One of the most stomach-churning moments of Donald Trump’s bizarre Tuesday press conference came when he suggested that demands to take down Confederate monuments would be a slippery slope. He suggested–with a straight face–that Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson would ultimately lead to calls for monuments to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to come down.
Just in case anyone thought he hadn’t made himself clear on the matter, Trump doubled down in one of his patented morning Twitter rants on Thursday.
Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
…can't change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson – who's next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish! Also…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
…the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
Let’s say it all together as a group. Washington and Jefferson fought to build this country. Lee and Jackson tried to tear it apart. Period, full stop. The fact that Trump either doesn’t know, doesn’t understand, or refuses to understand this is a sign that at best, he has a moral and historical blind spot.
But Slate’s Elliot Hannon uncovered something that suggests we may be dealing with something worse than just moral and historical blindness. Hannon discovered a clip from Trump’s first press conference as a presidential candidate, in June 2015. A reporter asked him whether he thought the Confederate battle flag should come down from the South Carolina State House grounds.
Think Progress’ Judd Legum managed to preserve Trump’s response.
Trump’s position at the time was almost identical to the position of those who wanted the flag and all other memorabilia removed from places in state capitols and courthouses–it belonged in a museum. And yet, more than two years later, he’s echoing the same arguments that were made by those who wanted to keep that flag flying–that taking it down was an attack on the state’s historical heritage. There is literally no good-faith explanation for such a massive 180 in a short period of time. This is blatant pandering.
While Trump’s own words would be enough in and of themselves to prove this, there’s more. Legum noted that Trump is now parroting the very same arguments made by the organizers of the Unite the Right Rally–that it was merely to protest the planned removal of the Lee statue, as well as a proposal to change the name of Lee Park to “Emancipation Park.” As we all know, what we actually got was a display of racists marching through town carrying torches, throwing Nazi salutes, and chanting, “Jews will not replace us!”
The Washington Post notes that Trump’s sudden change of heart on Confederate monuments and symbols dovetails with his growing connection to the GOP base. A September 2015 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that at the time, Trump was viewed favorably by 60 percent of Republican voters who thought the battle flag represented Southern pride. PRRI asked the same question in October 2016–a month out from Election Day. By then, Trump’s support among those who felt that flag was a symbol of pride had ballooned to 80 percent. If that wasn’t enough, a recent poll by The Economist and YouGov found that a whopping 81 percent of Trump voters wanted the Lee statue left alone.
When Trump left the podium on Tuesday, it was clear that, at the very least, he was morally and historically blind in a way that a president simply cannot be if he has any business in the White House. But now we know that it’s a lot more serious than that. The man who has conned his followers into thinking he’s not a traditional politician is engaging in pandering of the worst type, and to the worst elements in this country. It is yet more evidence that it is time for this president to go, and it is time for him to go now.
(featured image courtesy Ninian Reid, available under a Creative Commons-BY license)
