President Donald Trump defended white supremacists in George Wallace fashion yesterday at Trump Tower in New York City, and like clockwork, his black surrogates took to social media to step and fetch for him.
It doesn’t matter that a white supremacist is being held on a second-degree murder charge after, law-enforcement officials say, he rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Va., killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
Nope. Trump said there were good people on “both sides,” and his token Negroes took to his defense soon after.
Let’s start with Lynne Patton, whose claim to fame was that of an event planner and who now heads New York’s federal housing office. She claims that her boss disavowed white supremacists (even though he flip-flopped). But then she, in ahistorical fashion, said that today’s activists aren’t like those from the civil rights era.
OK, Lynne. Whatever, boo.
Pastor Darrell Scott of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, one of Trump’s top religious backers, appeared on MSNBC Tuesday to pretty much claim “left-wing media” and white supremacists are all the same.
If you want to listen to his foolishness, click on the link in his tweet.
Then we have Katrina Pierson, a former spokesperson for the Trump campaign, who said nothing about Trump’s words yesterday. Though she did push a conspiracy theory from last year that a Ku Klux Klan member, Will Quigg, donated $20,000 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The Daily Beast investigated the claim and could find no documents verifying it.
Quigg was just some super internet troll, and Pierson is more than happy to step and fetch in his name to support Trump’s racism.
Another Negro backing Trump is Gerard Robinson, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He didn’t respond to Trump’s racist diatribe but found time to defend Paris Dennard, Trump’s most passionate black defender.
Bruce LeVell, head of the National Diversity Coalition for Trump, has retweeted a video of Trump criticizing David Duke through the years (the same video is posted on the NDCFT Facebook page), as if that actually means Trump doesn’t have two faces. Trump can criticize Duke in one breath but back the racists who cheer on the former KKK leader in another.
LeVell really doesn’t give a shit about Trump’s racism. The only diversity LeVell’s group seems to care about is gathering as many people of color as possible who accept racist ideology at the expense of black people and other minorities.
And Diamond and Silk were being, well, Diamond and Silk. Click if you want to hear their foolishness. My advice: Don’t.
The Root has reached out to some of the folks called out in this post. We will publish their words if they are interested in having a real conversation about their racist boss, friend or whatever Trump means to them.
Don’t hold your breath, though.