June 20, 2020

Trump Reboots His Campaign With Some Racist Crap

Sue Ogrocki/AP

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The man who kicked off his first presidential campaign with racism about Mexicans rebooted his second one on Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with a racist fantasia to explain why the police shouldn’t be defunded.  

At his first rally since the coronavirus shutdown—originally scheduled for Juneteenth but moved on the counsel of unnamed Black “friends” of Donald Trump—the president asked the crowd to imagine a “tough hombre” breaking the “window of a young woman” at 1 a.m.. Her husband, “a traveling salesman or whatever he may do,” is away.

“And you call 9-1-1,” Trump said, “and they say, ‘I’m sorry, this number is no longer working,'” apparently because emergency dispatch centers have also been defunded in this copless dystopia. Having thus traded Kathryn Steinle for a more generalized racist panic scenario, Trump rounded into his conclusion: “If you want to save that beautiful heritage of ours—we have a great heritage, we’re a great country—you are so lucky I’m president, that’s all I can tell you.” 

Later he maundered on about “rioters, looters, and criminal aliens” of “Joe Biden’s America,” counterposing them against “law-abiding citizens.”

Wait, you want more? He also said that COVID-19 could be called “Kung-Flu.”

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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