viguerie began raking in the dough in the 1960s by stirring up ideological hysteria and convincing an audience of senior citizens that only their small-dollar donation could fend off union bosses, abortionists, and gays. Of course, most of the money ended up with the fundraisers.
From the direct-mail bunco artists, it was a natural progression to conservative media selling ads to the most outlandish dream peddlers and conspiracy-mongers. After Perlstein subscribed to email lists for publications like Townhall and Newsmax, he started getting some strange notices, including “the 123-Cent Heart Miracle,’ the one ‘Washington, the medical industry, and drug companies REFUSE to tell you about.’ (Why would they? They’d just be leaving money on the table: ‘I was scheduled for open heart surgery when I read about your product,’ read one of the testimonials. ‘I started taking it and now six months have passed and I haven’t had open-heart surgery.’).”
Conservative ideology, as Perlstein persuasively argues, is particularly vulnerable to grifters because of its faith in the goodness of business and its concomitant hostility toward regulation—which makes it easy for true believers to buy into the notion that some modern Edison has a miraculous new invention that the Washington elite is conniving to suppress. In Perlstein’s words, “The strategic alliance of snake-oil vendors and conservative true believers points up evidence of another successful long march, of tactics designed to corral fleeceable multitudes all in one place—and the formation of a cast of mind that makes it hard for either them or us to discern where the ideological con ended and the money con began.”
There’s another factor at work here: The anti-intellectualism that has been a mainstay of the conservative movement for decades also makes its members easy marks. After all, if you are taught to believe that the reigning scientific consensuses on evolution and climate change are lies, then you will lack the elementary logical skills that will set your alarm bells ringing when you hear a flim-flam artist like Trump. The Republican “war on science” is also a war on the intellectual habits needed to detect lies. The Republican “war on science” is also a war on the intellectual habits needed to detect lies. It was only natural that politicians themselves would want to get in on these scams. Writing in the New Republic in 2014, the journalist Ben Adler documentedhow an entire class of Republican politicians, including Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Mike Huckabee, used mailing lists built up in their presidential campaigns to sell dubious products afterward. In Cain’s case, anyone who gave money to his campaign would get ads, after the campaign ended,promising a “breakthrough” remedy for erectile dysfunction, “one of more than 50 similar pitches for miracle cures and easy-money tricks that Cain has passed along to his e-mail followers.” Gingrich and Huckabee, ostensibly more “serious” and established politicians, did much the same:
Newt Gingrich now pings the e-mail subscribers to his Gingrich Productions with messages from an investment firm formed by a conspiracy theorist successfully sued for fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mike Huckabee uses his own production company’s list to blast out links to heart-disease fixes and can’t-miss annuities.
These scams, risible as they seem, bring in serious money. By Adler’s calculations, Cain and Huckabee made small fortunes from selling their email lists to advertisers: “At $36 per thousand list members for an ad filling an entire e-mail, and no fewer than 33 such ads sent last year, Cain made more than $420,000 from e-mail ads in 2013—minus Newsmax’s cut and the costs of maintaining his list. For Huckabee, whose list is nearly twice as long as Cain’s and commands a rate of $43.25 per thousand, the rough haul is north of $900,000.” RELATED
Cain, Gingrich, and Huckabee all proved that running for president could in fact be what Trump thought it was: a money-making enterprise that gave you access to a nearly unlimited supply of rubes to buy your products. By actually winning the nomination, Trump has simply taken the con game Cain and the others pioneered to the next level. The affinity of conservatives for hucksterism not only explains Trump’s rise—but also why the Never Trump movement has never gained enough traction to stop him. By the time Trump launched his campaign, the conservative movement had already destroyed the intellectual immune system that is necessary to resist grifters. A telling example can be found in the famous “Never Trump” issue of National Review from February. Amid all the editorials and articles warning of the dangers of Trump was a full-page ad for something called “The Patriot Power Generator 1500.” The ad begins: FORMER CIA OFFICIAL WARNS; “ISIS TERRORISTS WANT TO CRIPPLE AMERICA’S ELECTRIC GRID!” Further down is a series of alarming sub-headlines designed to sell the generator: “IT May Have Already Begun,” “You Know We’re Targeted,” “Weather Is the Other Enemy.”
Here is the paradox of Never Trump in a nutshell: Could the people who have been conditioned to think they need to buy the Patriot Power Generator in order to fight off an ISIS attack on America’s power grid really be expected to see through Donald Trump? Conservative publications like National Review have spent a generation cultivating an audience of gulls. Now they’re shocked that a far more talented hustler has stolen them away.
[h=1]Bernie Should’ve Attacked Hillary’s “Damn Emails”[/h][h=2]He played nice. Now she's in weak shape against Donald Trump.[/h] [h=3]BY JEET HEER
[/h][h=5]May 26, 2016[/h]
One of the most memorable moments of the Democratic primaries came during the first Democratic debate in October, when Bernie Sanders proclaimed his intent not to go after Hillary Clinton for using her personal email account for government business while she was secretary of state. “Let me say something that may not be great politics,” Sanders proclaimed. “The American people are sick and tired about hearing about your damn emails.” The audience roared, and Clinton could not have looked happier as she shook his hand and thanked him.
Sanders’s decision to defend his opponent when he could have gone in for the kill was, in fact, great politics. Facing a Democratic crowd that liked both him and Clinton, Sanders appeared high-minded and magnanimous, willing to defend a fellow Democrat rather than score cheap points. This was a pivotal moment in the campaign, since it was the first time millions of Democrats saw Sanders, and he came across as a mensch.
