You Are Still Crying Wolf

1. Kudos to him for putting in the "Edit" about the inaccuracies in exit-poll data, but it's a really big "Edit" and casts doubt on most of his initial premise.

2. No mention of Bannon? This article was written yesterday, and we knew Trump had chosen Bannon to be his right-hand man long before then.

3. No mention that Trump believes that an American judge of Mexican heritage can't judge him? Of the birther claims? Or of playing to white fears with completely make-believe images of "inner cities" being war zones?

4. The jiu jitsu over saying that banning "All Muslims" from entering the country isn't really racism because "most Muslims are white(ish)" is nonsense.

5. And yes, it is special pleading. The author goes out of his way to explain things in a way that is unique to Trump:

> 15. Don’t we know that Trump supports racist violence because, when some of his supporters beat up a Latino man, he just said they were “passionate”?

> When Trump was asked for comment, he tweeted “Love the fact that the small groups of protesters last night have passion for our great country”.

> I have no idea how his mind works and am frankly boggled by all of this, but calling violent protesters “passionate” just seems to be a thing of his. I think this is actually a pretty important point. Trump is a weird person.

Oh. Ok. He doesn't support beating up people. He's just "weird."

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Edit: Also the author seems to have confused two statements of "passion." Trump's tweet about "small groups of protesters" was made just the other day. Instead, after the beating up of the Latino man, he said

"I will say, the people that are following me are very passionate, they love this country, they want this country to be great again."

Note that not only is he calling those men "passionate," he is essentially justifying their actions by bringing up their "love of country," which is particularly telling in the case of men beating up an immigrant.

At least a couple of the other arguments also have problems. He tweeted twice about the protests:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/11/do...

The first one was dismissive, the second one was supportive. Why not discuss them both?

The other one that jumped out at me was the taco bowl. I'm pretty sure lots of racists like tacos, tacos are delicious. So liking tacos doesn't say a whole lot. I'd go so far as to say that ham-fisted pandering using a taco bowl says more than liking tacos.

And the taco-bowl picture is captioned with "I love Hispanics!"

Most people don't talk this way, but everything he says about minorities lumps them together: "The Hispanics." "The Blacks." "The Muslims."

> “I have a great relationship with the blacks, I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.” [1]

> “The Hispanics are going to get those jobs, and they’re going to love Trump.” [2]

> “I’m doing good for the Muslims,” [3]

[1] http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/04/14/6471219-trump-... [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-border_us_5... [3] http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/09/politics/donald-trump-don-lemo...

"If you classify people into ethnic groups, you're a racist" is waaaay too powerful to use to prove "Trump is a racist". Unless you're willing to accept that pretty much everyone is a racist. Which perhaps some people are ready to accept, but it's not a very useful classification at that point.