1. I’ve been thinking a lot about how Trump talks about Black people: how terrible Black communities have, and how he is their savior.
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2. The point of this, as many others have said, is not to appeal to Black people themselves; rather, it is to appeal to white people who want to be convinced that support for Trump isn’t racist.
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3. That is, when Trumps about African Americans, he is talking to whites to avoid being seen by whites as a racist.
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4. His and Pompeo’s discussions of Jews and of Israel this week have been the same: talking about Jews to gentiles to convince gentiles that supporting Trump isn’t supporting antisemitism.
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5. In both cases, he radically flattens and misunderstands a minority community, insulting the very group he is pretending to be supporting. But that’s because the audience isn’t those minors groups at all, but rather the white, Christian majority.
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6. It seems to me that any analysis that doesn’t start there misunderstands Trump’s audience and thus his purpose, and so is necessarily wrong.
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7. The point is that these professions of support are, in fact, their opposite: they are excusing the actual white supremacy, actual antisemitism, of Trump and his cronies.
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8. And so Jews and Jewish organizations that lend credence to Trump’s claim of helping (saving!) the Jews are not just dupes but traitors. (The same may be true for Black organizations, but it’s not my place to say.)
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There have been significantly fewer black organizations who have given cover to Trump. Only one I can think of are presidents of HBCU who met with him.
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