Anyone who frequents this blog may already be familiar with my fellow contributors here at Crooks and Liars, Fran and Driftglass, and their weekly podcast, The Professional Left, which can be found at either of their blogs, or at ProLeftPod.com.
A common theme of theirs that they often discuss during their podcast as well as in their blog posts is what they call the Republican lifeboat builders, who are desperately trying to do all they can to distance the Republican party from Donald Trump.
Anyone who watches cable news is probably already all too familiar many of with them. Former McCain staffers such as Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace. Never Trumper right wing radio hosts like Charlie Sykes. Neocon anti-Trumpers like Bloody Bill Kristol. Republican strategists like Rick Wilson. Washington Post Romney fan-girl Jennifer Rubin.
All of them have been outspoken critics of Trump, and every one of them is doing their best to build the lifeboats so when the Republican party finally decides they've had enough of Trump, they've got a nice soft spot to land in so they can pretend all of the awful things Trump has been doing were all on him, and have absolutely nothing to do with being a Republican or a conservative.
Which brings us to the latest edition of this phenomenon, neocon and Iraq invasion booster Max Boot, who wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post back in September titled I came to this country 41 years ago. Now I feel like I don’t belong here., and who made an appearance on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS this Sunday to discuss his article.
Boot is rightfully horrified by the treatment he's received and the anti-Semitic venom that's been directed his way since the election of Donald Trump. My question for Mr. Boot would be, where in the hell have you been for the last forty plus years since you moved to the United States? Where was your objection to the race-baiting we saw from the likes of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan? What do you think Fox "news" has been using as a business model since we've been unfortunate enough to have them polluting our airways and taking a big giant crap into the skull of every single American who has been brainwashed by their hate-filled propaganda? Where were you when Fox and right-wing hate talk was going insane and working the Republican base into a frenzy any time anyone in Congress made a move to pass any type of comprehensive immigration reform?
If this is the first time you've felt unwelcome in the United States, welcome to the party. Better late than never I suppose, but you don't get to pretend this is something new for the Republican party. The problem is not Trumpism. It's Republicanism.
Here are some highlights from the interview above via CNN. Max Boot: Trump 'making me feel like a foreigner' in my own country:
Author and foreign policy analyst Max Boot feels President Donald Trump is making him feel like a "foreigner" in his own country.
"He's making me feel like an outsider, a Russian, a Jew, an immigrant," Boot told CNN's Fareed Zakaria.
"Anything but kind of a normal mainstream American, because of the way that he is dividing us and balkanizing us and seems to be catering to this white nationalist agenda."
Boot, an American citizen who emigrated from Russia to the Unites States at the age of 6, said he's always considered America his "very own country" until now.
"That's very much the message I'm getting from Trump, you know, when he is refusing to unequivocally condemn the white supremacists in Charlottesville, when he's pardoning the racist former sheriff, Joe Arpaio, and when he's deporting, potentially, 800,000 Dreamers from this country, it feels like there is an 'us' and a 'them.' And I'm not part of the 'us' anymore, somehow, even though I always thought I was."
"I feel very American. I feel this is the only country I've ever known" he added. [...]
"Simply because I'm opposing Donald Trump, I'm getting deluged with anti-Semitic filth online and in Twitter and email and so forth."
"It feels like Trump has given a license for these people to come out of the woodwork and to express their views more openly in a way that they did not do before."
