Donald Trump conflates the Confederacy with the American Revolution

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I had a surprisingly restful Fourth of July holiday weekend. I didn’t watch the news at all and I barely even watched tennis. I mostly just played games on my iPad and watched Castle DVDs, because I’m a giant social distancing loser. Anyway, it’s back to the grind and back to pretending that I was actually paying attention to any of the political stories this weekend. Apparently, Trump went to Mount Rushmore, huh? And he gave a speech about the fascism of the left and such.

President Donald Trump celebrated America over the Fourth of July weekend with a pair of ugly speeches at Mt. Rushmore and in Washington, D.C. that attempted to rally conservative support by demonizing the left and defending monuments. “Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children,” Trump said on Friday night at Mt. Rushmore, as he tried to revive his base following an embarrassing turnout in Tulsa. “Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.”

Trump, who last weekend promoted a video advocating “white power,” has defended honoring the racist Confederacy with statues and at military bases. While Trump has a history of racism, the Washington Post notes that his strategy of “amplifying racism and stoking culture wars” has been especially striking in this particular moment of national reckoning, one that Trump has responded to with stunningly divisive rhetoric “seeking to weaponize the anger and resentment of some white Americans for his own political gain” rather than calming a country in crisis.

Trump has responded to the outcry for reform with a reimagined version of the “American carnage” he cited at his inauguration, during which he painted a dark picture of a United States exploited by immigrants and foreign nations. But unlike in 2016, notes the Post’s David Nakamura, the enemy has also become other Americans who, in challenging the nation’s founding ideals, pose a threat to Trump’s conservative base. “We are now in the process of defeating the radical left—the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters,” the president remarked on Saturday. On Friday, he warned of “the violent mayhem we have seen in the streets of cities that are run by liberal Democrats,” drawing battle lines in an attempt to galvanize supporters. “Our children are taught in school to hate their own country,” he claimed.

From the Black Hills of South Dakota, Trump warned of a “new far-left fascism” and “cancel culture” that “is designed to overthrow the American Revolution.”

[From Vanity Fair]

Fun fact for the amateur historians out there: the monuments of Confederate generals and the historical relics of the Confederacy are not, in fact, part of the American Revolution. I’m not naive, and I know what Trump is trying to do: he’s trying to conflate the (necessary) movement to rip down all of the Confederate monuments with the larger (and more nuanced) conversation about the history of slavery, white supremacy and racism in America, and the conversation about who gets monuments and whose history gets (literally) whitewashed. But considering Trump’s ride-or-die supporters are the f–king idiots who scream at people for wearing masks, I don’t expect them to recognize what Trump is actually doing. He just wants to convince aggrieved white people that the race war is already upon them.

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Photos courtesy of Getty.

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23 Responses to “Donald Trump conflates the Confederacy with the American Revolution”

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  1. Annaloo. says:

    This man needs to be arrested the second he is out of office

    He should go now.

  2. cee says:

    Idiot racist President. God help the USA.

  3. Ravensdaughter says:

    I am convinced that this is a smoke screen to deflect from his incompetence with COVID and the intelligence he received-but did not act on-regarding the Russian bounty pay offs to Taliban soldiers for American lives.
    Also, he has to think of his base, which is thankfully shrinking.
    Maybe I give him more credit than he is due, but even if he is so ignorant as to meld the two, there is some diversion going on.
    I saw a great meme-“I wear my mask so that I will live until November 3rd”..
    Outta here, Donald.

  4. savu says:

    He went on and on about how kids are educated to “hate their country/founding fathers” and “erase history”. Bitch what?! We’re raised to idolize the founding fathers. We are not taught enough about the evils this nation has perpetrated. The stories of slavery are just as American as stories about the Revolution. It’s amazing to me how one-dimensional these people are sometimes, as if it’s impossible to love your country and hate its past. When for so many Americans who love their country just as much as the MAGAs, we believe this nation can do better. And can do more to live up to the ideals it was founded on, originally meant to benefit white men, that could benefit everybody.

