This "R" Stands for More than "Reprehensible"

He's not insane but if Jim Steinman was right that "two out of three ain't bad," three out of four is quite good.

There’s no doubt Biden is old and slow but Trump is insane; a rambling, incoherent, buffoon. Yet I don’t think I have heard you, Piers, asking whether ‘Republicans can let this go on’? https://t.co/bHREROlwhE

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) June 16, 2024

And don't forget racist. At a rally in Durham, New Hampshire on December 16, 2023

“They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump told the crowd at a rally in New Hampshire. “That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”

Trump then repeated the use of “poisoning” in a post on his social media website Truth Social, saying overnight in an all-caps post, that “illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation. They’re coming from prisons, from mental institutions — from all over the world.”

On CNN the following morning, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie condemned Trump and his statement, maintaining "what he's doing is dog-whistle to Americans."

This, however, was no dog-whistle. As Merriam-Webster notes, a dog whistle is "a coded message communicated through words or phrases commonly understood by a particular group of people but not by others."  Unlike some of Donald Trump's assertions or allegations, frequent lies and occasional facts, this was not meant only for his rabid followers and disciples.  "Poisoning the blood of our country" can be interpreted only one way. It is nativism and ugly, yet something else and worse. It is sheer, unadulterated racism.

As a claim that individuals are inferior by virtue of "blood," it can be interpreted in no other way, and it is on tape (video). Donald Trump obviously is prone to rambling, incoherence, and is a buffoon. But he is something else, additionally. 

Perhaps it is the overuse of the accusation of "racism" that has desensitized us to the "racist" label. For whatever reason, Trump's remarks in New Hampshire were a story for only a few days before dying. However, if the Democratic Party is unable or unwilling to remind repeatedly immigrants and their sons and daughters that the Republican nominee for President is a race and that his supporters in high places agree with him, it is political malpractice.

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