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.

I think the main point the article makes, and maybe I'm willing to come around on it, is that the term 'overt racism' when referring to Trump is maybe exaggerated. Maybe it is 'only' 'subtle racism', while 'surrounding himself with open racists'.

But another issue that this article completely ignores is the subtle sexism that permeated the Trump campaign. Catch phrases like 'Trump that Bitch'; or when Guiliani says

"Don’t you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a woman, and the only thing she’s ever produced is a lot of work for the FBI checking out her emails?"

Note this was distorted by people on the left to show that Guiliani is openly sexist by ending the quote after 'woman', and pretending it didn't continue. But as a full statement, this juxtaposition of man and woman, one glorified and the other dismissed, phrased as a rhetorical question, actually reads pretty sexist to me.

I also tend to think the alt-right movement much bigger than the 50K that the author claims. It's not very monolithic, there are many related off-shoots. For example, the associated /r/TheRedPill has 170K members, and that's just one of them.