EDS NOTE:
OBSCENITY - Crews lower the statue
Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart in
preparation for transport after
removing it from it's pedestal on
Monument Avenue, Tuesday, July 7,
2020, in Richmond, Va. The statue is
one of several that will be removed
by the city as part of the Black
Lives Matter reaction. (AP
Photo/Steve Helber)
Nearly
30
volunteers
and 10
teaching
artists
painted
a
7,000-square-foot
mural
honoring
Breonna
Taylor –
a
26-year
old
Black
woman
who was
fatally
shot by
police
in her
Louisville,
Kentucky
apartment
in March
– at
Chambers
Park in
Annapolis.
(July 7)
In risky
bid,
Trump
stokes
racial
rancor
to
motivate
voters By
JONATHAN
LEMIRE
apnews.com
NEW
YORK -
President
Donald
Trump is
wielding
America’s
racial
tensions
as a
reelection
weapon,
fiercely
denouncing
the
racial
justice
movement
on a
near-daily
basis
with
language
stoking
white
resentment
and
aiming
to drive
his
supporters
to the
polls.
The
incendiary
discourse
is
alarming
many in
his own
party
and
running
contrary
to the
advice
of some
in his
inner
circle,
who
believe
it risks
alienating
independent
and
suburban
voters.
It’s a
pattern
that
harks
back to
cultural
divisions
Trump
similarly
exploited
in his
victorious
2016
campaign.
“It’s
not
about
who is
the
object
of the
derision
or the
vitriol.
The
actual
issue is
understanding
the
appeal
to white
resentment
and
white
fear,”
said
Eddie
Glaude,
chair of
the
Department
of
African
American
studies
at
Princeton
University.
“It’s
all
rooted
in this
panic
about
the
place of
white
people
in this
new
America.”
Though
Trump
has long
aired
racially
divisive
language
and
grievances
in the
public
sphere,
his
willingness
to do so
from
behind
the
presidential
seal —
and on
his
Twitter
account
— has
reached
a
breakneck
pace in
recent
days as
the
nation
grapples
with
racial
injustice.
The
president
tweeted
— and
later
deleted
— a
video of
a
supporter
yelling
“white
power.”
He
referred
to the
Black
Lives
Matter
mantra
as a
“symbol
of
hate.”
He took
a swipe
at
NASCAR
for
removing
the
Confederate
flag
from its
races
and
falsely
suggested
a Black
driver
had
carried
out a
racially
charged
hoax. He
mused
about
overturning
a
suburban
fair-housing
regulation
and
spoke
approvingly
of the
current
branding
of the
Washington
Redskins
and
Cleveland
Indians,
team
nicknames
that
many
consider
offensive
to
Native
Americans.
Most
notably,
he has
engaged
in a
full-throated
defense
of the
Confederate
legacy,
which he
at times
has
cloaked
within
tributes
to the
Founding
Fathers,
including
during a
pair of
high-profile
Fourth
of July
weekend
speeches.
“Those
who seek
to erase
our
heritage
want
Americans
to
forget
our
pride
and our
great
dignity,
so that
we can
no
longer
understand
ourselves
or
America’s
destiny,”
Trump
said
Friday
at the
base of
Mount
Rushmore.
“In
toppling
the
heroes
of 1776,
they
seek to
dissolve
the
bonds of
love and
loyalty
that we
feel for
our
country,
and that
we feel
for each
other.
Their
goal is
not a
better
America;
their
goal is
the end
of
America.”
In
defending
Thomas
Jefferson
and
George
Washington
that
night,
Trump
did not
mention
the
Confederacy.
Instead,
he
painted
racial
justice
demonstrators
with a
broad
brush
that
made no
distinction
between
the many
who
oppose
honoring
the
Confederacy
and the
relative
few who
question
celebrating
Founders
who
owned
slaves.
But
Trump
has
repeatedly
called
for the
preservation
of
statues
of the
Confederacy
and the
names of
its
generals
on
military
bases —
all
assailed
in the
protests
that
have
swept
from
coast to
coast in
the
aftermath
of the
death of
George
Floyd.
His
comments
are an
apparent
descendant,
a
half-century
later,
of
Richard
Nixon’s
coded
outreach
to white
voters
known as
the
Southern
Strategy.
