“Don’t Believe Him Anymore, He’s Telling the Truth: the Paradox Of Trump’s Lies and Racist Words and Actions

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Over the weekend in a series of tweets targeting female Democratic Party members of Congress, President Trump rekindled the subject of his racist and White Nationalist views, which he began the very day that he announced his candidacy for President. In his tweets he challenged their citizenship and told them that they should go home and fix the countries they came from. His tone was similar to when he referred to other countries as shit hole countries. The next day he doubled down on it and so did many of his Congressional, right wing media, and members of his White, Evangelical Christian base.

Likewise, over his first two and a half years the President has told over 8,000 direct lies or distortions of the truth, and regularly charges his critics with lying, fake news, or even treason. Back in 2015 I said that I believed that he was a racist, and I compared his words to those of the racist Know Nothings Of the 1830s to 1860s in a blog article back then.

Those words cost me friends, but I think that the President’s every tweet, word, and policy, as well as his actions have proven me right; from his announcement, to Charlottesville, to his immigration policies, to his “shit hole countries” remarks, to his tweets over the weekend, and remarks Monday. They were all bloody red meat which his followers swallowed hook line and sinker, especially White Evangelical Protestants who form a large part of his base.

The President’s racism is not not a new thing. In the 1990s when five black youths were falsely accused, charged and later acquitted of raping a woman jogger in New York’s Central Park, Trump took out newspaper adds urging their conviction and the use of the death penalty. One of his earliest ventures in the New York Real Estate market was in 1973  in which the Justice Department showed that he discriminated against minorities applying to live in his apartments. Trump settled out of court.

The President’s past anti-Semitic comments wreaked of Nazi comments in the Third Reich. His continued words and policies against non-White Christian immigrants before he was elected and since his election show all the evidence that he is an out and out racist. I would like to believe that such could not be true, but every action of his demonstrates it. The old saying that if it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck is most appropriate when dealing with the words, actions, tweets, and policies of this President, his administration, and his Party. Every day I see Republicans tweeting, writing, or saying that this is all President Obama’s fault, which is absolute bullshit.

If you asked me what the President could do to change my mind I would answer the following:

Stop lying. However, this is not possible because he honestly believes everything he says. He lies so much that he cannot tell truth from a lie. Most people understand when they are lying, even when they lie to protect someone from harm, but Trump cannot tell the difference. It’s habitual, and pathological, and his Party, supporters, and media accomplices let it happen. He was all in on the birther  conspiracy theories about President Obama, Hell, even the leaders of the Democrat controlled House of Representatives, and their so-called moderates struggle with accusing him of being a racist.

Second, the President could stop dividing Americans based on race or disagreement with his racial policies. He could easily stop his racist rants on Twitter or at his rallies if he did not personally believe them and revel in the adoration of his followers who pick up his chants.

As a historian it almost feels like the things I studied about the anti-immigrant Know Nothings, the ante-Bellum Slave Power South, Jim Crow, the treatment of almost every ethnic group which has ever arrived in the United States, to include the Irish, Germans, Italians, Poles, other Eastern Europeans, Arabs, Jews, Asians, including the internment of Japanese American citizens in World War Two, the treatment of others including Cubans, Haitians, and others fleeing political persecution or natural disasters. Please let’s not forget what how we treated the inhabitants of the country we took over in regard to Native Americans, Mexicans, and even the French.

Sure, we do have our better angels, but the history Of the United States demonstrates a clear, consistent, and unending history or racism, hatred of immigrants, especially those of darker skin, or non-Christian religions. Sadly, that racism is rising exponentially, in both extremist groups and in the mainstream of the GOP and White America. I can hardly believe what I am seeing. It reminds me of the very racist tenor of the busing debate in my home town back in 1974-75.

As far as the lying, I am reminded of the words of Adolf Hitler’s Finance Minister, Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk noted: “He wasn’t honest with his most intimate confidants…. In my opinion, he was so thoroughly untruthful that he could no longer recognize the difference between truth and lies. 

This very evening at one of his rallies Trump supporters began to chant “Send her back” in relation to U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, Democrat from Minnesota, a naturalized citizen whose parents fled war torn Somalia in the early 1990s. It sounded like a Nazi rally. Trust me, I have watched and listened to plenty of Nazi propaganda and seen just how the President uses the same type of language and gestures to goad his supporters into such behavior.

So my friends I will leave you with that to ponder. I think that the quote fits, and if he is not turned out of office that he will destroy the laws and institutions that made this country great.

And finally, this I hate to say, if after all of this someone still supports the President, they are most likely racist, and White Nationalist. Trump appeals not to the better angels of our nature, but the demonic nature, that which despises that Sacred Secular Scripture Of the Declaration “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights…” 

White Nationalists and Know Nothings hate those words and seek to limit them to themselves, as it appears that the President does. I don’t know them man, but his words and actions, past and current lead me to believe that there is no other answer to the paradox of Donald Trump.

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+