Saturday, September 24, 2016

Donald Trump's astounding racist projections

By Mark Sumner  
Monday Sep 19, 2016 · 4:23 PM EDT

Here’s an odd thing: You never hear Donald Trump talking about UFOs. Or Bigfoot. And while imaginative observers may have found Donald Trump's face on Mars, Trump himself seems to be missing from the list of those who doubt the moon landings. Granted, Trump does believe that climate change is a “hoax,” but a lot of what Donald Trump believes seems to fit a theme.

Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories are filled with racism and projection.

“Look,” he told Sean Hannity, “he was born ‘Barry Soetero.’ Somewhere along the line, he changed his name. I heard he had terrible marks, and he ends up in Harvard. He wrote a book that was better than Ernest Hemingway, but his second book was written by an average person. ... I say Bill Ayers wrote the book.” 

… “He was best friends with Bill Ayers,” he explained, and Hannity just let him roll on at that point. “Bill Ayers was a super-genius. And a lot of people have said he wrote the book. Well recently, as you know last week, Bill Ayers came out and said he did write the book. Barack Obama wouldn’t be president ? and, you know, I wrote many best-sellers, and also, No. 1 best-sellers, including The Art of the Deal. So I know something about writing. And I want to tell you, the guy that wrote the first book didn’t write the second book.”  

Those two paragraphs are so rich in “Trump theory” that they could be the subject of their own book.

1) Trump believes that President Obama’s moving memoir of how his life was affected by his absent father was actually written by a “super-genius” white man.

2) Trump believes that Barack Obama “was born ‘Barry Soetero’” and either spent much of his life using a false name, or is using a false name now. 

3)  Trump believes that Obama had “terrible marks” in college but somehow made it into Harvard.

There’s a deep racist theme running through all these ideas. But there’s also one person who actually fits most of these conspiracy theories … and his name is Donald Trump.

Read more

No comments: