Three months ago,
Donald Trump posted a video online depicting
former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes. He later took the video down but refused to apologize for it.
Five months ago, Trump confirmed something he had long denied. In his first term,
reports emerged that during a 2018 White House meeting with senators, Trump had referred to Haiti and African nations as “s–––hole countries.” When those comments were first reported, Trump denied he ever used that language.
But then a few months ago, he bragged, proudly, during a speech in Pennsylvania,
that he had used that term — and that he still believed it.
As is clear from the repeated daily news cycle, Trump and his administration have been
bad at everything they have set their mind to. They’re terrible in the
courts. They’re terrible in the court of public opinion. They’re terrible at the
technocratic, practical stuff a government is supposed to do. They’re terrible at
war and diplomacy. They’re bad at what they’re trying to do. Simply put, they’re not great.
But on race, on the treatment of African Americans, even being
terrible at what they’re doing has still proved disastrous for the country. It’s not just posturing and messaging that validates and excites the worst bigots in the country (though it’s that too), but we’re now about 16 months into a concerted and intense targeting of Black Americans by the Trump administration.
He immediately started firing or trying to force out some of the highest-profile Black public officials in the government, seemingly regardless of any other criteria, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen.
Charles “CQ” Brown Jr.; the librarian of Congress,
Carla Hayden;
Gwynne Wilcox, an attorney who served on the National Labor Relations Board;
Robert Primus, a member of the Surface Transportation Board;
Alvin Brown, who served on the National Transportation Safety Board;
Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics;
Willie Phillips, head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and
Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
When Trump and his top political donor,
Elon Musk, then started just getting rid of huge swaths of the federal government, to disastrous effect, the biggest cuts targeted agencies that employed a disproportionate number of Black employees.
It should read, The Republican Party is waging war on Black America.
The Supreme Court has joined in as well and one of the main proponents is a so-called black man sitting on the bench.
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