But what was a shrewd maneuver on Sanders’s part might have served him better than it did the party. A harsh State Department report released Wednesday condemned Clinton for her handling of the emails and stated unequivocally that this was done without the agency’s permission. So the very questions Sanders brushed aside last fall will now become fodder for Donald Trump against Clinton in the general election. Part of the function of primaries is to vet and test candidates, to put them through the rigor of a preliminary run where all sorts of questions about their background, policies, and campaigning skills can be tested. Democrats have worried that this particular primary has been too harsh, with Sanders potentially damaging Clinton before the general election by suggesting that she’s corrupted by her reliance on Wall Street funding. These worries are misplaced: If anything, the primaries have been far too gentle, with both Clinton and Sanders refraining from truly devastating attacks.
This is a marked contrast from the 2008 Democratic race, when the two candidates went all-out at each other. At times they seemed to go too far, with the Obama camp portraying Clinton as untrustworthy (an accusation that haunts her to this day) and the Clinton camp using racially charged tropes to suggest Obama was foreign. These attacks had an undeniable downside. When a Clinton surrogate referred to a photo of Obama in Somali garb as showing the candidate in his “native clothing, in the clothing of his country,” it gave birtherism a bipartisan patina. But still, Obama’s skills at deflecting these attacks led to the finest moments of the campaign, like hishistoric speech on race in the wake of revelations about his ties to the firebrand preacher Jeremiah Wright. As unpleasant and even dishonorable as the Clinton attacks were, they allowed Obama to prove his mettle. Moreover, many of the issues the Republicans might have wanted to use in the fall were already old news because the Clinton camp had raised them.
There has been far less testing this time around. Sanders’s attacks have all been connected to his larger critique of the Democratic Party and the role of big money. They don’t touch Clinton personally, but indict a system. Conversely, Clinton hasn’t ever felt that Sanders is such a threat that she needs to pose harsh questions about his radical past, matters that would certainly be brought up if Sanders were the nominee. Both Sanders and Clinton have sparred knowing that they’ll eventually need to mend fences and unite. This has spared the Democrats a nasty and demoralizing primary season, but it means Clinton won’t be prepared for many of the attacks to come.
The fact is, the “damn emails” haven’t gone away. Trump has promised to use the email scandal “bigly” against Clinton. By taking the high road early on this issue, Sanders may have spared Clinton in the short term, but he robbed her in the long run.
[h=1]Why Hillary Clinton Should Fear Donald Trump[/h][h=2]He might be easy to beat, but his unrestrained attacks could taint her presidency.[/h] [h=3]BY JEET HEER
[/h][h=5]April 27, 2016[/h]
With Hillary Clinton’s strong performance on Tuesday night, the Democratic primaries are effectively over. Barring an unforeseen catastrophe, Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. And it’s increasingly likely that her opponent will be Donald Trump, who won a clean sweep of five states on Tuesday and only seems to be getting stronger. Both parties must now gear themselves for a Clinton-Trump match-up in the fall.
Clinton indicated as much in her victory speech last night. As in earlier speeches, she made a play of Trump’s name and his penchant for racism, declaring, “Love trumps hate.” This slogan is an early clue as to how Clinton will frame the election, presenting herself as an inclusive advocate of national unity and Trump as an avatar of prejudice and divisiveness. Yet such an election poses unique problems that go beyond normal politics, and Clinton’s team may not yet appreciate how difficult this fight will be. If winning the presidential election were all that mattered, Trump would be Clinton’s dream opponent. The Democratic front-runner struggles with poor approval ratings—55.6 percent unfavorable, according to Huffington Post’s aggregation of the polls—which means she needs to compete against someone who is even less popular than her. Trump fits that bill handsomely, standing at 63.6 percent unfavorability. Furthermore, Trump’s racism and misogyny are likely to motivate the very voters that Clinton most needs to attract: people of color, single women, and young people. And not surprisingly, in head-to-head polls, Clinton enjoys a hefty lead over Trump, even as she trails behind the less-polarizing John Kasich and enjoys a significantly smaller lead (of roughly 5 percentage points) over Ted Cruz.
Yet there are reasons why the real estate mogul should be a far greater cause for fear than Cruz or Kasich. Cruz might be a political extremist, further to the right than any serious presidential candidate since at least Barry Goldwater. But the Texas senator is still bound by the rules of normal politics, still beholden to donors and constituencies that serve as a check on what he can say or do. Cruz would be a predictable opponent in that he’d follow a hyper-conservative script and make largely ideological arguments. Trump, in contrast, is not predictable in that manner and has no loyalty to traditional Republican causes. He could, as he has in the primaries, present himself as an opponent of the Iraq War and interventionism, a supporter of Planned Parenthood in non-abortion funding, an enemy of free trade pacts, and a defender of Social Security and Medicare.
And Trump’s unpredictability goes far beyond policy. He is wealthy enough not to worry about donors, and his core supporters have shown every sign that they will stick with him no matter what. Rather than being repulsed by his excesses, they thrill at Trump’s subversion of the rules of political decorum. This makes Trump a potentially more destructiveopponent on a personal level, because he could do considerable reputational damage to his Democratic opponent.
