Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/08/29/reports-confirm-donald-trump.html
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Contextual note: The Klan wasn’t the fringe group it is now back in the 20s. It was fairly mainstream and riding high on anti-immigration platforms. For comparison, today there are ~8000 members. In the mid-late 20s there were ~6 Million members. But after various scandals the membership fell to just ~30,000 in the 1930s.
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Which excuses nothing, of course… But all very true.
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No, it doesn’t excuse anything, but I think it is important to know the context.
ETA - sort of how Republicans are the party of Lincoln, and now that is questionable…
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I mean, would it ever change anyone’s mind about him? The people who think he’s great wouldn’t hold it against him (or would be pleased.)
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So… like father, like son?
edit to add:
This is what the Klan was about when Fred Trump was enthused enough about it to join a march.
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I’d say the distance between Lincoln and todays republicans, and Trump’s dad and the clan, (from a topical perspective AND in terms of distance in the past) are not aptly compared. Muddying the waters won’t help anyone.
Getting back on topic → Trumps dad seems to have been a clansman.
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The people who think he’s great would, I’m guessing here, think that as a result Trump Jr has pedigree,
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“The liberal media is saying that my dad was in the Klan. So sad. Really, how low will they go? But I want you to know that if he was a Klansman, he would have had the best robes. Not just white sheets like Klansmen in those … I don’t know … those cartoon things. Real robes. The best robes. But if he had worn sheets, they would have been the best. Absolutely amazing sheets. And people are saying to me, Donald, they say, why don’t you have sheets like your dad’s? So soft, so downy-fresh. Just extraordinary. And that’s why we’re going to make America great again. Because have you seen Hillary’s sheets? Now, I don’t know this for certain, but I’ve been told, that she doesn’t know how to wash her sheets. Just tragic. They’re gray, and stiff. Whereas my dad’s. And this is why you can’t trust her, because a woman who can’t do laundry … which she should be doing, by the way, but instead she wants to bring in Mexicans for that, and these Mexicans, they’re not the best, they use too much detergent, they don’t know how to fold … now, I know how to wash sheets, because I’m a smart guy. Anything, I can learn it in minutes. I can even fold those fitted sheets, you know. Wharton School, best there is. But I don’t, because my dad used to tell me, don’t do that, Donald, that’s not where the money is. So Hillary Clinton, Lying Crooked Hillary there, she’s still washing sheets and getting terrible, terrible results. Just shameful. And I can’t explain it, but that’s how it is. So sad. Thank you.”
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I’m starting to think this guy probably shouldn’t be president.
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Fred Trump was Woody Guthrie’s ‘racist landlord’:
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You’ve really done a frighteningly good job there of capturing his verbal style, with all the self-aggrandizing digressions and snide, half-finished asides.
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That maybe it is important to note that many people were swept up in a movement that looked to pinned the nations problems on specific groups of people? That it wasn’t just a fringe group of hardcore racists that it is now. That perhaps right now people are making the same mistakes that will be dug up and shown in the future.
History repeating and all that.
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Old Man Trump
Words by Woody Guthrie, Music by Ryan Harvey
I suppose that Old Man Trump knows just how much racial hate
He stirred up in that bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed that color line
Here at his Beach Haven family project
Beach Haven ain’t my home!
No, I just can’t pay this rent!
My money’s down the drain,
And my soul is badly bent!
Beach Haven is Trump’s Tower
Where no black folks come to roam,
No, no, Old Man Trump!
Old Beach Haven ain’t my home!
I’m calling out my welcome to you and your man both
Welcoming you here to Beach Haven
To love in any way you please and to have some kind of a decent place
To have your kids raised up in.
Beach Haven ain’t my home!
No, I just can’t pay this rent!
My money’s down the drain,
And my soul is badly bent!
Beach Haven is Trump’s Tower
Where no black folks come to roam,
No, no, Old Man Trump!
Old Beach Haven ain’t my home!
© Copyright Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. (BMI) & Ryan Harvey (ASCAP)
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I still believe that it is poor practice to let the sins of the father cast aspersions on the son; I mean, it’s not like Fred Trump is the one running for President.
If this were any other normal, reasonable person (imagine if Sander’s dad turned out to be a racist!), you could ignore it and move on. Sadly, Donald has enough of his own racist baggage to drag him down; for once he doesn’t need to lean on his father’s legacy.
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I think you answered your own question right there (if that was a question). If Trump has leaned on his father’s legacy in so many other ways, why not suspect that he’s also done so in this way? Especially since so much of what the son says and does so strongly resembles the father’s allegiance to white supremacy?
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But it also was. They were hardcore racists. Hardcore racism is possible. And his son is reinvoking the father’s memory with all this horrid rhetoric.
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Yes, his family. And many of his supporters. While I agree that history is important, nothing of what you stated has minimized or contextualized his family history as applies to the present behavior in a post-Stetson Kennedy world.
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