OK, so we’ve seen our share of hot takes on President Trump’s speech Friday night at Mount Rushmore, which CNN has now chosen to describe as “a monument of two slave owners … on land wrestled away from Native Americans,” whereas when President Obama visited it was simply “majestic.”
A lot of those hot takes have come from a newspaper that shares the name of one of those two slave owners: the Washington Post. We’d already written about the WaPo piece entitled, “At Mount Rushmore, Trump exploits social divisions, warns of ‘left-wing cultural revolution’ in dark speech ahead of Independence Day.”
And yet there’s another Washington Post piece this Independence Day tearing down President Trump’s speech, this one by Robert Costa and Philip Rucker and entitled, “Trump’s push to amplify racism unnerves Republicans who have long enabled him.”
President Trump’s unyielding push to preserve Confederate symbols and the legacy of white domination was crystallized by his harsh denunciation of the racial justice movement Friday night at Mount Rushmore.
My latest report w/ @PhilipRucker https://t.co/rRox4Xin5Y
— Robert Costa (@costareports) July 4, 2020
What unyielding push to preserve Confederate symbols? Maybe, like Alyssa Milano, they didn’t actually watch the speech. Here’s how their take kicks off:
President Trump’s unyielding push to preserve Confederate symbols and the legacy of white domination, crystallized by his harsh denunciation of the racial justice movement Friday night at Mount Rushmore, has unnerved Republicans who have long enabled him but now fear losing power and forever associating their party with his racial animus.
Although amplifying racism and stoking culture wars have been mainstays of Trump’s public identity for decades, they have been particularly pronounced this summer as the president has reacted to the national reckoning over systemic discrimination by seeking to weaponize the anger and resentment of some white Americans for his own political gain.
…
Trump put his strategy to resuscitate his troubled reelection campaign by galvanizing white supporters on display Friday night under the chiseled granite gaze of four past presidents memorialized in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He celebrated Independence Day with a dystopian speech in which he excoriated racial justice protesters as “evil” representatives of a “new far-left fascism” whose ultimate goal is “the end of America.”
Wow, Trump’s speech went from “dark” to “dystopian.” It’s so frustrating; just like these half-wits keeping brining up Trump’s “very fine people” remark completely out of context, they refuse to distinguish between peaceful George Floyd protesters and the Marxists and anarchists who’ve hijacked the movement with rioting, looting, and vandalism … all anyone has to do is look at Seattle’s CHOP zone to see how Black Lives Matter had been taken over.
This is vile. I've read that speech 4 times. It explicitly and repeatedly rejected racial divisions. It didn't once refer to confederate symbols.Trying to portray a defense of American ideals this way isn't an insult to Trump, it's an insult to Americans who hold those beliefs.
— (((AG))) (@AGHamilton29) July 4, 2020
Here was WaPo's description vs the actual speech.
They randomly took words without context and assigned them as descriptors "racial justice protesters" when those descriptions weren't even referring to protests. pic.twitter.com/teF0AsQc6v
— (((AG))) (@AGHamilton29) July 4, 2020
In case you can’t read those, the first is the excerpt from the Washington Post piece: “He celebrated Independence Day with a dystopian speech in which he excoriated racial justice protesters as ‘evil’ representatives of a ‘new far-left fascism’ whose ultimate goal is ‘the end of America.'” The second is an excerpt from the speech as delivered:
In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished. It’s not going to happen to us.
Make no mistake: this left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution. In so doing, they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress.
To make this possible, they are determined to tear down every statue, symbol, and memory of our national heritage.
Yes, every statue, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionists, and even Abraham Lincoln. Someone tell Seth Abramson about the Emancipation Monument being surrounded by fencing so it won’t be toppled. Only the Vladimir Lenin statue in Seattle appears safe.
It is genuinely disgusting to see you lying like this. Have you no integrity? None?
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) July 4, 2020
Rucker definitely has none.
— Arthur Schwartz (@ArthurSchwartz) July 4, 2020
They're just actors reading scripts off the screen for cash, no integrity required.
— BlondeAmericanChick (@PonyGirl_04) July 4, 2020
On brand. No surprise here.
— Jim Cooper (@JimCoopr) July 4, 2020
You used to be a fair minded person. Sad to see you writing crap like this
— Kyle Raccio (@kyleraccio) July 4, 2020
Disgusting and vile lie
— Patrick McRae (@patricksb4) July 4, 2020
You’re a disgrace. That’s not true.
— Andy Lancaster (@andylancaster) July 4, 2020
This is objectively a lie#FakeNews #EnemyOfThePeople
— Habitual Linestepper (@FergusFSU) July 4, 2020
That’s not within a million miles of reporting, just lying in a particularly vile manner.
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) July 4, 2020
Liars.
— I didn't vote for him, so think of a new retort (@jtLOL) July 4, 2020
Going to report this as an in-kind donation to the @DNC since it is closer to their propaganda than reality. It is statues of Washington, Columbus, Jefferson, and Lincoln that the "racial justice" movement is seeking to destroy, not just confederate statues.
— Harold Stickeehans (@StickeeNotes) July 4, 2020
The only tactic Chazi sympathizers have left at this point in the game is overtly shrill gaslighting.
— D.W.Robinson (@_DWRobinson) July 4, 2020
Seek help.
— Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) July 4, 2020
You know, it’s just like Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan celebrating the takeover of part of her city as a block party and the second coming of the Summer of Love — she wanted so badly for Antifa, Marxists, and anarchists to succeed in creating their own little country, but then those darn murders got in the way. And now that it’s been razed she fondly recalls the weeks of “incredibly peaceful demonstrations.”
Either like Durkan, they cheer on the militant leftists who hijacked the Black Lives Matter movement, or as journalists, they refuse to see it.
Related:
Talking point status: RECEIVED! Washington Post spin on Trump’s Mt. Rushmore speech is exactly what you expected https://t.co/T0v8zeiqsP
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) July 4, 2020
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