The Darker Voices from Trump’s America
That Trump has captured the attention of a segment of America is indisputable. The general observations and polls indicate it is primarily white, working class, and those with little advanced education. The broad characterizations are on-par with the majority of the voting base for the Republican Party over the last few election cycles.
Trump has also boasted about driving out new voters, those who never voted in previous elections, because there was either no one who represented them, or spoke to them directly. It’s telling that one of the strongest lines in Trump’s nomination speech at the RNC was a simple declaration: “I am your voice.”
But what about the voices of his supporters? There has been plenty of lampooning on late night talk shows and online of the stereotypes of Trump fans, but very rarely besides interview sound bites do we hear from them.
Until last week when The New York Times posted a 3 minute long video. “Unfiltered Voices From Donald Trump’s Crowds,” is a collection of moments from a year’s worth of campaign events covered by NYT reporters. As the simple white text at the beginning of the video states, “This video includes vulgarities and racial and ethnic slurs.” Well, that’s putting it lightly.
(It should be worth noting, so does the rest of this post.)
‘Fuck those dirty beaners!” when Trump mentions the great, beautiful wall he will build.
‘Fuck political correctness!”
“Fuck Islam. Fuck ‘em!” As one Trump fan walks past this shouting supporter, he says “Thank you for not taking the shirt off,” in reference to the supporter’s Fuck Islam shirt. Other supporters line up to take selfies with him and his t-shirt.
“Sieg heil.”
“Fuck that n*gger,” when Trump mentions President Obama.
Note: this is just 90 seconds into the video
“Get out of here, you fag!,” someone shouters to a protester being escorted out.
“Ignorance and immigrants. They mix together. Woooo!” You don’t say…
“Hillary Clinton needs to get her ass spanked,” says a Southern drawl off camera.
“Hang the bitch!”
“Kill her!”
All Trump says in the video in regards to these comments, “This is a movement like people have never seen before.”
In explaining its decision to publish this video, David M. Halbfinger, the New York Times’ Presidential Campaign Editor, stated: “Politics at its best can be inspiring. But many in Mr. Trump’s audiences were being inspired to express themselves in hateful, coarse, profane, obscene or just plain nasty ways.”
The counterpoint defense of this video is to say that this is just a very small vocal minority of Trump supporters and they do not represent the overall constituent base. That the mainstream media is trying to portray Trump supporters as racist, ignorant, and uneducated. Or that the video only captures these negative moments to paint a broader picture by association. Or that people say things in Clinton rallies too, but no one ever says brings that up.
Perhaps. But it is hard to imagine that a candidate who encouraged people to attack protesters, commented about the good ol’ days when you could hit somebody with no punishment, and even pledged to cover the legal fees of any supporter who assaulted a protester, doesn’t take some small measure of satisfaction in hearing his “passionate” supporters say these things.
And yes, while it is impossible to hear everything that is shouted out loud during a rally, there has yet to be any time when Trump has stopped or paused his comments to issue any type of rebuke or rejection of some of the things that were being shouted out loud.
The starkest comparison came in the 2008 election between John McCain and Barack Obama. During a McCain town hall meeting in Minnesota, a woman in the audience began her comments with, “I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him and he’s not, he’s not uh — he’s an Arab.” McCain took the microphone back from her to stop the rant. “No ma’am,” he said, “He’s a decent family man [and] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign’s all about. He’s not [an Arab].” Those comments earned him boos from the crowd.
He later said, to supporters who were arguing he wasn’t fighting hard enough against his Democratic candidate, “We want to fight, and I will fight. But I will be respectful. I admire Sen. Obama and his accomplishments, and I will respect him.” Those comments also received boos.
I remember, 8 years ago, when that first was reported. I was surprised with how quickly McCain had ditched the ‘Maverick” persona he was known for and retorted to some of the campaigning tactics he had done once he started slipping in the polls. But that moment stood out for me, because it was a rare instance of a candidate stopping and challenging a supporter in such a public venue. While I disagreed with McCain overall, that was a moment that made me pause and at least respect what he did, knowing it would result in an unfavorable response from him base. For at least that moment, principles trumped politics.
Where’s the similar response from Trump? I doubt we will get one from a candidate who prides himself on giving one world nicknames to all of his opponents. I doubt Trump will stand up and stop a supporter from insulting Hillary when the strongest rallying chant from the audience at the RNC wasn’t “USA, USA,” or “Trump, Trump, Trump,” but rather, “Lock her up!”
Hopefully I’m proven correct and at some point there will be a pause, and a rebuke of some of these extreme things shouted at a Trump rally. Because even if someone has the right to shout such things out loud, that does not make those words right themselves.
