According to a well-reported story in both the Washington Post and the Star Tribune, branding expert Donald Trump is unhappy, ne’ furious (!) about a label he’s having a tricky time unsticking, that he’s a racist.
As the campaign takes shape about 15 months before voters render a verdict, Trump’s Democratic challengers are marking him a racist, and a few have gone so far as to designate him a white supremacist.
Throughout his career, Trump has recoiled from being called the r-word.
Recoiled?
I actually do not fancy myself a branding expert, but this seems straight forward. and I do have some branding advice, should Trump be serious.
“Stop being a fking racist!”
That ought to help.
For them to throw out the race word again — racist, racist, racist,” Trump told reporters Friday as he left the White House for a week at his private New Jersey golf club. “They call anybody a racist when they run out of cards.”
No. Actually we don’t call “anybody” a racist, with or without cards. (What cards, by the way? Never mind. We are not going to start trying to make sense of his sentence-like utterings.)
Has anyone ever called Nancy Pelosi a racist? No. So we can throw out the “everybody” right there. Let’s actually take some risks here, did anyone really call Mitt Romney a racist? An elitist who hated all poor people, yes! Mitt got nailed with that one, bulls-eye. But racist? I don’t recall, and I kind of doubt it. Mitt currently hates Trump, he just has trouble hiding it. It must be based on something.
Moving on, please stop saying “Go back to …” when referring to three Americans of color who were born here, and one who simply carried out the American dream and certainly did “find a better life.” Legally! That would be a great start!
Stop calling areas that are largely populated by people of color “rat infested.” Relatively straightforward.
Start following the examples set by people who are notorious for not being racists. That’s easy! Everyone from Lebron James to little ole white-boy me! Examples are everywhere.
I realize this hits you right in the heart, because we’ve rarely heard you’re furious about anything. I can see how it hurts your “brand.”
Trouble is, I think in your heart, you actually don’t care about being a racist. You are just bothered that people are on to you, which, in your case, always sucks.
Breathe it in, it is who you are.
And you don’t have a heart anyway.
****
Peace, y’all
Jason
First, he has a heart? Second, guess I’ve got an excuse to warm up that branding iron.
There is a mixed signal in there, yes we referenced a heart, and then I tried to end the piece in a cold fact, “no heart.” Maybe it worked, maybe not. Who cares! The issue is pretty easy, amirite?
Ah, no big, Jason. I probably just missed it when I read it the first time. More a bad joke on my part.
‘Trump the Rascist’ DOES have a certain ring, doesn’t it?
I prefer Trump the Idiot but that’s me.
And Dimwit Donny was my favorite, but ‘The Rascist’ has a certain cut through.
Should be spelled ‘racist’, sorry.
I seem to recall that when writing the majority opinion that gutted the Voting Rights Act it was no less than the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court who stated (in the opinion itself) “The way to end discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
IOW he said it was no big deal and that folks should simply not discriminate and all of a sudden it would stop. Easy peasy and so on and so forth.
So we have the Federalist Society approved Chief Justice as an authority to cite to the Prez – just tell him the way to stop being called a racist is to stop being a racist!
Of course the real world, and real racists who engage in discrimination every day find it to be just a wee bit more complicated than that. And for a hard core racist like Trump well hell, it’s part of his DNA. Stopping being a racist and promoting racist policies would for him be like cutting off his dick and balls with a rusted top of a tin can. Not gonna happen. He’d also have to apologize and we all know how Trump feels about apologizing – itt would be like admitting his (cough cough) hands are small. Again that ain’t about to happen.
Trump has said and done racist things all his life because he is a racist, raised to be one by a racist father and he’s avoided any real consequences for it. Some legal issues along the way have been “handled” in a way that didn’t stop him from continuing to be and act like a racist and making a shitload of money – even if he kept squandering it.
His “brand” means more to him that I think most people realize. And it’s been taking a hit. People are literally demanding those giant letters spelling out his last name be taken off their buildings and it actually keeps happening. Revenue at many of his properties has gone down not just here but around the world and if foreign governments weren’t propping up his DC hotel to gain favor it would be headed down the tubes by now. His beloved Mar A Lago would be in trouble too. The country is changing and while the old GOP dog whistle stuff would have continued to work and would have for him too he just can’t help himself and keeps doing the one thing he can’t do – letting his racist flag fly. That DOES sometimes come with consequences in the business world & Trump isn’t the “bigly” awesome businessman he pretends to be in the first place.
Worse (for him) he’s actually publicly LOSING at something which in this case is a branding war. He’s getting a big R for RACIST branded into his forehead only unlike Charlie Manson’s swastika Trump doesn’t want his own special brand there for all to see. One of the few things Trump knows something about is branding and he can see he’s losing this battle and that it will cost him money he can’t afford to lose.
It’s out there now and even journalists with national reach are saying it. He can’t stuff the shit back into the goose, especially given his pathological need to soak up the love at his rallies and the only way he can get THAT is by letting his racist flag fly. Take away all that red meat he throws out at his rallies and it just won’t be the same and he knows it.
He made his pile of shit and now he’s going to have to wallow in it. If I were him I’d be worried about what the kids might be thinking. Their own lifestyles are on the line too and without ole dad’s brand being all shiny and (fake) golden they are well and truly fucked. I have a feeling Trump “family” gatherings will (if they haven’t already) taken on the vibe of a bunch of drug cartel members realizing the head of the enterprise is vulnerable – and looking for a way to take out both the boss and any competitor who might challenge them for the top spot.
I know exactly what opinion you’re referencing, John Roberts, in striking down major parts of the voting rights act. Next time you hear a Republican complain about “activist” judges, just note that the VRA had just 8 years earlier been re-upped by a 98-0 vote in the Senate. It took only 8 years for the SCOTUS to decide it was inconvenient and not needed. Traditionalists like Roberts whined about the gay marriage case bc “Who are we to determine the law when state legislatures are doing the job as we speak” – and yet on THAT case, they would speak over a unanimous senate. Of course, you know what happened in-between? The voter ID, and Republican plan to suppress votes again with all their energy. That was the only difference.
Basically the Federalist Society types (and all five Republican appointees on SCOTUS were active in building that group) who wax poetic about the plain text of the Constitution and/or dabble in original intent by citing the Federalist Papers (another bit of bullshit) only adhere to the ideals of the founding fathers when it suits them. I got the feeling Scalia was particularly hypocritical on this although he claimed to scorn the Original Intent philosophy.
I long ago reacted to conservative complaints about “activist judges” by saying conservatives were just fine with activist judges who happened to be conservative. And in fact DEMANDED conservative judges be the very “activist judges” they hated if they perceived a liberal judge as being.
The republicans are dragging America into the gutter.
In NYC social circles that Trump used to frequent–courting, flattering, and fawning for acceptance–their members can do terrible things (SEE: Epstein, etc.) without losing status, but the one thing nobody gets away with is being called out as racist. Kiss of death. In the case of the idiot traffic cone currently occupying the Oval Office, it wasn’t like he was ever more than merely tolerated in NYC society anyway, and that was before he became the most loathsome human being in the Western Hemisphere. Sad!
Awesome comment. That is dead on.
It’s a great post
We all know this nimrod. We sat next to him in high school, and believed we’d never be forced to do that again. Surprise.
tRump wants his base to know he’s racist. Hell, that’s why they voted for him.
He’s just too stupid to know how to dog-whistle it so he gets called out.
BTW, Mittens is a Mormon. Didn’t they stop discriminating against African-Americans just this century?