Laura Ingraham repeatedly took racial swipes at African American A. Scott Bolden for challenging her contention that Donald Trump has been terrific for black people. But when Bolden called Trump a racist, she really came unglued.
Ingraham opened her show with advice to Trump on how to boost his popularity. (Trump is currently the least popular occupier of the Oval Office in the history of polling.) Oddly, she never got to discussing the imminent passage of Trump's tax cut bill.
INGRAHAM: You’ve accomplished so much this year [but] more voters can and will be on your side with maybe just a few tweaks, a few modest changes. Perhaps the time has come to put aside a few of the Twitter battles. I like the tweets but not all of them. And now it’s time to humanize the agenda you’ve been fighting for.
She cited former Presidents Obama and Clinton as “masterful emoters” but “often no action.” After offering a few thoughts as to how First Fox Fan Trump could do both, Ingraham invited a panel to further the discussion.
I credit Ingraham for putting together a four-person panel with two real liberals. But the path to you-know-where is paved with good intentions. It wasn’t long before Ingraham reached the limit of her tolerance for Trump criticism and went off the rails.
It started with guest A. Scott Bolden’s refusal to agree that Trump deserves more credit from African Americans.
BOLDEN: He [Trump] doesn’t have a message for them. He’s offensive to them. He’s done nothing for them. He talked about an urban agenda? What urban agenda?
INGRAHAM: What’s your urban agenda? Handouts?
BOLDEN: No, it’s not handouts.
INGRAHAM: Then what is it, an economy that creates jobs?
BOLDEN: I want full employment, job training –
INGRAHAM: Well, that’s what we’re getting. Do you want more illegal immigrants in the community? … Do you want MS-13 in your community?
BOLDEN: No, I don’t, and I don’t want gangs in my community and I don’t want white racists in my community, either.
INGRAHAM: So Donald Trump’s a racist? You back on that?
INGRAHAM: Oh, absolutely.
INGRAHAM: That’s it! We just won the argument.
I lost count of all the insulting and/or condescending things Ingraham said or implied in that brief exchange. But basically, she was suggesting that Bolden was either too stupid, too much of a race hustler or too much of a moocher – or all three – to acknowledge how appreciative he should be to Trump.
Bolden cited Trump's infamous claim that there had been “very fine people” among the white nationalists and Ku Klux Klan demonstrating in Charlottesville and some “bad” people among the anti-racist protesters.
“White nationalists and Ku Klux Klan are good people and bad people,” Bolden paraphrased.
Ingraham called that “so sad for this country” (as Bolden interrupted to say, “I just told the truth”). She insisted, “Donald Trump in one year has done more for the African American standard of living than any president in my lifetime! … Right now, the response to that is, Donald Trump has to be a racist.”
Ingraham was lucky that Bolden didn’t cite any of the other many, many instances of Trump racism: His bogus birtherism, his Twitter attacks on African Americans, and his bigoted attack on Gold Star parents, Khizr and Ghazala Khan being some of the most memorable.
As Paul Waldman pointed out,Trump sometimes characterizes his black targets as “ungrateful.” “In case you haven’t been following along, ‘ungrateful’ is the new ‘uppity,’” Waldman noted.
Ingraham continued by saying that things have “gotten better” in the black community for “entrepreneurs, for mothers who want to send their schools [sic] to other than failing public schools.” She added snidely, “If school choice and economic opportunity are not emancipators in the inner city, I don’t know what is.”
In other words, like Trump, Ingraham was suggesting that Bolden was just not grateful enough to Dear Leader Trump.
Originally published at Newshounds.us
