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When Trump Fought the Racists
JEFFREY LORD Print Friendly and PDF
November 13, 2015, 9:00 amAnd so the cry went up.
“Trump is a racist!” was the mocking cry from an off-stage Larry David when Trump recently hosted Saturday Night Live. The David bit was designed to make fun not of Trump but Trump’s critics. In this case a left-wing group calling itself deportracism.com which, without the slightest sense of irony, put together a thoroughly racist ad having children spewing obscenities as they proclaimed their allegiance not to America and its ideals but rather to their race. A chilling reminder of all those fresh-faced young Germans of long ago pledging allegiance to their Aryan race.
All of this is already old news. But there is a much older “old news” story about Trump that has now resurfaced — a story that paints a highly accurate portrait of the real Donald Trump — the guy who has no time for racism and anti-Semitism and stood up in public to fight both.
The story, linked by a group calling itself Zionists for Trump, was published in the Wall Street Journal — in 1997. It revolves around Trump’s purchase and operation of the famous Mar-a-Largo estate, built in the 1920s by Post Cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. Trump had recently purchased the sprawling, seaside estate and turned it into a club. This being located in upscale Palm Beach, Florida, there were other prestigious clubs in the area, clubs that catered to the old order of upper crust Palm Beach society. The problem? Quietly, these other clubs had long barred Jews and African Americans — which is to say they practiced a quiet but steely racism.
The Zionists for Trump headline:
How Trump Fought Antisemitism and Racism in Palm Beach Two Decades Ago
The WSJ story that is linked focuses on the battles Trump faced as a new arrival to Palm Beach, including his new competition with the social clubs of the old order. The story, which quotes Abe Foxman, the longtime head of the Anti-Defamation League, says, in part, the following:Mr. Trump also has resorted to the courts to secure his foothold here, and many residents wince at the attention his legal battles with the town have drawn — to the town in general, and to the admission practices at some of Palm Beach’s older clubs in particular.
…The culture clash began to approach a climax last fall, when Mr. Trump’s lawyer sent members of the town council a copy of the film “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” a film that deals with upper-class racism. Mr. Trump then approached the town council about lifting the restrictions that had been placed on the club. He also asked some council members not to vote on the request because their membership in other clubs created a conflict of interest.
Last December, after the council refused to lift the restrictions, Mr. Trump filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Palm Beach, alleging that the town was discriminating against Mar-a-Lago, in part because it is open to Jews and African-Americans. The suit seeks $100 million in damages.
… Mr. Foxman seems pleased that Mr. Trump has elevated the issue of discriminatory policies at social clubs. “He put the light on Palm Beach,” Mr. Foxman says. “Not on the beauty and the glitter, but on its seamier side of discrimination. It has an impact.”
In recent weeks, Mr. Foxman says, the league has received calls from Jewish residents telling of how Palm Beach clubs are changing. Locals concur that in the past year, organizations such as the Bath and Tennis Club have begun to admit Jewish patrons. The Palm Beach Civic Association, which for many years was believed to engage in discriminatory behavior, this month named a Jewish resident as its chief officer.
In other words? In other words, long before he was running for president, there was Donald Trump battling racism and anti-Semitism in Palm Beach society. Using every tool at his disposal.The film he chose to send the Palm Beach town council was no accident. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was released in 1967 and starred film legends Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, and Sidney Poitier. The Oscar-winning story revolved around a liberal, upper-class older couple who are stunned and discomfited when their daughter, played by Katharine Houghton, brings her new fiancé — Poitier — home to dinner and an introduction to her white parents. As liberals, her parents were staunch supporters of racial equality and had raised their daughter accordingly. Yet suddenly, in comes the very personal reality of equality when their daughter waltzes in the door after a vacation with husband-to-be Poitier, a black widower and doctor. Soul searching about just how devoted to equality they really are ensues.
Thus it was no accident that Trump selected this movie to tweak the members of both the Palm Beach town council and the larger white society it represented. Trump understood exactly what the game was and he would have none of it. In addition to sending a copy of the movie, he launched his lawyers, who filed that $100 million lawsuit “alleging that the town was discriminating against Mar-a-Lago, in part because it is open to Jews and African-Americans.”
This is the same Donald Trump who employs hundreds of Hispanics in the Trump Organization at its various properties across America and around the globe.