Two of President Obama’s campaign masterminds, David Axelrod and David Plouffe, took up the special problems Trump poses during a recent episode of the Axe Filespodcast. Both came to the surprising conclusion that Cruz, not Trump, is the candidate you’d prefer to fight against. Axelrod noted that Trump “can make incursions in places you don’t expect,” and “plays by no rules and will hit you with punches that no other politician would throw. I would think that would be a little bit unsettling.” Plouffe agreed that Trump would be a “very unsettling” opponent. “With Trump,” he said, “I also think execution and prosecution on the campaign day to day would be gruesome. Anything Donald Trump says is legitimate news if he’s the Republican nominee. You know they had a little dustup last December where he threw a brushback pitch about old news regarding the former president. I think a lot of people were shocked by that. My guess is that’s just a taste of what we would see.” The “old news” Plouffe was alluding to was Trump’s reference in December to Bill Clinton’s “terrible record of women abuse.” That comment is surely only an appetizer for the no-holds-barred personal attacks that Trump will unleash if he’s the nominee. Material will be ready at hand: Roger Stone, a Trump crony and notorious dirty trickster, is author of a book called The Clintons’ War on Women, which rehashes in lurid detail allegations of sexual abuse on Bill Clinton’s part and the supposed role Hillary Clinton played as accomplice. Stone, it’s worth remembering, was the likely source behind the National Enquirer report on Cruz’s alleged extramarital affairs. Running against Trump would put the Clintons back in the tabloids. Axelrod and Plouffe are exactly right: Trump is a very dangerous opponent, one who can derail the political process even if he loses. To be sure, any Republican opponent is likely to try to make hay of the various scandals and pseudo-scandals that surround the Clintons. Cruz, whose campaign manager is widely known for vicious attacks, would certainly dredge them up. The difference with Trump is that he’s unusually ruthless about such attacks, and rarely hides behind surrogates. He doesn’t engage in Bush family–style underhandedness—there will be no whisper campaigns and Swift Boaters. Trump might use Roger Stone, but he’s likely to give some sanction under his own name, as he did when he tweeted an unflattering photo of Cruz’s wife. When Trump has gone birther against Barack Obama or Ted Cruz, he’s done so personally. This means that his attacks enter the mainstream of political discourse more quickly and stay there permanently. Clinton will end up facing the same dilemma that hurt Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and the other Republican candidates: If she responds to Trump’s attacks, she’ll sink to his level, but if she ignores them she may look weak or evasive. This is where Trump becomes Clinton’s most dangerous opponent: Even if he loses, his toxicity will linger on to poison Clinton’s administration. She might start her presidential term with a large chunk of the Republican Party believing, for instance, that she is complicit in sexual assault. Trump has already shown he’s an ugly winner, denigrating his opponents even when he’s besting them at the polls. This suggests that Trump will be an even uglier loser—especially for the ultimate political prize. He won’t accept the prospect of defeat graciously. Instead, he will be tempted to imitate Samson, to pull the pillars of democracy down so that he destroys his opponents as well as himself.
In the wake of defeat, Trump is also likely to claim he was cheated, which is what he did after the Iowa Caucus. Even if Trump loses by a landslide, his campaign could generate millions of supporters who reject the legitimacy of a Clinton presidency. Re-integrating bitter Trumpkins into the polity will be a major challenge.
Last night, Clinton offered a message of inclusiveness and warmth, declaring that “love” binds the country together. This positive message might be a way of answering Trump without descending into the pigsty. But Clinton might also try to find ways to marginalize Trump so that he starts to be seen as a fringe figure. A little bit of mockery could add some needed energy to her message. Love, in other words, might need a little assistance if it is to truly trump hate.
Donald Trump is no ordinary political candidate. The Republicans have already learned how difficult he can be to defeat, or even to challenge. In the general election, because the demographics are much broader and more favorable, Clinton will have an easier time of vanquishing him. But then she’ll still have to face the other problem of running against Trump: his ability to contaminate everything he touches.
[h=1]The Return of the Women Scorned[/h][h=2]We're still coming to grips with 1990s misogyny, which has complex implications for Hillary Clinton.[/h] [h=3]BY JEET HEER
[/h][h=5]April 19, 2016[/h]
The year may be 2016, but we’re still trying trying to grapple with the sexism of two decades ago. Anita Hill, Marcia Clark, and Monica Lewinksy were all subjected to horrifyingly misogynist attacks in the 1990s, and by a quirk of the zeitgeist, all are in the news again. The fact that our culture is still coming to terms with this unfinished business is surely tied to the fact that Hillary Clinton is on track to become the first female presidential nominee of a major political party. Since Clinton is herself no stranger to woman-bashing barrages, she might welcome attempts to rectify the sexism of the 1990s as part of a larger feminist wave. But the Lewinsky episode, in particular, is also fraught with peril for Clinton’s presidential prospects.
What Clark, Hill, Lewinsky, and Clinton have in common is that they were all strong public women who were pilloried for defying gender expectations. As we’re reminded by the new FX series The People v. O.J. Simpson, Marcia Clark was repeatedlyslimed in the press when she came to prominence as a prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson trial. National Enquirer printed nude photos provided by Clark’s former mother-in-law, while more reputable media questioned both her appearance (something that’s all too familiar to Clinton) and her fitness as a mother. “I really didn’t want the spotlight, but there was no way to escape it,” Clark recently told People magazine. “And there was real hostility there. People would try to give me advice like, ‘You shouldn’t come across tough. Wear pastels. Talk softer.’” The thrust of this advice makes clear that it was Clark’s challenge to traditional ideas about femininity that made her threatening. In 1991, Anita Hill almost derailed the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, a story told in the new HBO film Confirmation. David Brock, then a right-wing journalist, notoriously described Hill as “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty.” Brock, who now ironically plays a major part in the Hillary Clinton circle as a surrogate and informal advisor, has since apologized for his remarks. But it wasn’t just conservative Republicans who went after Hill. Joe Biden, then a senator, dismissed Hill by bringing up a line from William Congreve: “Hell hath no fury like a women scorned.”
The role Biden played in the besmirching of Hill is ample proof that when it comes to 1990s sexism, Democrats have their share of skeletons in the closet. This is even more true of the Monica Lewinsky case. After all, in their zeal to protect Bill Clinton in the 1990s, some Democrats cast Lewinsky as an unstable stalker who thrust herself on the president.
