Trump Goes Full-Bore White Supremacist at Mount Rushmore

This is just jaw-dropping:

Trump put his strategy to resuscitate his troubled reelection campaign by galvanizing white supporters on display Friday night under the chiseled granite gaze of four past presidents memorialized in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He celebrated Independence Day with a dystopian speech in which he excoriated racial justice protesters as “evil” representatives of a “new far-left fascism” whose ultimate goal is “the end of America.”

“Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children,” Trump said to boos from a packed crowd of supporters. “Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.”

The president literally went to one of America's most iconic national monument's on the Fourth of July to preach white supremacy to his followers.

Now, it's understandable that he wants to rally his base, since he has literally no policy accomplishments to point to, alongside a devastating list of failures.  Off the top of my head, there's family separation, failure to build his racist and counterproductive wall, not one but two failed racist Muslim bans, counterproductive tariffs, a nuclear Iran, a nuclear North Korea, a pandemic out of control, impeachment, almost-certain collusion with a despot who puts bounties on American troops, and corruption as far as the eye can see.  With that kind of track record, he's right to conclude that even a judiciary packed with his death cult acolytes, a corrupt Attorney General and widespread voter suppression won't help him win re-election.

With all of this working against him, it's understandable that he wants to give his followers what they want.  Unfortunately, what they want is not only on the wrong side of history, but on the wrong side of popular opinion as well.

And let's never forget, Trump isn't the problem, he's the symptom:

On Capitol Hill, some Republicans fret — mostly privately, to avoid his wrath — that Trump’s fixation on racial and other cultural issues leaves their party running against the currents of change. Coupled with the coronavirus pandemic and related economic crisis, these Republicans fear he is not only seriously impairing his reelection chances but also jeopardizing the GOP Senate majority and its strength in the House.

“The Senate incumbent candidates are not taking the bait and are staying as far away from this as they can,” said Scott Reed, a veteran Republican operative and chief strategist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has invested heavily in keeping GOP control of the Senate. “The problem is this is no longer just Trump’s Twitter feed. It’s expanded to the podium, and that makes it more and more difficult for these campaigns.”

Oh the poor dears, fretting privately.  If Republicans actually want their party to stand for something other than open, malignant white supremacy, these tender blossoms need to summon the courage to at least SAY SO, if not denounce Trump outright.  But clearly, their hope is that if they remain silent, voters won't see them as the enablers they are.

They don't care about what's right.  They only care about winning re-election.

But we're smarter than that, aren't we?  We all know that to remain silent in the face of oppression is to side with the oppressor, don't we?

We're not going to let them continue to sit in Congress, and sanctimoniously lecture us about 'character', are we?