Trump: White Warriors And Wonderful Me

King Charles has his number, bigtime

Drawing I did on my live yesterday

Yesterday, I spoke about this in my live broadcast with Andy Borowitz, but wanted to write about it today. Originally I thought King Charles’ visit would be a bore, but it was anything but. In a very sneaky way.

Yesterday morning after I heard Heather Cox Richardson on social media discuss the speech Trump gave welcoming Charles, I decided to go listen. I also listened to Charles’ address to Congress. Richardson sums it up in her letter today.

Trump’s speech was riddled with indirect white supremacy guised as pride for our country and our Founding Fathers. Charles’ words were a guised warning to the president and American people. Trump read his speech and seemed not to grasp the words. Charles command of his words was masterful and gave me hope. Of course Charles gets it, and wants anyone who listened to know that the UK is on our side and on the side of democracy, and not Trump’s. He spoke about the importance of NATO, supporting Ukraine, checks and balances, and more, but he did it so subtly that Trump probably didn’t understand. But we do.

Within a few moments after he started, Charles made indirect reference to violence, and as I listened, I thought he was referring the January 6th Insurrection. However, without naming it, he was referencing the Hilton Hotel incident, yet I don’t think I am wrong in believing he was also referencing January 6th attack on our democracy.

“We meet, too, in the aftermath of the incident not far from this great building that sought to harm the leadership of your nation and to foment wider fear and discord. Let me say with unshakeable resolve: such acts of violence will never succeed. Whatever our differences, whatever disagreements we may have, we stand united in our commitment to uphold democracy, to protect all our people from harm, and to salute the courage of those who daily risk their lives in the service of our countries.”

Lionel Barber in his Substack concurs, writing, saying the King implied: “we/they must not flinch in the face of populist violence aimed at overthrowing our democratic institutions as occurred on January 6, 2021. He added a pointed reference to Magna Carta and the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances - something which has escaped Trump.”

Trump thinks in simple terms: it’s all about brave strong Anglo Saxon warriors saving the world from people who are not Anglo Saxon, and making them subservient in the process.

There was other guised commentary, brilliantly executed by Charles. I have never thought a whole lot about Charles, but now I have great respect for his subtle diplomacy. Here is the speech in its entirety. It’s better to watch it because he uses his tone and humor so well.

Then I listened to Trump’s speech when he welcomed Charles earlier that day. I saw in the video a moment when Charles looks at Trump as if he cannot believe what he’s hearing.

In his speech, which I don’t suggest you watch because it’s painful (But here it is if you want to), Trump characterized the American Revolution as a some sort of Anglo Saxon Brave journey for “what’s right,” carried on by warriors descendant from England. Excerpts below that to my ears are dog whistles:

“The American patriots who pledged their lives to independence in 1776 were the heirs to this majestic inheritance. Their veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage. Their hearts beat with an English faith in standing firm for what is right, good, and true.”

“In the centuries since we won our independence, Americans have had no closer friends than the British. We share that same root, we speak the same language, we hold the same values, and together, our warriors have defended the same extraordinary civilization under twin banners of red, white, and blue.”

“If they could see us today, our ancestors would surely be filled with awe and pride that the Anglo-American revolution in human freedom was never, ever extinguished, but carried forward across centuries, across oceans, and across history, until it became a fire that lit the entire world.”

And then this arrogant take on the UK and US that has a domination feel to it:

“Let us remember what has made our countries the two most exceptional nations the world has ever known, and together, let us go forward with even stronger resolve to carry on our sacred devotion to liberty and to the traditions of excellence that have been our shared gift of all mankind.”

Other news. It was excrutiating to hear the Supreme Court decision yesterday to gut a key section of the Votin Rights Act. The NY Times calls the Voting RIghts Act a “ stunningly effective piece of legislation secured at the cost of blood and lives in the South in the Jim Crow era, the act helped Black voters match and sometimes exceed registration rates of those of white people.” The Court’s majority said, in essence, that the aims of that law had been satisfied.

Justice Kagan wrote that she “will be interested to see, for example, whether time will vindicate the majority’s view that the ‘great strides’ made in African American office holding, ‘particularly in the South,’ will hold up after the issuance of this opinion. My own guess is not.”

“It is for the people’s representatives in Congress to decide when the nation need no longer worry about the dilution of minority voting strength,” she wrote. “So long as Congress has not done so — and it has not — this court has no right to cancel (sorry, ‘update’) a duly enacted statute on the theory that it knows better.”

Journalist Chris Hayes reminded us in a video on social media that we can hold hope that we can overcome this. During Reconstruction after the Civil War, there was an effort to instill legal equality between the races with the passing of the 13th and 14th and 15th ammendments. It didn’t last long, Southern whites made sure of it, and Jim Crow crept in very quickly and Black voters were forced by violence and other intimidation to stop voting. Finally, in 1965, the Voting Rights Act was passed, and equal access to voting began to return.

We can do it again.

Thanks for being here! I hope you have a great day. Keep the faith, we can get through this.