Drawing on the wretched treatment that she received during the sex scandal that led to Bill Clinton being impeached, Lewinsky has emerged as a forceful critic of slut-shaming and online bullying. In an interview over the weekend with The Guardian, Lewinsky indicated that she includes Bill Clinton’s account of her as “that woman” as part of the abuse she received. “I was branded as a tramp, tart, slut, whore, bimbo, and, of course, ‘that woman’,” Lewinsky said. “It was easy to forget that ‘that woman’ was dimensional, had a soul.” No less than Clark, Hill, and Lewinksy, Hillary Clinton suffered from an endless sexist onslaught. Writing in the New Republic, Camille Paglia labeled Clinton a “man-woman and bitch goddess.” In 1992, When Clinton defended her decision to have a career rather than bake cookies, she was accused of insulting American housewives. To earn the forgiveness of the press, she engaged in a “bake off” with Barbara Bush. That same year, the American Spectator described Clinton as the “Lady MacBeth of Arkansas.” For Clinton, the reopening of the old 1990s wounds is a heartening development in one respect: The fact that there’s a willingness to look back and grapple with the mistreatment of prominent women suggests a cultural shift that could help elect the first woman president. But revisiting the Hill and Lewinsky controversies means that some of her closest allies—notably Vice President Biden and Bill Clinton—also need to make amends. Of course, Hillary Clinton can’t be held responsible for what her allies or her husband do. Still, the ability of Democrats to act as effective advocates for feminism is hampered by the fact that the sexist mistreatment of Hill and Lewinsky hasn’t received a full reckoning. This cultural moment offers a golden opportunity for that. David Brock apologized to Anita Hill; Joe Biden needs to do the same. And somehow, Bill Clinton needs to try to square himself with Monica Lewinsky by formally acknowledging that the attacks on her reputation were unjust. Revisiting the Lewinsky scandal in a forthright manner might be painful, but it would also open up a conversation that would serve Hillary Clinton well.
[h=1]Hillary Clinton’s History Problem[/h][h=2]As recent comments showed, Clinton tends to downplay the role of radical activism in fomenting social change.[/h] [h=3]BY JEET HEER
[/h][h=5]March 15, 2016[/h]
Like Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton has a theory of political change. But unlike hismuch-discussed “political revolution,” her thoughts about how democratic transformation happens rarely get fleshed out. Yet if we attend to Clinton’s own words, she has a distinctive view of how history works. While Sanders emphasizes grassroots mobilization, Clinton is much more inclined to see politics as a matter of leaders forging a consensus—and of social progress being made when those leaders are moved to do the right thing.
Clinton’s argument that she’s a proven pragmatist who can get things done—a lynchpin of her campaign against Sanders for the Democratic nomination—rests on a view of history that highlights leaders at the expense of social movements. This often leads her to tonally off-key statements that put her at odds with her own party’s base, many of whom have been shaped by the social activism of the civil rights, feminist, and LGBT rights movements. The crucial question is whether Clinton’s comments offer a window into how she really thinks about social change—or if this is simply the way she frames issues in an effort to speak to the broader electorate.
Clinton’s elite view of history caused some consternation during her first run for president eight years ago, when she appeared to give greater credit to President Lyndon Johnson for civil rights laws than the movement lead by Martin Luther King. “I would point to the fact that Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done,” Clinton said during her heated contest with Barack Obama. “That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became real in people’s lives, because we had a president who said we are going to do it and actually got it accomplished.”
This past weekend, Clinton made two statements that echoed those remarks. Interviewed by MSNBC upon the death of former First Lady Nancy Reagan, she said, “it may be hard for your viewers to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about HIV/AIDS back in the 1980s. And because of both President and Mrs. Reagan, in particular Mrs. Reagan, we started a national conversation, when before nobody would talk about it.”
This strange interpretation of history was met with an immediate backlash from the LGBT community, and from others with strong memories of how the Reagan administration neglected the HIV/AIDS crisis until nearly the end of the Republican president’s term in office. It wasn’t the quiet beneficence of Nancy Reagan that awoke the nation to the reality of HIV/AIDS, they pointed out, but rather the very vocal and radical activism of groups like ACT-UP and the Gay Men’s Health Crisis.
To her credit, Clinton not only quickly apologized but also, on Saturday night, issueda detailed statement that offered a much more accurate account of the history of AIDS and the role activism played in making the world aware of the urgency of the crisis. Still, the view of history in the repudiated Nancy Reagan statement echoes that of Clinton’s professed view of civil rights and LBJ: It’s that idea that historic change is made by those in power, or in proximity to power, who decide to do what is best for society.
Also on Saturday, Clinton issued a statement on the violence at Donald Trump rallies that bespoke an elite theory of history:
Last year in Charleston, South Carolina, an evil man walked into a church and murdered 9 people. The families of those victims came together and melted hearts in the statehouse and the confederate flag came down. That should be the model we strive for to overcome painful divisions in our country.
The problem with this statement is that it elides the decades of heated struggle and activism that finally led to taking down the Confederate flag in South Carolina. It turns history into a fairy tale in which the innocent (the families of the victims) melt the hearts of the powerful (the legislators in the statehouse) and solutions to old problems magically come to fruition. In actual fact, the movement to retire the flag included a 15-year boycott of South Carolina led by the NAACP—and culminated in activist Bree Newsome taking direct action by scaling the pole in the state capital and taking down the flag herself. Previously, Clinton had given credit to activists (and Newsome by name), but her words on Saturday offered a far more sanitized version of history—one in which primacy is again given to the personal decency of officeholders. Last August, when Clinton first met with Black Lives Matter activists, the candidate showed an narrow and limited view of the role activists play in pushing the powerful from the outside. She made it clear that, in her view, the young activists could only be successful if they came up with concrete “plans” that could win “common ground.” “So the consciousness-raising, the advocacy, the passion, the youth of your movement is so critical,” Clinton said. “But now all I’m suggesting is—even for us sinners—find some common ground on agendas that can make a difference right here and now in people’s lives, and that’s what I would love to have your thoughts about, because that’s what I’m trying to figure out how to do.”
The question is whether Clinton’s tendency to downplay social activism as an agent of history is mostly a rhetorical tic, or whether it reflects more deeply held convictions. If it is a rhetorical tic, it is probably located in a reflexive centrism that doesn’t want to scare away moderate voters by bringing up the importance of radical protest. Yet if it comes from Clinton’s genuine ideology, it could have have serious repercussions for her presidency—and for the progressive possibilities that it could open up or shut down.