Trump
himself
has
embraced
Nixon’s
phrase
“the
Silent
Majority”
to
describe
his own
supporters.
By
all
accounts,
the
president’s
actions
are, at
times,
born of
impulse
and an
instinctive
reaction
to what
he sees
on
television.
However,
according
to
current
and
former
Trump
campaign
officials,
his
overarching
strategy
is an
appeal
to white
voters —
some of
them
racist
and some
who fear
being
left
behind
by a
government
seemingly
consumed
with
helping
others.
Those
officials
were not
authorized
to
publicly
discuss
such
private
matters
and
commented
only on
condition
of
anonymity.
The
belief
is that
his
appeals
will
generate
enthusiasm
among
the same
disaffected
white
voters
who made
up the
president’s
base of
supporters
four
years
ago.
But
many in
Trump’s
orbit
are
sounding
the
alarm
that
2020 is
not
2016.
White
House
advisers
Kellyanne
Conway
and
Jared
Kushner,
according
to the
officials,
have
both
warned
that
some of
the
racist
rhetoric,
including
the use
of
China-blaming
“kung
flu” to
describe
the
COVID-19
pandemic,
could
turn off
swaths
of
voters.
And some
believe
there
was more
of an
audience
for
inflammatory
rhetoric
about
immigration
four
years
ago,
particularly
as polls
show the
Black
Lives
Matter
movement
gaining
widespread
support.
“The
2016
debate
about
immigration
was
about
the
future
of
sovereignty,
the
American
worker,
and our
culture.
The
issues
that
involve
race now
are
completely
different,”
said Sam
Nunberg,
a former
Trump
campaign
adviser.
“It’s
not easy
to
conflate
people
who want
to tear
down the
statues
of the
Confederacy
and the
few who
want to
get
George
Washington,”
said
Nunberg.
“I don’t
think
it’s a
winning
argument
in a
time of
a
pandemic.
This
doesn’t
affect
people’s
daily
lives.
This is
a dumb
issue to
fight.”
Four
months
before
Election
Day,
Republicans
are
nervously
watching
polls
that
show
Trump
slipping
behind
his
Democratic
rival
Joe
Biden.
They
have
grown
increasingly
worried
that his
focus on
racial
rancor
could
force
GOP
senators
locked
in tough
campaigns
to
distance
themselves
from
their
party’s
president.
“Defending
the
Confederacy
and
racial
dog
whistles
is not
going to
help win
the
suburbs.
He is
solely
focused
on a
small
part of
his base
when he
should
be
looking
to grow
his
support,”
said
Alex
Conant,
a
Republican
strategist
who
advised
Sen.
Marco
Rubio’s
presidential
bid. “If
Joe
Biden
proposed
tearing
down
Mount
Rushmore,
that
would be
a huge
opening
for
Trump.
But
Biden is
not
doing
that.”
Sen.
John
Thune,
R-S.D.,
said GOP
candidates
“need to
do what
they
need to
do to
win. And
in some
states,
he will
be a
benefit
in some
parts of
the
country.
In other
parts of
the
country,
less
so.”
The
Trump
campaign
dismisses
accusations
of
racism.
“President
Trump’s
Mount
Rushmore
address
was a
defining
speech
highlighting
America’s
highest
ideals
of
freedom
and
individual
liberty,”
said
campaign
spokesman
Ken
Farnaso.
“He both
educated
citizens
on our
shared
history
and
pushed
for a
more
united
front
combating
those
who want
to
create
chaos.”
Democrats
have
charged
that the
president’s
recent
rhetoric
is
consistent
with
Trump’s
history,
including
his call
in the
1980s
for the
death
penalty
for
Black
teenagers
later
exonerated
for the
rape of
a jogger
in
Central
Park and
for
questioning
whether
the
nation’s
first
Black
president,
Barack
Obama,
was born
in the
United
States.
“We
are
beyond
dog
whistles
with
this
president,”
said TJ
Ducklo,
the
Biden
campaign’s
national
press
secretary.
“Donald
Trump
openly
embraces
racist
rhetoric
and
sends
blatant
signals
of
support
for the
causes
of white
supremacists
-- and
he does
it from
the
highest
office
in the
land.”
___
Associated
Press
writer
Alan
Fram in
Washington
contributed
to this
report.
___
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Lemire
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