Related articles
Ex-presidential niece Mary Trump attacked the character of ex-president Donald Trump’s fans, calling them “White supremacists, Christian nationalists, misogynists, and anti-Semites.”
Mary Trump — host of The Mary Trump Show podcast and a strident Trump critic — was a guest on a recent edition of the MeidasTouch Show, during which she and host Ken Harbaugh talked about the CNN Town Hall, zeroing in on the crowd and what it represents about Trump’s supporters more broadly:
KEN HARBAUGH: My underlying fear here is less of Donald Trump as an individual than of the tens of millions of followers who actually gravitate to that message. And as you said, it doesn’t require a majority of Americans. The Republicans are being very strategic in how to create and solidify a system that will allow them to maintain power with a minority of votes. And you saw the response of that crowd.
And I think it is the tip of the iceberg. It is just a harbinger of what’s going to play out in these swing states. And it’s you know, again, it’s not the tens of millions of voters in California, in New York and most of the country. It’s in a handful of swing states. And too many of them love that message. So seeing him for who he is, it’s going to bring out the worst side of us. And that’s something you speak about in the book as well. This president giving America permission to indulge its worst instincts.
MARY TRUMP: Yeah. And you said, at the very beginning of the show, you mentioned voter suppression, and that is why the Electoral College makes this so dangerous. If there were no Electoral College, we wouldn’t even have to have this. Well, we would have to have this conversation because the developments are so dangerous. But we wouldn’t be worried about the election. That’s for sure. Not in the way. I mean, I, we’re white-knuckling this right now. And the Republicans know that they only have to focus on three states. And again, to those who are of to those people who support the Electoral College. Do you think that’s democracy when candidates literally can ignore 47 of the 50 states? It’s just absolutely absurd.
But that’s why they have three tools at their disposal. They have gerrymandering. They have voter subversion. And thanks to Donald, who really can take credit for very little, but he can take credit for this one. We have voter subversion, which is the idea that the election results are illegitimate if your candidate doesn’t win. And that’s only happening on the right side. Or on the right, I should say.
So if you put on top of that, the media’s willingness to normalize Donald… Like to treat him as if he’s a normal candidate, not somebody who was impeached twice, who incited, planned and incited an insurrection, and who perpetuated the big lie and continues to perpetuate the big lie. And that’s leaving aside Georgia, that’s leaving aside sexual assault and all of the other many crimes he committed and allegedly committed.
Then, when they’re also normalizing his followers. That’s when we get into real trouble because, as you say… There’s nothing normal about their relationship to their candidate, their support for their candidate, the things about him they support.
You know, I’ve always thought that one of the purposes of liberal democracy was to kind of wall off that, you know, 25 to 28% of us who, you know, the white supremacists, the Christian nationalists, the misogynists, the anti-Semites, and just yes, they get their vote, but they don’t get an outsized voice in how things are done.
And, you know, a lot of people forget that between 2017 and 2019, that 28% was represented by 100% of the federal government. The Republicans had the White House, they had Congress, and they had the Supreme Court. So that percentage grew. Because it suddenly became okay again to be openly white nationalist, openly somebody who prefers AK. Sorry AR-15s to the lives of our children. And on and on and on.
Discussion about this post