Social change in American history has always come when progressive leaders in positions of power were responsive to radical activists—whether it was Abraham Lincoln with the abolitionists, Franklin Roosevelt with the trade-union movement, or Lyndon Johnson with the civil rights movement. Crucially, these presidents all accepted the fundamental legitimacy of the protest movements. In prior eras, abolitionists, trade union members, and those pushing for civil rights had been regarded as extremists or troublemakers. Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Johnson accepted these activists as having as legitimate a voice in politics as the traditional elite stake-holders. These presidents weren’t interested so much in finding “common ground” (in Clinton’s sense) as in expanding the field of democracy.
Can Clinton be as expansively democratic in welcoming social protest? It’s a critical question, considering that we live in an age of renewed activism: of the Dreamers, Black Lives Matter, and a reborn feminism. Will Clinton be inclined to listen to these movements and work with them—even to goad them on? Or will she sideline radical activism because of her more top-down view of leadership, in which the president is focused on forging consensus and making only low-key, nudge-nudge efforts to change the national conversation?
Those who hope that the next Democratic president will build on Obama’s progressive legacy have reason to worry. Unless Clinton can more convincingly show that she appreciates the role radical activists play in moving the progressive consensus forward, there’s every reason to fear a “common ground” presidency that aims to be squarely centrist.
House Speaker Paul Ryan has remained quiet on Donald Trump’s tweet.
This weekend, Republican leaders had time to tweet about Independence Day, tax policy and Elie Wiesel’s death, but not to comment on Donald Trump’s use of an anti-Semitic image.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee on Saturday tweeted an anti-Hillary Clinton picture that originated on a white supremacist website.
The image, which Trump later took down, showed the Democratic presidential candidate’s face next to a Star of David that read “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” The Anti-Defamation League denounced the tweet, and Clinton called it “blatantly anti-Semitic.” The former secretary of state’s criticism was echoed by hordes of Twitter users.
The most powerful Republicans in the U.S. stayed silent, though.
Instead, House Speaker Paul Ryan (Wis.) and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (La.) tweeted about their tax reform plan.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) released a statement on the death of Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning author who survived Auschwitz. Wiesel died on Saturday, the same day Trump published the Star of David tweet. During the Holocaust, Nazis forced Jewish people to wear Star of David badges to identify themselves.
McConnell’s statement read:
“We knew Elie Wiesel as a survivor, an advocate, and an award-winning author. Though he saw the worst of humanity, he also showed us the enduring power of the human spirit. The mark he left on our world will continue to be felt for years to come.”
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus paid tribute to Wiesel, too.
We are all inspired by Elie Wiesel's quest for justice & his fight to preserve the dignity of all human beings. May he rest in peace 6:18 PM - 2 Jul 2016
Priebus also tweeted about Clinton’s meeting with the FBI over her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.
Hillary Clinton is the first major party presidential candidate to be interviewed by the FBI as part of a criminal investigation 5:24 PM - 2 Jul 2016
All four of them wished Americans a happy July Fourth.
Representatives for Ryan, McConnell and Scalise didn’t return requests for comment. RNC Communications Director Sean Spicer didn’t respond, either, but he did tweet about dry shampoo:
Ryan and McConnell (among several other Republican politicians) have in the past criticized Trump’s racist and xenophobic remarks. They are still, however, endorsing him for president.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) also didn’t have a response. None of the politicians on Trump’s rumored short list of VP candidates — including Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie or former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (Ga.) — spoke out either. Fox News barely addressed Trump’s tweet, and when the network did, it defended him.
Trump denied the tweet was anti-Semitic and blamed the “dishonest media” for making him look bad. Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
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Donald Trump delivers a speech in front of a garbage pile (Screen cap) DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
On Saturday, GOP candidate Donald Trump tweeted an image that has been widely condemned as anti-Semitic — an image of Hillary Clinton and a Star of David, with $100 bills in the background. Trump’s team had mined the image from a racist and anti-Semitic message board, Mic reported. A watermark on the image lead to a Twitter account known for violent, racist memes. Trump deleted the tweet and has been trying to fend off criticism by saying it was not a Star of David in the image.
Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff's Star, or plain star! 9:42 AM - 4 Jul 2016
Social media users were not amused by Trump’s explanation.
Whether they support Trump or not there isn't a single Jew on Earth who saw that Star of David and thought "that's just a sherriff' star." 10:25 AM - 4 Jul 2016
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Donald Trump has ignored criticism that he tweeted an attack ad targeting Hillary Clinton using anti-semitic imagery. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee (or someone from his campaign) posted the image on Twitter on Saturday, which shows Clinton superimposed over a pile of money with the words "Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!" framed by a six-pointed star, which resembles the Star of David.
This morning, Trump said that the "dishonest media" was misleading the public, and that the star could have been "a Sheriff's star, or a plain star." This response echoed that of his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who called the public outcry "political correctness run amok."
Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff's Star, or plain star! 9:42 AM - 4 Jul 2016
The original tweet containing the star was deleted and replaced with an identical ad using a circle instead. (Although you could still see the original points of the star.) Trump's campaign adviser Ed Brookover told CNN this morning that there was “never any intention of anti-Semitism,” and claimed that Trump had "consistently and loudly denounce white supremacist groups." This is despite the fact that Trump has previously refused to rejectthe support of a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan. A report from Mic revealed that the Clinton attack ad featuring the star seems to have originated on 8chan's /pol/ ("politically incorrect") board a week before being tweeted by Trump. Discussions on this same board currently include speculation as to whether the US is heading for a second Civil War or a new Confederacy. TRUMP HAS PREVIOUSLY RETWEETED MATERIAL FROM ACCOUNTS WARNING OF 'WHITE GENOCIDE' Trump frequently retweets material from white supremacists, and many on his campaign staff follow white supremacist Twitter accounts. Although his campaign may deny any links to these groups, they certainly see Trump's Twitter activity as a tacit endorsement of their cause. The editor of white supremacist site The Daily Stormer even said that Trump was giving the "full wink-wink-wink to his most aggressive supporters."
