Okay, okay. My timing was off.
The mashup above shows three instances where Morning Joe said "let's call it Trumpism."
Oh no you don't. I predicted this back in July, folks. It isn't Trumpism. It's the Republican Party. And it has been for far longer than Donald Trump has been running for President.
Trump voters didn't just register to vote this year or fall off a truck into the Republican Party. They voted for Bush, twice. They voted for McCain/Palin. They voted for Romney. And they're tired of losing and being embarrassed by their votes, so embarrassed that they fell for a "Tea Party" rebranding just so they would not have to associate themselves with Bush.
And then the establishment had the nerve to suggest they vote for Bush's brother.
Donald Trump lies about a lot of things, but he is not lying when he says he received more Republican Primary votes than any other candidate in US history. That statistic is skewed by how many Republicans voted "Not Trump," but the fact that the race boiled down to Trump versus not-Trump is not helpful to the "Trumpism" argument. Republican voters selected Trump as their candidate, in state after state after state.
Three things about the latest Morning Joe digging a memory hole for Trump as the Republican nominee:
1. Mighty White of ya. It's no accident that in pushing the Trumpism lie Morning Joe had an all White stage this morning. Yeah, Joy Ann Reid isn't allowed fifty miles from that set. Not today. Put the White guy from "The Hill" and the White guy from "National Review" on, to wring their hands and talk about "the future of the Republican Party" without Trump as their nominee.
But both of them have to admit that their party is full of Trump voters.
What they CAN'T say is that Trump voters are primarily motivated by being White, having a White supremacist America that is just for them. That's what the "Great" means in their slogan. It means White. That's what the Wall with Mexico is for. That's what the anti-Obama fury is. And that's what the Republican Party has become. If you're going to use the term Trumpism, use it directly and unequivocally as shorthand for White Supremacy. Anything else is a lie to yourself, because we Democrats see right through it.
2. "Both Sides" only works if you aren't standing on the Edmund Pettis Bridge. Bob Cusack from "The Hill" comes close, saying that "it helps you in the primary" and "Romney did it in 2012 - went hard right on immigration but it hurts you in the general."
And this another problem that Trump magnified, but did not create, for the Republican Party. One big reason the Republican establishment didn't have a problem with Trump during the primary season is that they expected he would pivot in the general election to a kinder, gentler Trump. That never happened, probably because Trump couldn't be bothered to take advice from anyone in the party establishment. And also because Trump actually
craved the cheers of the party base.
The Republican Party has pretended for years that they could be bigoted in the primary for their base voters and not so bigoted in the general election and no one would notice. Barack Obama and the GOP's visceral and racist reaction to him means that we will always notice from now on.
3. The Beltway media pretends the bigoted Republican base does not exist, year round, for ratings. The purpose of beltway cable news shows like Morning Joe is not to cover breaking news or inform the public or even discuss issues. The purpose is to sell time to big pharma so THEY can inform the public about penis pills and cures for moderate to severe Crohn's Disease.
And you don't appeal to the marketing department of Big Pharma by calling the Republican voters in your audience racist. And Republicans in Washington can't be tainted with "Trumpism," because bigotry is how they got here.
So when Tom Brokaw says we have to "sew the country back together again," that sounds really nice. But you are not going to find anywhere to sew Confederate flag-waving, Pepe the frog tweeting, "build the damn wall" bigots -- who are registered Republicans and who selected Trump as the party's nominee -- into the fabric of an America based on the Constitution of the United States and the universal rights it promises to women and minorities and gays and the rest.
Whoops we have to go to break because hey, moderate to severe plaque psoriasis medication won't sell itself.
PS. In July I also warned:
Watch particularly for the Beltway media to question Hillary Clinton's "mandate" after the election because Trump was such an "outlier." He wasn't. He was what the Republican voter chose to represent them, enthusiastically and overwhelmingly.
Whoops my timing was off again. It wasn't after the election. It's now.