Yet here comes the utterly predictable charge of racism from deportracism.com
One has to ask the obvious. Who are the real racists here? The Democratic Party, as we have noted in this space repeatedly, has a long and disgraceful history of out and out racism. Right from the beginning of its history, what became the American Left was on-record supporting slavery, segregation, lynching and, as noted by historians, used the Ku Klux Klan as the military arm of the party to enforce its racism. It was Franklin Roosevelt who issued the infamous Executive Order 9066 that rounded up Japanese-Americans — which is to say legal American citizens — and sent them to internment camps merely because of their race. When a Japanese-American fought the internment in the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States, six of FDR’s liberal court appointees upheld the racist executive order. The opinion, in fact, was written by Justice Hugo Black — who held a “golden passport,” a lifetime membership, in the Ku Klux Klan.
In today’s world the Left demands racial quotas and supports illegal immigration. What all of these things have in common is that they are designed to divide Americans by race, to divide by skin color. Which is precisely what Donald Trump stood up and fought against when no one other than Palm Beach society was paying attention.
The harsh reality of the racism charge against Trump is not only that it is bogus, utterly false from start to finish. The reality is the charges of racism against Trump are coming from the one political force in the country that has a long, deep, and immutable history of racism. A racism that is no relic of a long ago past but both current and visceral, used now as it has always been used — to divide and judge by skin color for political profit.
The good news here that in Donald Trump someone — finally — is standing up to fight back. Just as he fought back all those years ago in Palm Beach when no one was looking.
The upside to being a Rams fan is heartbreak.
Sprinkles are for winners.
And speaking of anti-semitism:
Trump recently sent out this ad about Clinton:
(The second one was a change from the first, after he was called on the obvious reference to Jews and money)
Even fellow right-winger Gary Johnson called it racist.
Trump comments ‘clearly’ racist, says Gary Johnson amid antisemitism furor
The Libertarian candidate for president, Gary Johnson, said on Sunday Donald Trump’s recent comments were “clearly” racist, a day after the presumptive Republican nominee faced accusations of antisemitism and in the same week that he said he would consider firing government employees who wear hijabs.
“He has said 100 things that would disqualify anyone else from running for president but it doesn’t seem to affect him,” Johnson told CNN’s State of the Union. “The stuff he’s saying is just incendiary. It’s racist.”
Earlier this week, a New Hampshire woman asked Trump at one of his rallies whether, as president, he would replace Transportation Security Administration workers who wear “heebeejabbies” – apparently a reference to Muslim headscarves called hijabs.
“We are looking at that,” Trump replied. “We’re looking at a lot of things.”
At the same rally, Trump pointed to a plane flying overhead and declared: “That could be a Mexican plane up there. They’re getting ready to attack.”
Well, even if one enters the reality-tunnel of that writer, and even if one tries to find some logic in his article, it doesn’t demonstrate that Trump is not a racist. I mean, for example, one could love Jews and still be anti-muslim, right?
Also this: “…the American Left was on-record supporting slavery, segregation, lynching and, as noted by historians…”
Linking the so-called ‘left’ to slavery and lynching is kinda meaningless because it lacks any context. I mean in the 1850’s you had all kinds of mainstream people supporting slavery. It wasn’t a ‘left vs right’ thing. And in the 1910’s and 20’s you had plenty of Dems and plenty of Reps supporting lynching of minorities. It wasn’t a ‘left vs right’ thing. It was an American thing.
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vNow now lets just drag that timeline forward 100 years since the democrats were flagrantly racist in the 1950s too. Sen. Byrd wasn’t alone in your state.
But that’s not “the left.” Will you at least admit that Jeffrey Lord is wildly mistaken in asserting that the KKK was a “leftist” organization, and that the Nazis were? We can at least agree there, correct?
Again, there is a huge difference between the Democratic Party and “the left.” They’re not the same things. And, again, historically, the Dems had all kinds of far-right congresscritters, generally in the South (pre-1965), just as the GOP once had folks on the center-left. No longer, of course. They’ve all but purged themselves of the center-right these days. With the rise of the tea party, they’re dominated by folks to the right of the center right.
Oh, for chrissakes. He has said that the Mexicans coming here are the worst society has to offer. “When Mexico sends you its people, they’re not sending their best…They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
Never mind that Mexico isn’t “sending” anybody, that statement is appalling, and there is no way to get out of the fact that it is racist. And inflammatory.
What he said above should have been enough to disqualify him. All by itself. But he’s added to that pile of excrement since then. Just today, he was still saying we can’t let any Syrians in the country, because we don’t know where they come from — more Palinesque word salad — and that people were flooding over the border. They aren’t. It wasn’t that long ago that he insisted that “thousands of Muslims cheered in New Jersey on 9/11.” That, also, all by itself, should have been enough to sink his candidacy. But he’s the ultimate teflon racist and xenophobe, and his supporters continue to make endless excuses for his dangerous and incendiary behavior.