DONALD TRUMP’S SOCIAL MEDIA TIES TO WHITE SUPREMACISTS
By Ben Kharakh and Dan Primack Photographer by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
It’s more than just a couple of retweets.
In late January, Donald Trump did something that would have sunk almost any other presidential campaign: He retweeted an anonymous Nazi sympathizer and white supremacist who goes by the not-so-subtle handle @WhiteGenocideTM. Trump neither explained nor apologized for the retweet and then, three weeks later, he did it again. This subsequent retweet was quickly deleted, but just two days later Trump retweeted a different user named @EustaceFash, whose Twitter header image at the time also included the term “white genocide.”
None of this went unnoticed among ardent racists, many of whom believe there is a coordinated effort to eventually eliminate the “white race.” Trump is “giving us the old wink-wink,” wrote Andrew Anglin, editor of a white supremacist website called The Daily Stormer, after Trump retweeted two other “white genocide” theorists within a single minute. “Whereas the odd White genocide tweet could be a random occurrence, it isn’t statistically possible that two of them back to back could be a random occurrence. It could only be deliberate…Today in America the air is cold and it tastes like victory.” It is possible that Trump ― who, according to the campaign, does almost all of his own tweeting ― is unfamiliar with the term “white genocide” and doesn’t do even basic vetting of those whose tweets he amplifies to his seven million followers. But the reality is that there are dozens of tweets mentioning @realDonaldTrump each minute, and he has an uncanny ability to surface ones that come from accounts that proudly proclaim their white supremacist leanings.
“The retweets are based solely on the content, not the personal views of those individuals as they are not vetted, known or of interest to the candidate or the campaign,” says Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks, who declined to explain how Trump searches through his Twitter feed. Hicks also declined (repeatedly) to answer Fortune‘s question as to whether or not Trump believes that white genocide is a legitimate concern. Follow the followers
Countless numbers of people mention #WhiteGenocide each day on Twitter, but Fortuneused social media analytics software from Little Bird to find those who are considered to be the most prominent. In the world of social media marketing, such people are called “influencers.”
“Our technology builds a big network of hundreds or thousands of specialists in a particular field or people who used a particular hashtag, and then analyzes the connections between the people in that network,” explains Little Bird co-founder and chairman Marshall Kirkpatrick. “We then find the person or people in that group that are most followed by others in the same group. It’s kind of like a ‘9-out-of-10 dentists recommend’ model rather than measuring people by the absolute popularity. We view it as earned influence within a specific context.”
The Little Bird software analyzed Twitter content to generate a ranked list of just under 2,000 #WhiteGenocide “influencers” as of February 8. The more impactful, the higher up on the list (which, understandably, ebbs and flows a bit over time).
Since the start of his campaign, Donald Trump has retweeted at least 75 users who follow at least three of the top 50 #WhiteGenocide influencers. Moreover, a majority of these retweeted accounts are themselves followed by more than 100 #WhiteGenocide influencers.
But the relationship isn’t limited to retweets. For example, Trump national campaign spokesperson Katrina Pierson (who is black), follows the most influential #WhiteGenocide account, @Genophilia, which is best known for helping to launch a Star Wars boycott after it became known that the new film’s lead character was black. (Below are some recent #WhiteGenocide tweets from @Genophilia.)
Pierson also follows #WhiteGenocide influencer @Trumphat, who has tweeted that he looks forward to seeing people “swing from lampposts” on the #DOTR, which stands for Day of the Rope ― a seminal event in the racist Turner Diaries novels that inspired Timothy McVeigh. [Update: @Trumphat removed the tweet after this story was published, but Fortune retained a screenshot.]
Moreover, Pierson has company within Trump’s campaign:
The official Twitter account for Trump’s campaign in Nevada follows #WhiteGenocide influencers #3 and #40.
The official Twitter account for Trump’s campaign in North Carolina previously followed #20, #74 and #77.
Tana Goertz, a senior Trump advisor and co-chair of his Iowa campaign, follows #74 and #117.
Nancy Mace, Trump’s South Carolina coalitions director, follows #20 and #35.
Elizabeth Mae Davidson, a former campaign staffer who later sued Trump’s campaignfor alleged sexual discrimination, follows #40.
Dena Espenscheid, Trump’s Virginia field director, follows #5, #22 and #35.
That last example is notable, because one of those followed accounts refers to itself as AdolfJoeBiden and has a profile image of Joe Biden with Hitler’s mustache and haircut — something that would have been visible to Espenscheid were she to have followed the account while using almost any device.
Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks declined to discuss the Twitter follows of campaign staff or accounts, saying she doesn’t speak for them. Pierson did not return a request for comment.
Several grassroots organizations campaigning for Trump also follow #WhiteGenocide influencers. The most notable example may be Students for Trump, a national organization whose top two student leaders have met personally with Trump. Its main Twitter account (@TrumpStudents) follows nine of the top 100 #WhiteGenocide influencers, plus users like @WhiteAmericaKKK.
Even the Twitter account for @USAFreedomKids, the young girls whose performance for Trump in Florida became a viral sensation, follows 13 of the top 100 #WhiteGenocide influencers, plus another account that promotes a pro-Hitler documentary called The Greatest Story Never Told. Fortune also used Little Bird software to analyze the top 50 influencers of the Trump campaign slogan #MakeAmericaGreatAgain,and found that 43 of them each follow at least 100 members of the #WhiteGenocide network.
Trump himself follows just 42 total Twitter accounts, none of which are #WhiteGenocide influencers. But a whopping 67.5% of the #WhiteGenocide influencers do follow@realDonaldTrump (as of March 15), while another 24.1% follow Trump campaign social media director @DanScavino. This compares to just 17.7% that follow @tedcruz, 5.7% that follow @HillaryClinton, 4% that follow @BernieSanders and 2% that follow@JohnKasich.
