Esquire reports: Trump’s Disgusting Retweets Suggest a Larger Problem Is Brewing
President Trump does not know much about anything, and he doesn’t much care what he does or doesn’t know. He is the Low Information Voter President. That makes his free-range access to Twitter, a cesspool of unverified information and rampant hate, a serious problem—particularly when he can amplify some of the worst information available on the platform to his 44 million followers. We saw this during the campaign, when he would retweet accounts with the handle “White Genocide” and pass on disgusting misinformation about black-on-white crime. But today he seems to have retweeted his way down a new, incredibly dark path.
In three successive early-morning social posts, the President of the United States shared unverified videos from the deputy leader of a British far-right hate group called “Britain First.” The name probably caught Trump’s attention, as he’s been clinging desperately to his “America First” shtick as the tempests of the Russia probe and a thousand daily scandals swirl around him. But Britain First, according to The Independent, has been condemned as an extremist nationalist group. The account tied to the deputy, Jayda Fransen, is partly automated and frequently shares unverified videos that claim to show immigrants and Muslims attacking (white) people in Europe.
That’s what the leader of the free world shared today. To be clear, there is no evidence these videos are real or show what they purport to show.
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By the way, “OCS,” according to The Independent, means “Onward Christian Soldiers.” Not for the first time, you can read “Christian” here as “White.” This whole episode has jarring similarities to Trump’s treatment of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. After hundreds of Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, and those who think it’s a good idea to rub shoulders with them marched armed through an American city, and after one white supremacist killed an anti-racist protester with his car in what even Attorney General Jeff Sessions called an act of domestic terrorism, the president suggested there were “very fine people on both sides.” That is to say, the President of the United States believed good people march alongside Nazis.
And let’s not even bother with the argument that it’s “just Twitter.” We saw more evidence just this week that his tweets are seen by the world at large as official communications from the president. Our Dear Leader spends his days tweeting complaints about his coverage on CNN, attempting to undermine it and the free press in general as “Fake News,” and some outside our borders are taking notice. The Libyan media cited Trump’s tweet attacking CNN International to question whether a CNN report on modern-day slavery in that country was accurate.
Trump and justice? Not on good terms.
He thinks of brown people as germs.
If you burn church and steeple
And you’re white, you’re good people.
Then he’s back to his clubs, greens and berms.
Lily Coals, 11/29/17
