Donald Trump’s presidency was over the first day it started. I know that’s a startling statement, but hear me out.
Let’s begin with his poll numbers being at historic lows (and I believe beyond even modest recovery).
The reason they are is rooted in the fact that Trump’s ego and the echo chamber around him convinced him that MAGA voters represented the majority of Americans. He called his slim victory “a mandate” when in fact he won by only 1.6%, the fourth smallest since 1960.
That led him to make a fatal mistake of launching an all out assault on DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion).
It signaled his intention of reforming the country into his own image by insisting wrong is right, evil is good, hate is love, prejudice is justice, lies are truth.
The key was to bring back the ugliest elements of America’s past and normalize them for today, but to do that he has to erase the truth about that past, especially its ubiquitous racism that shaped the way whites treated native and African Americans.
He ordered the staff of the Smithsonian Institution to remove objectionable materials that he said demeaned America because of displays that tell the truth about slavery and the struggle for civil rights.
He threatened to cut off federal grants to colleges and universities who supported DEI and ordered the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to demand information from prominent law firms that supported DEI and represented victims of injustice and discrimination.
He fired 75% of black members of independent federal agencies such as the Natonal Labor Relations Board, Equal Emploment Opportunity Commission, Federal Reserve, Library of Congress, to name a few.
He removed six (6) black top tier military leaders, including four-star general Charles Q. Brown Jr. as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the first woman to lead the Navy, the vice chief of the Air Force, and the top lawyers for the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
In his attack on DEI Trump has used the now worn out claim that it represents “reverse discrimination” of whites and the brain child of the radical left Trump says hates America and wants to blame white people for being white.
What Trump didn’t count on was the fact that most Americans were repulsed by our nation’s racial past as we read and heard the stories of the absolute savagery of white racism, as we understood the negative impact of extremist leaders whose vision for America was one we never want to see again.
From the start of his second term Trump has been about seizing power in order to disinherit and exclude everyone who isn’t white like him and doesn’t share his vision of the kind of nation America should be.
DEI did and still does represent the opposite kind of country Trump wants because its goal is to continue the collective work of reducing and eventually eliminating endemic racism in American life.
DEI programs were a tangible way for today’s Americans to acknowledge the sins of the past and take tangible steps to ensure our nation will not to keep repeating them.
Of course, Trump’s MAGA voters support his attack on DEI because they support him, but also because they have no idea why it exists or how it works.
The perception that DEI forces schools to favor unqualified students of color over qualified white students is simply false. I’ve served on admission and scholarship committees in colleges and graduate schools and I know for a fact that numerous factors go into every decision made that the public knows nothing about.
DEI doesn’t take anything away from anyone. It says everyone counts, no one is expendable, that everyone has a chance.
That was the meta-message coming out of Minnesota’s stand against ICE on behalf of immigrants. It was our way of saying we believe in DEI, believe in diversity, believe in equity, and believe in everyone having a place at America’s table.
The 1965 Voting Rights Act said the same thing about participation in our democracy, which is why the Supreme Court’s recent attack on it was as racist as Trump’s attack on DEI.
Former slave states such as Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina immediately joined Louisiana in beginning the process of redrawing voting districts to eliminate all black representation in Congress, removing any doubt as to the racist impact of that decision.
What Trump, the Court, and the MAGA Republican Party are trying to do is to re-establish a “lite beer” version of the days of American apartheid.
But it is clear now that the majority of Americans don’t want them to succeed. We don’t want to be the country they want us to be. We know that the civil rights movement made us a better nation than we were because it expanded our diversity, widened our equity, and opened doors of opportunity to include more and more.
Trump’s poll numbers are telling us the same thing, but nothing underscores the progress we’ve made in racial attitudes more than how Martin Luther King, Jr is viewed today compared to the time of state sanctioned segregation.
In a 1966 Gallop Poll, only 32% of Americans had a positive opinion of Dr.King while 63% viewed him negatively. When he was assassinated two years later the negative view of him had risen to 75%.
Those views have now been turned upside down with more than 90% expressing a positive view of Dr. King today, his I Have A Dream Speech the most read and revered speech in American history next to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and his birthday having become a national holiday.
Trump, of course, is jealous that Dr. King’s birthday is a national holiday, just as he is jealous of former President Barack Obama who has a 59% favorable rating and is considered by that same majority to be America’s most respected former president.
When he posted the racist meme of the Obamas as apes, it not only revealed that his personal racism goes to the core of his being, but also the fact that if he could have his way he would take us back to the time when a black man like Obama could never be president.
He is failing in that effort because a majority of Americans know the truth about our past and, thus, know the truth about the kind of man Trump actually is. He is a living reminder of a past we don’t want to go back to and stands in the way of a future we want.
His world is caving in on him, pushing him further and further into delusions about who he is and the support he believes he has. He may become more dangerous as his delusions intensify, but he is also becoming more pathetic in public, as we saw in scenes this week at the White House of his talking to children about how many wars he has ended and what a great president he is.
It is both sad and tragic that we are being forced to live with the consequences of the majority of voters allowing a minority among us to elect this awful man. There were more than enough anti-Trump voters to defeat him. There just weren’t enough votes.
That has now changed because America is far more DEI than a reflection of Trump’s “white like us” MAGA Republican Party whose racism has no place in the kind of nation most of us want America to be.
linnposts.com 