January 11, 2018

I really just wanted to put the picture up on the site because it says more than I ever could, but Cuomo's comments in the segment ahead of the "debate" between Symone Sanders and Jack Kingston (which I did not clip) were so worth it that I went ahead and clipped it for you.

The transcript follows:

"We just have to be very clear about what's going on in the White House, because the president is just showing you who he is. This is who he is, okay?"

"We sum it up in a word, okay? (Writes "Shithole" on white board) There it is. This is the gift that he decided to give the American people."

Bravo, Chris, for this.

"It's a bad word, my kids are watching right now, I don't want to teach my kids and your kids a bad word, our president decided to make that choice."

And also this:

"Here's the mistake, hiding from the word, not speaking it, not talking about it because it's too ugly. Well, this is just how he is. He was voted in, so it's okay, it's not okay. It is who he is, it wasn't a fit of pique. It wasn't a slip of the tongue, how do we know? He's given us the same impression of how he feels every chance he has."

"Facts. Times, last summer, in another immigration meeting, the president said Haitians all have AIDS. And immigrants from Nigeria would never go back to their huts after seeing the United States. As a candidate, Mr. Trump called Mexicans rapists and insulted an American-born judge of Mexican descent. Each time you hear one of these, we laugh it off, it's always been a mistake. Who can forget when he infamously equated white supremacists with the people protesting against them last August in Charlottesville, Virginia."

TRUMP: I think there's blame on both sides. You also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.

"On both sides, remember that? It was never two sides to that. You never equate anything with white supremacy and hate. We don't do that in this country. The president did. This is who he is."

"And it is no small irony that Oprah does come to mind for me. Do you remember what Oprah said when she was asked the greatest lesson, the greatest advice she ever got. She quoted now deceased Maya Angelou. Angelou, when someone shows you who they are, believe them. "

"The question is, does it make it okay if the president said this and his base would agree?"

That was the lead-in to the predictably acrimonious debate between Trump apologist Jack Kingston and African-American commentator Symone Sanders. I had no heart for that. It's not okay if his base agrees. His base, such as it is, agrees with him as a matter of course. The idea here is to shrink that attitude into oblivion, not enable it.

So who cares if his base agrees? That just means a small sliver of old white Fox News viewers shake their collective fists at the TV and comfort their anxieties by knowing they've got a fellow bigot in the White House to agree with them.

We know who he is. Now we need to marginalize him. Over and over and over again.

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