As long as I’ve covered Republican campaigns, there has been racial fearmongering: Dark-skinned people are coming to hurt you. Be very afraid.
With Reagan, it was “welfare queens” glomming onto tax-free cash income.
With George H.W. Bush, it was Willie Horton. Liberals would give more criminals like Horton furloughs, so they could break into your house and rape your girlfriend.
With George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, it was Arab terrorists. Democrats would let them invade America and kill us.
With Donald Trump, it was migrants swarming over the border from Central and South America with the intent to rape and kill, as well as the racist “birther” conspiracy about “Barack HUSSEIN Obama.”
Trump, who adopted his father’s view that some bloodlines are “superior” to others, has slipped into the usual Republican race-baiting by purposely fumbling Kamala Harris’s name, mispronouncing it different ways and christening her “Kamabla.”
Speaking to a group of Black journalists recently, Trump stunningly questioned Harris’s racial identity, saying, “She was always of Indian heritage,” and adding, “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black.”
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