Trump spreads racism with a fighter pilot's precision (WP)

[dalton99a]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-plenty-racist-without-the-n-word/2018/08/14/69d35c78-9fcd-11e8-93e3-24d1703d2a7a_story.html

Trump spreads racism with a fighter pilot’s precision
by Karen Tumulty | August 14 at 6:20 PM

It is often said of President Trump that he is careless in his use of language.

What an underestimation that is of a man who shows a fighter pilot’s precision at waging racist and sexist attacks. His words have a clear effect — stirring and normalizing bigotry — while preserving a veneer of deniability for himself and the followers who take up his call.

That is why, in some ways, it is almost irrelevant whether there is any truth to his former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman’s explosive contention in her new book that Trump has used the n-word and that there is a recording of it somewhere. (Trump denied it on Twitter, but press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she “cannot guarantee” no such tape exists.)

Trump doesn’t have to say it, when he can employ so many other expressions that will unleash the same ugly forces.

Consider the language the president chose on Tuesday morning to describe Manigault Newman herself, a notorious contestant on “The Apprentice” who became his most prominent African American hire at the White House.

“When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!” Trump tweeted to his 53.8 million followers.

That dog.

Those two words evoke centuries of disgraceful history in which dark-skinned human beings were spoken of as animals.

Trump’s defenders will surely point to the fact he has used canine comparisons when talking about white men. But that has been in similes about their failures or their transgressions: Mitt Romney “choked like a dog” when he ran for president; journalist David Gregory, commentator Erick Erickson, television host Glenn Beck all were fired “like” dogs. They did not become them.

This is the difference when his target is a woman or a nonwhite person: Trump so often transforms them into something less than human. MS-13 gang members are “animals,” whose acts are amplified into a reason to fear all undocumented immigrants. Former Miss Universe Alicia Machado said he called her “Miss Piggy” when she gained weight after the pageant.

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[ismnotwasm]

1. No he speaks for racists loudly

Nothing to do with precision. Just picks up blunt tools laying around and works with what he’s got