Cruz’s account, however, does follow 14 #WhiteGenocide influencers, while Kasich follows three. Clinton and Sanders don’t follow any. It’s a pattern
Donald Trump has never publicly commented on the idea of white genocide, and has publicly distanced himself from white supremacists (despite his well-publicized stumble on David Duke and the KKK). Most recently, in a Monday evening interview with CNN, Trump said he has “always condemned” white supremacists, adding: “I don’t want their support, I don’t need their support.”
But Trump clearly is partial to conspiracy theories, including his involvement in the birther movement and his appearance on a radio program hosted by Alex Jones (whom Trump has referred to as a “nice guy,” even after Jones claimed The Boston Marathon bombings were carried out by the U.S. government).
To repeat what Hope Hicks said, Trump neither checks nor cares that an account like@NeilTurner_ ― which he has retweeted five times ― includes the phrase “#WhiteGenocide is real” in its bio.
What the data shows, however, is that Donald Trump and his campaign have used social media to court support within the white supremacist community, whether intentionally or unintentionally. And it appears to have worked.
@keksec__org is a #WhiteGenocide influencer who has been repeatedly retweeted by @realDonaldTrumpBen Kharakh (@benkharakh) is a New York-based freelance writer. Dan Primack (@danprimack) is a senior editor with Fortune.
Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes, CNN analyst Errol Lewis - Screengrab DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
Appearing on CNN Monday afternoon, avid Trump supporter Scottie Nell Hughes ran into a bit of a buzzsaw when she attempted to dismiss Donald Trump’s anti-Semitic tweet as something someone else created and therefore not worthy of discussion. Asked by host Carol Costello “Why it is important for Mr. Trump to explain why he tweeted or retweeted this image?” CNN political analyst Errol Lewis corrected the record and launched into a diatribe against the Trump campaign. “It wasn’t a retweet, he tweeted it. it was under his account and it’s important because the imagery is unquestionably anti-Semitic, and I understand why Trump’s people are embarrassed and might want to change the subject, but this is not a subject that you do that with,” he explained. “This is something that is of great importance to a great many people including people who are not Jewish and for Donald Trump to act as if this is just some concoction, ‘Oh, he has no idea’ and he won’t explain and he won’t apologize, and given the string of other incidents that you talked about,” Lewis continued.“I think everybody, everybody who’s not a complete partisan understands exactly what his campaign is doing. They understand that it is deliberate. They understand that they’re playing footsie with some very dangerous radical, disgusting elements of this country and that they hope to ride in the White House based on that support, and it’s disgraceful.” Hughes attempted deflect blame for the tweet on “someone who posted the image back on June 15th,” completely ignoring the fact that Trump posted it on his own Twitter account over the weekend. After Hughes stated that no one can “responsibly say” that Trump is responsible for the image posted on his Twitter account, Lewis struck back. “Donald Trump, we know from past behavior, is not going to explain unless a lot of pressure is put on him,” Lewis shot back. “And I think the followers who are trying to explain this foolishness should be ashamed of themselves. I mean, it’s not worth winning a Twitter war, it’s not worth winning a news-cycle. It’s not worth winning an election over.” Watch the video below uploaded by Crooks & Liars:
Donald Trump would have made little fanfare had he merely tweeted an image of Hillary Clinton with a backdrop of money with the caption, “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!”
But when the caption was placed inside a Star of David, the tweet took on a whole new meaning. Such imagery is intended to leave the impression that Hillary is controlled by “Jewish money” and Trump isn’t. That Trump deleted the tweet as if he had never sent it only makes matters worse. Trump has tried to present himself as a friend of the Jews and of Israel. But when Trump questions Israel’s commitment to making peace, claims he will be a neutral when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians, makes haste in disavowing David Duke and now tweets out blatantly anti-Semitic imagerywhich originally appeared on a white supremacist website, he is no friend of Jews or of Israel. With friends like Donald Trump, who needs enemies?
God only knows why Trump sees fit to behave in this manner. But when it is all said and done, instead of drawing attention to Hillary Clinton’s deficient character Trump has again succeeded in drawing attention to his own utter lack of redeeming values.
Prior to this weekend, Donald Trump had a degree of plausible deniability regarding anti-Semitism, both personally and from his campaign. While many of Trump’s legions of online supporters are explicitly (and viciously) anti-Semitic, Trump himself had little to do with them beyond his Twitter account retweeting things from accounts with #WhiteGenocide in their profiles. On the same weekend as Elie Wiesel’s death, though, Donald Trump’s official Twitter account tweeted an image of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, with the caption “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” pasted within a red Star of David — the symbol of Jews for a millennium. Several hours after the tweet was sent, leading to an uproar unusual even for the candidate who traffics in uproar, it was deleted.
On CNN, commentator and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said seeing a Star of David in a six-pointed star was a further example of observers and opponents of his former boss being overly “politically correct.” It was a sheriff’s star — despite it lacking the distinctive circles over the angles of those stars. But if the objections are mere political correctness, then why would the candidate who has built his entire campaign on being anti-PC delete the tweet?
Perhaps it has something to do with the source.
The day after the tweet was sent, the online publication Mic discovered the meme’s origins. According to reports, it first appeared on “an Internet message board for the alt-right, a digital movement of neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and white supremacists newly emboldened by the success of Trump’s rhetoric —- as early as June 22, over a week before Trump’s team tweeted it.”
