Donald Trump Is a Racist. We Need to Call it Out. Stuart Stevens [View all]

Donald Trump has asked for a review of Smithsonian exhibitions and artifacts to eliminate items that remind us how bad slavery was. Donald Trump is a racist.

He’s also a fascist.

These are, clearly, very strong words, and it’s important to be careful with language, because if you use it too loosely, it loses its meaning. But after decades of evidence — the dog whistles, the calls for innocent black men to be executed, the bizarre fixation on the Confederacy, his alliance with known Nazis and White Christian Nationalists — saying these things, that Donald Trump is a fascist, that he is a racist, should be the least controversial thing to say about him.

Remember the knots the mainstream media tied themselves into back in ‘16 and ‘17 over whether or not to call him a liar? He lies. He’s a liar.

For seven months, he’s rounded up brown people for deportation, imprisonment, or total disappearance. He’s attempting to convince his base that slavery wasn’t so bad, after all. Some in his orbit are echoing this sentiment, going so far as to claim we shouldn’t actually blame white people for slavery.

He doesn’t like Black or brown people. Nearly every action is motivated by that dislike. Every breath he takes is flush with a fear and hatred of people who are not white.

What would you call that?

And now he’s trying to cleanse our historical institutions. He’s creating a police force to target all of us, but black and brown people particularly. He ignores courts. He is rigging elections. He’s plastered the White House (and the internet) with images of himself.

What would you call that?

Donald Trump is a fascist, and he’s a racist.

Saying it won’t make it go away. But we can’t hide from it anymore, either.