Yes, My President

WAMU 88.5

Published July 16, 2019 at 10:06 AM EDT

President Donald Trump hugs the US flag as he arrives to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

President Trump drew the ire of Congressional Democrats — and many others — over the weekend with tweets that employed time-tested racist rhetoric.

On Sunday, Trump wrote that four freshman congresswomen of color should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

Three of those four Congresswomen were born in the United States.

It wasn’t the first time the president has used racist language and dog whistles to imply that people of color who oppose his policies are somehow less American.

During the 2016 campaign, he famously said a Mexican-American judge could not rule fairly in a fraud case involving Trump University because of his heritage. While in office, he called El Salvador, Haiti and other African nations “s—thole countries.”

Despite backlash, Trump dug in, saying Monday that those who “hate our country” should leave. In the past, he’s repeatedly denied being racist, calling himself “the least racist person that you have ever met.”

“If you’re not happy in the U.S., if you’re complaining all the time, you can leave,” the president said Monday.

Democrats in the House of Representatives are moving to vote to condemn Trump’s statements.

But the backlash from his own party has grown slowly. Republican Senator Tim Scott said the president’s tweets were “unacceptable” and “racially offensive.”

So during this show, we want to hear from you. If you support Trump politically, how do these latest tweets square with that support?

And if you don’t, what impact does the president’s rhetoric have on you personally? What effect do you feel it has on the nation as a whole?

Produced by Haili Blassingame. Text by Orion Donovan-Smith.

GUESTS

Ian Haney Lopez, Director, Racial Politics Project, University of California-Berkeley; author, “Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class”; @IanHaneyLopez

Goldie Taylor, Editor-at-large, The Daily Beast; @goldietaylor

Carol Anderson, Professor of African-American Studies, Emory University; author, “One Person, No Vote”; @ProfCAnderson

Cooper Jackson, Administrator, Houston Area for Donald Trump Facebook Page; car wash equipment manufacturer;

For more, visit https://the1a.org.