The original image had a watermark, which the Trump campaign covered up, that linked it to an alt-right Twitter account with a number of racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic images, far worse than the one Trump’s official account tweeted. Despite the fact that Trump often gives credit to Twitter accounts for originating the memes he re-tweets, he chose not to do so here. Whenever I write about the Trump campaign’s connections to these bottom rungs of our society, I hear from his non-racist supporters (yes, they do exist): “these are just his fans, he can’t be held responsible for their actions!” But why are the alt-right drawn to Trump? Perhaps because in addition to the retweets originating from his own personal account, they see other winks and nods in their direction. Many of his actually racist supporters see the close (and now, proven) online connections between the alt-right and Team Trump. Because the same weekend Trump tweeted the anti-Semitic image which originated on an alt-right message board, Fortune posted a deeply researched story on the most influential alt-right Twitter accounts, who they follow and — more damningly — who follows them. Turns out, the alt-right are fans of Trump, and his official campaign accounts are fans of the alt-right.
As with every close call Trump has had with anti-Semitism (which, unlike his racism andmisogyny has never been overt), Trump chooses to keep retweeting from accounts that promote the theory of #WhiteGenocide (the idea that the white race is the victim of genocide) on his own timeline and then delete blatantly anti-Semitic memes without explanation when the uproar becomes too deafening even for Trump Tower.
In a normal world, a nod this blatant sent to white nationalists would have been followed by a clear and unequivocal apology from the respectable, non-racist candidate. Despite the fact that many in the media, both conservative and liberal, in this paper and beyond, have been asking for Trump to simply and loudly repudiate the alt-right faction in his camp for months, he has yet to do so. Despite Trump’s repeated assertion that he hires “the best people” as one of his main qualifications for the Oval Office these very same people are following alt-right Twitter accounts and providing anti-Semitic memes for their boss to tweet to his almost 9.5 million followers. We are left with three possible explanations: Many in Trump’s campaign have an affinity for the alt-right; or the campaign team is too stupid to understand the company they keep; or the team is too calculating to disregard any group that will support his candidacy — even from neo-Nazis.
For most rational American voters — even Republicans like me — none of these three possibilities are in any way enticing for voters, or even conventions, tasked with choosing the next President of the United States. Bethany Mandel writes on politics and culture, usually from a conservative perspective. Follow her on Twitter @BethanyShondark
Saturday morning, Donald Trump tweeted out a graphic attacking Hillary Clinton as corrupt. That sounds par for the course for him — except this one overlays a six-pointed star, which looks a lot like a Star of David, on a pile of money. Yes, I’m serious:
(Donald Trump)
The idea that politicians are controlled by Jewish money is one of the defining tropes of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. The apparent subtext of the graphic is that Hillary Clinton is corrupt, and that the source of the corruption is the Jews.
Did Trump intend to convey an anti-Semitic message with this graphic? I’m honestly not sure. On the one hand, his daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism several years ago. She and her Jewish husband Jared Kushner reportedly wield some influence inside the Trump campaign, so you’d think they would steer him away from overt anti-Semitism. Indeed, about two hours after the first tweet, he sent out a new version of the graphic which replaced the six-pointed star with a circle. He deleted the six-pointed star tweet about an hour later. On the other hand, the campaign hasn't yet apologized. Trump has clearly and publicly demonstrated his own blind spot when it comes to anti-Semitism.
In December, he gave a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition which was filled with anti-Semitic stereotypes. A few examples of what he said:
"Stupidly, you want to give money. ...You're not going to support me because I don't want your money."
"I'm a negotiator, like you folks."
"Is there anyone in this room who doesn't negotiate deals? Probably more than any room I've ever spoken."
It’s also been well documented that Trump has a vocal fanbase among anti-Semites on the internet, particularly on the avowedly anti-Semitic "alt right" subculture. "We haven’t seen this kind of kind of mainstreaming of intolerance at this level," Jonathan Greenblatt, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a May interview with The Forward.
When journalist Julia Ioffe wrote a critical profile of Melania Trump in GQ, she was inundated with anti-Semitic invective, including photoshops of her face onto concentration camp inmates. When Melania was asked about it, she said that Ioffe "provoked" the backlash, adding that "I don’t control my fans." The point, then, is that the Trump campaign has enjoyed vocal support from anti-Semites, and done virtually nothing to warn them off. Trump himself has openly indulged in anti-Semitism, and never apologized. So while it might not be possible to prove whether or not this graphic was intentionally anti-Semitic, it’s not clear how much that matters. It’s yet more evidence that Trump is entirely oblivious and indifferent to the anti-Semitism that his campaign is kicking up.
July 03, 2016, 03:41 pm[h=1]Anti-Defamation League blasts Trump's Star of David tweet[/h] By Jessie Hellmann
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The Anti-Defamation League is asking Donald Trump to speak out against anti-Semitism on the part of his supporters after he tweeted a photo of Hillary Clinton with the Star of David superimposed on it. The image shared by Trump on Saturday — reportedly created by white supremacists — accused Hillary Clinton of being "corrupt" and had a six-pointed star emblazoned across it."We've been troubled by the anti-Semites and racists during this political season, and we've seen a number of so-called Trump supporters peddling some of the worst stereotypes all through this year," wrote Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, in a statement. "And it's been concerning that [Donald Trump] hasn't spoken our forcefully against these people. It is outrageous to think that the candidate is sourcing material from some of the worst elements in our society." The image appeared on an internet message board for the alt-right, a digital movement of neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and white supremacists that has shown interest in Trump's candidacy, Mic reported on Sunday. The image was featured on the message board as early as June 22 — more than a week before it was tweeted by Trump, according to the news outlet. The tweet drew quick backlash from people asking why the Star of David was used. Two hours after the initial post, Trump tweeted a different version of the same image, using a circle instead of a star. He then deleted the original post. But he hasn't publicly apologized for or acknowledged the incident. And a former aid to the campaign, Corey Lewandowski, dismissed the controversy as "political correctness run amok."
"For those people who say that you can write this off, and that calling it out is simply political correctness, it's crazy," Greenblatt wrote. "We would like to see [Trump] speak out consistently and clearly and reject not only this kind of prejudice, but the people behind it. And make it clear that they have no please in the public conversation, and no place in a political campaign, and that they have nothing to do with making America great again."
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