Everyone is in a tizzy this week because Donald Trump wrote racist tweets. The story is all over every type of media, from TV news to Twitter to Facebook to news media websites, and more. However, this has to be one of the biggest non-news events of the year. Trump already has a well-known history of public racism dating back at least to the 1970s with housing discrimination, continuing through the 1980s and beyond with the Central Park Five case, and which was on full display in Trump’s 2015 presidential campaign announcement speech, where he came out of the gate attacking immigrants from Mexico and Central America.
If you’re still wondering why Trump deliberately creates distractions with shiny objects regarding immigration and race, here are a few things that Trump has been distracting us from while the whole country obsesses over his racist tweets:
Jeffrey Epstein — The story isn’t just that Jeffrey Epstein recently was arrested for sex trafficking of minors, or that Epstein is a long-time friend of Donald Trump. Rather, the story is that Donald Trump has been accused of raping and sexually assaulting numerous girls and women, including raping a 13 year-old girl together with Jeffrey Epstein, and then hiring Alex Acosta, the man who let Epstein off the hook, as America’s Secretary of Labor (Acosta recently resigned in the face of the burgeoning Epstein scandal).
Asylum — The Trump administration announced a new rule this week, aimed at cutting off legal claims of asylum by immigrants who arrive at the U.S./Mexico border from Central America. Trump’s rule upends over 100 years of U.S. history, and indeed, the very symbol of Lady Liberty. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit in federal court yesterday, challenging Trump’s new asylum rule.
Planned Parenthood — The Trump administration this week also declared that it will immediately begin enforcing a months-old “gag rule” against referring women to clinics that perform legal abortions, as well as the requirement that such facilities separate their finances between abortion and other services. These rules are seen as an attack on Planned Parenthood in particular, and are viewed as actions that the conservative religious base of the Republican Party love.
Trump/Russia — If there is anything that Donald Trump repeatedly wants to knock out of the headlines, it’s his original sin of asking for Russia’s help in the 2016 elections, accepting Russia’s assistance in the form of illegal hacking and cyber attacks on the U.S., and then, with Republicans such as Republican U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, blocking efforts to prevent more such attacks in the future. Likewise, Trump wants to distract us from focusing on Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is due to testify before the U.S. House of Representatives about Russia’s attacks and the resulting Trump/Russia conspiracy very soon.
As we have learned long ago, when it comes to politicians, don’t just read their lips, but also watch their hips, meaning the actions they take while they try to distract us with the Republican Culture War.