    • local russian hill says:

      well said. thank you for articulating what i was thinking. his rhetoric is so tiring.

  5. Sayrah says:

    He also just tweeted at Bubba Wallace. What a disgrace our “president” is 🤦🏻‍♀️

    • Also Ali says:

      I just ordered a Bubba Wallace T-shirt and hoodie. I have never watched him race but I’m a new fan. I hate Donald Trump so very much.

  6. Lightpurple says:

    This morning, he is attacking Bubba Wallace.

    That whole Mount Rushmore fiasco was a giant, racist sh**storm.

    Junior’s paid girlfriend spent all last week in campaign meetings in the Dakotas, Montana, and Wyoming at which there was no social distancing or masks and on Friday, she announced she has Covid19.

    Melania wore an Alexander McQueen dress to the Mt Rushmore fiasco, so much for putting American companies first. And when people started joking that the print looked like Trump took a sharpie to the dress, they put out a fake story that the drawings on the dress were artwork from sexually abused children about their feelings. The print was a compilation of kids’s drawings but it had nothing to do with sexual abuse or feelings. This group will stop at nothing.

    Nagini spent the weekend promoting rodeos and pretending she has the perfect family.

    And Barron was, as usual, nowhere to be seen, not even at the fireworks fiasco.

    • Granger says:

      Barron was probably forbidden from attending any of these events because the one thing his clueless mother DOES understand is that he might get COVID if he does.

    • Jerusha says:

      I feel for Barron. He’s at an age where he knows what pieces of 💩 both of his parents are. I hope he can escape before they turn him into another toxic trump spawn.

    • Hoot says:

      Wonder now many people Ms. Kimberly infected while she was/is asymptomatic?

      I don’t think DT knows the difference between the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.

      Barron just may be the smartest one of the bunch.

      • Lightpurple says:

        Probably quite a few as she was meeting with a lot of people in close quarters. She and Junior are now driving cross country, joyfully bringing Covid19 to every rest stop along route 90.

    • ChillyWilly says:

      Don’t forget about Mary Hart flashing the white power “ok” sign during her speech! It was all such an awful, disturbing, Nazi, KKK hatefest.

  7. Call_Me_Al says:

    I love how in the Celebitchy ads slideshow you have put a circle over Trump’s face which says, “Wear a F’in Mask, Idiot.” Can you do that on all of his pictures on all your posts until he actually does wear a mask? I’m sick of looking at his face. He doesn’t deserve it.

    • Dazed and Confused says:

      I have been using the Chrome add-on “Make America Kittens Again” since January 2017. Instead of seeing that orange blowhard’s face, I see adorable kittens. Best add-on ever.

  8. Mabs A'Mabbin says:

    Everything he says is deflection and blame. There’s no mistaking it by now, and it’s shocking to me how many continue to attempt dissection in order to discover some buried wisdom. It’s not there. There’s nothing buried there never was. He is our terrorist who is jacking off late at night watching our discord explode on film as he jettisons his….microscopic toxic skree. He is the fascist who doesn’t know what it means. He is the dictator stroking totalitarianism. By the way, everyone should only used the ‘T’ word from now on because he can’t pronounce it… and he doesn’t know what it means.

    By the way, there are journalists out there who are privy to those of us who can’t stomach the sound of our very own ogre mascot so they typed his phonetic pronounciation of totalitarianism L.M.A.O. Now that is awesome.

    • Juls says:

      Mabs, you always have a way with words, and I think this may be your best comment yet. Bravo! I love this part: “it’s shocking to me how many continue to attempt dissection in order to discover some buried wisdom. It’s not there. There’s nothing buried there never was.” But “microscopic toxic scree” had me dying.

  9. Louisa says:

    Wait…. so are the left fascists or antifa? Not sure how we can be both……

  10. Mina_Esq says:

    Im still trying to process the idea of “overthrowing” a revolution 😂 My God, this man is dumb.