It’s not an accident that he has a large white supremacist following, or that he seems to retweet things from their websites all too often.
Though, really, when all is said and done, it doesn’t matter if Trump himself is a racist or not: He is obviously trying his best to appeal to them, to stoke the fires of racism and bigotry and xenophobia in America, to gin up white fears of black and brown people and bring out the ugliest side this country can present to the world. And remaining silent about this is obviously wrong as well. To play nice with Trump and his supporters is playing nice with racism, bigotry and xenophobia.
Why should we? Seriously? What should anyone feel the necessity to treat Trump as anything other than a con-artist and a dangerous bigot?
I’m still waiting for the first expression of an actual policy from Trump. He’s never presented one. On any subject. With him, it’s all word salad and repetition of the same old same old tired xenophobic rants.
What would he actually do about jobs, shit wages, crappy conditions for workers? What, exactly, has he proposed? Cuz just saying he’ll “renegotiate” trade deals is meaningless. What will go in them? And will he continue the pattern of letting financial and business elites write them — which really means writing endless loopholes for American businesses to slip through and screw over American workers and workers in all trade zones.
Trump has no history of doing anything for labor, and no specific plans to bring jobs home. Anyone who thinks that it’s all the fault of black and brown immigrants and refugees obviously doesn’t have a clue about how the economy works, who pulls the strings, who sets up winners and losers and why.
When America sets up trade deals, it does so to protect the wealthy, to protect profits for rich executives and their corporations. It does this and destroys labor leverage and all smaller and weaker competitors in its wake. That’s not on immigrants and refugees. That’s on people like Trump.
What will he do to stop himself and people like him from screwing over American workers and workers all over the globe?
Interesting. So in a nation with an extremely high rate of unemployment, talking about the good ole USA here, you say-
Trump wouldn’t have a problem with rich foreigners coming to this country since they can pay their way and can create and finance jobs for other US citizens?
WELL DUH! It’s about the ECONOMY! JOBS. JOBS. JOBS. JOBS.
Actually, our rate of unemployment is rather low (4.7%), if we’re comparing apples with apples, and not using a different metric for the past than we use today. It’s pretty low. Though this is also a bit of a scam, foisted upon us by capitalists in general and the Fed in particular, who consider anything under 5% “full employment.” Of course, “full employment” would be 0% unemployment, not some number under 5%. But that’s another story and it has to do with capitalism’s desire for a standing army of the unemployed, at all times, to kill worker leverage and keep wages down. And that has absolutely nothing to do with refugees and immigrants.
But, again, you keep talking about jobs jobs jobs. And I keep asking you to post Trump’s plan for creating them. He doesn’t have one. He’s never put forward any plan to create them. All he does is demagogue about black and brown people, immigrants, refugees, undocumented workers, etc. who don’t impact our wages one iota or take away our jobs. Corporations, the rich and the capitalist system itself do that.
Bnw, can you please post Trump’s plan for “creating jobs”? I’ve asked several times now.
Btw, when you say rich people create jobs? Um, no. Consumer demand for products and services create them. Rich people don’t want to hire any workers at all. They only hire them when they have to to meet demand.
Nick Hanauer “Rich people don’t create jobs”
Also: Trump calls for massive tax cuts for the rich. This will result in massive job losses — unless the government just puts the ginormous lost revenues on our national credit card. His tax cut plan will add an additional 10 trillion in debt over the course of his presidency, if he wins. That’s in addition to any debt that would be accrued without those tax cuts.
Billy,
What is really funny is that you of all people are concerned about the national debt!
(Tried to respond multiple times over a half hour but keep getting 403 Forbidden message when quoting your post.)
Unlike most people on the right, I actually favor paying for the government we use, as we use it. Most on the right prefer steep tax cuts, which create massive deficits and debt.
I’d rather raise tax rates on the wealthy so we can balance the budget. Of course, that’s under our current system. I’ve also put forward ways to make it so we don’t need any taxation at all, and there is no debt.
Money is a fiction. It’s an agreed upon fiction. Like capitalism, nation-states and religion. We could very easily agree to a different kind of fiction, one that benefits 100% of us, instead of just the 1%.
But if we remain in our current fiction, yeah. I’d prefer we have no debt. Though it’s economic suicide to try to pay it down during a recession or a weak recovery. The time to do that is when the economy is doing well. The CBO, for instance, told Bush back in 2000/2001 that if he just left tax rates alone, we could pay off the entire debt by 2009. He cut rates for the rich twice — 2001 and 2003 — and doubled the debt instead.
And I’m still waiting for you to tell us how Trump would bring back jobs.
;>)
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