Regardless of whether or not Juneteenth of Martin Luther King Day are perceived as Left-leaning, the bottom line is this - Trump repeatedly and consistently exhibits a hostility to non-White people. This is not to say there aren't Black and Latino fans of Trump. This is not to say he doesn't bring some minorities into his administration. He tolerates them as does the larger GOP.
In the case of the latter, the GOP quickly puts forward any minorities it can in order to belie claims of racism. And yet the arguments still carry a lot of traction and with Trump there can be little doubt. He is contemptuous of people from other cultures unless they accumulate wealth and power and are willing to stay in their geographical context - in their lane as it were. He certainly has an established record of defending White Supremacists who in turn laud him. For many of them his ascendancy has created a kind of euphoria, an impossible dream come true. And why would think that? They understand what he's saying and how he speaks. There's plenty of dog-whistles, but with Trump he often is just blatant, unguarded, and unabashed. The Left has been reporting on this for over a decade now - in some cases since the 1980's. The Right ignores it or spins it. The Mainstream Media has at times picked up on it but overwhelmingly they have simply chosen to ignore it and move on. It's more like it's just a given and therefore isn't really worthy of a great deal of attention.
Trump's record on this is longstanding. One thinks of his involvement in Red-lining back in the 1970's to even his father's affiliations with the KKK and his reputation as a landlord. Fred Trump was well known enough for Woody Guthrie to sing about him and Donald's family members have testified to his racism and beliefs. His response to the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville was about as blatant as it gets - let alone his many vile statements about Black Africans, Mexicans, and the like.
Race certainly played a role in Trump's ruthless and destructive campaign regarding the Central Park Five - something he will not repent of, though he was completely wrong and played an important role in destroying the lives of these young black men.
Many are convinced his hostility to Obama was also race-motivated.
Trump may not be the most intelligent person but he possesses a kind of cunning and he certainly retains memory of things that anger him.
Though you wouldn't know it today considering the fact that the GOP and many figures in the Right now try an appropriate the legacy of Martin Luther King, there was a time when they viciously opposed him and the creation of the holiday connected to him.
As I have frequently mentioned, my wife and I are both old enough to remember when the King holiday was rejected by not just the GOP but within conservative Christian circles as well. And I would also add that we grew up 2,500 miles apart in completely different cultural contexts in terms of the United States and yet our experience on this point was the same. King was excoriated and the holiday scoffed at.
Today, you'll hear Christian politicos pretending as if the Christian Right is somehow carrying the King torch or something to that effect, or that if still living he'd be on the Bush or Trump team. Nothing could be further from the truth.
One need only look to the example of someone like Jesse Jackson who knew and worked with King and was on site when he was assassinated in 1968. Jackson remained politically active and consistently opposed the politics of Reagan and both Bushes.
King was viewed as a communist and a threat to the American order and was detested. This was pretty mainstream among Fundamentalist and Evangelical circles in the 1970's and 1980's. As I have suggested previously, the narrative began to shift in the 1990's and since then the history has been re-written.
I contend Trump is not one to jump on such bandwagons. He hated King then and hates him now and his actions demonstrate this.
Whether or not King deserves a holiday is (for the sake of argument) immaterial. The point is that Trump's words and deeds demonstrate he is a racist and racially motivated thus this has implications for American Christians who support him.
Racism is a sin and thus this but one of many sins the Christian Right has embraced and effectively baptised - and it's getting worse by the day it would seem. And let's not kid ourselves, even though the Right had embraced figures like Tim Scott (though Trump clearly doesn't like to share the stage with him) and the incompetent pseudo-economist Thomas Sowell, I think I can safely say that among White conservative Christians there's still a lot of racism and it comes out in certain contexts, leaving many of us in a dilemma as we wrestle with whether or not to make a scene at a family gathering or other event. This also explains why Trump is supported even though again and again he demonstrates his racism by all but wearing it on his sleeve.
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