Republished with permission from D. Earl Stephens
Donald Trump hates the same people his supporters do.
Any time I spend a portion of my day considering the dark, noxious cloud that has become a part of the American landscape, and more specifically, the origins of this man-made disaster, I arrive at this place.
It’s as sad, simple, and as hideous as that.
Trump is a terrible president, and an even worse person. He’s certainly not smart, and is obviously ill-bred. He has done nothing to make anybody’s lives better but his own, and the billionaires who are carving us into pieces. He is using our White House to launder our money to fill his bottomless pockets, while spending hundreds of millions more to celebrate himself with arches, ballrooms, and tacky golden trinkets.
This isn’t even in dispute.
He’s a liar, a cheat, a pervert, and a complete clown. He tapes stringy fir to his head each day, and slathers his face in orange goo. He looks absolutely ridiculous, but nobody in his inner circle dares say a word.
Thank God this emperor at least has clothes.
He doesn’t know what he is talking about in almost any conversation, and just spits out random words and sentences that often make absolutely no sense. The minute somebody calls him on this, which is generally a woman in our press corps, he lashes out with the venom of a convicted felon and serial woman-abuser.
Our air and water is being poisoned. Prices are skyrocketing, and we are in a war with no way out, because he has turned our Pentagon into a bumbling mess, where cowards in uniform salute the crown or else.
And of course, he is doing everything he can to wreck our vote. Even that we talk about in all-too-casual tones, which really should blow all of our minds on a regular basis.
As I’ve written before, Trump’s ongoing attack on America is a national emergency and should be addressed this way. Right now, we are being forced to make plans for what might happen if our very own president violently comes after OUR vote in November.
Can we stop right there for five seconds to consider THAT?
Instead, we are fixated on all the other preposterous things he is into each and every day. Why just yesterday he traveled to Ireland to duck in some golf, and insult and divide the people there. The day before that he talked about bribing Republican voters, and then there is the never-ending projectile vomit about renaming lakes and attacking places like Greenland and Canada.
So what is there to recommend him? Why does your aunt, or best friend, or husband support this sickening maniac?
It’s the bigotry, stupid.
Plain and simple.
Again: He hates the same people they do, and for that he gets their undying allegiance.
Trump’s bigotry has always been the redline for me, and why I avoid anybody who voted for this bigot. It’s easy for me: If you vote for a bigot, you are one.
Maybe I have this wrong, but I really don’t think so.
Trump has always been a bigot, and like so many things, this isn’t reported near enough. It’s not just a part of his brand, it IS his brand. Without his endless bigotry, he wouldn’t have gotten within three states of the White House.
I am not wrong about this.
It was his overt bigotry that separated him from the other 17 Republicans on that ridiculous debate stage 11 years ago. Trump went right out and said what so many white people think, including many of the phonies on that stage, and the majority of the white people in America loved him for it—including, and mostly, all those radical, right-wing Christian Nationalist churches.
When he initially made his move to run for president, the man who likes to think of himself as a builder did so by erecting a platform to spread the repellent Birther controversy. Barack Obama was not born in this country, you see, and needed to produce papers to prove he had a right to be here.
This was gross and disgusting of course, but many white people gobbled this up, like sharks go for so much greasy chum in the water.
Like those sharks, your Uncle Bud ate this up. “Now THERE’S a guy telling it like it is!”
FINALLY, an old white man who was as mean and miserable as he was—even if he has a weird orange tint to him …
Instead of disqualifying him from the presidency the Birther assault jump-started it, and Trump and all that bigotry are still humming right along to this day.
I’m not wrong about that, either.
Even today, after all his overt bigotry, you will not come across anything in the mainstream media that refers to him this way. No real surprise, because most of these worthless outposts still won’t call a guy who is incapable of telling the truth a LIAR.
He has become completely normalized.
While I was researching this heated rant, I came across an AP story this morning addressing the Black male vote.
It has been reported to death that Kamala Harris got less support from Black men than Joe Biden did.
Statistics show 25 percent of Black men went over to Trump in 2024, and away from Democrats. But so did younger voters. So did white women. So did Latino voters. I don’t have to tell you what white men did … because I have enough to do calling them into account, which I do on a regular basis much to the chagrin of many people in my life who wish I was happier these days.
I will never get in the business of judging Black voters, when the vast majority of these voters have picked the better, more humane candidate during every election in my lifetime. This also means, among other important things, that they picked the candidate who was nearly always better on the economy, because almost without fail, Democratic presidents are far, far better on the economy than Republicans.
I’m not wrong about that, either.
Turns out the only sector who didn’t move toward Trump in 2024 were Black women. Black women have seen a few things. Black women have felt a few things. Black women know what’s up.
It has to be completely MADDENING for them that so many of us don’t.
Can you imagine where we’d be right now, if even HALF of white men didn’t vote for this racist, orange ghoul?
One of the passages I was struck by in that AP sorry was this:
“A Federal Reserve survey of 2022 data found that Black families had a median wealth of $44,890 compared with the median white family wealth of $285,010. In 2023, Black men’s imprisonment rate was about 5.5 times the rate for white men, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.”
Read that one again.
And again.
Now try to tell me there is no institutional racism in America, when it is completely baked into our screwed up system.
For every 100 dollars a Black person has, a white person has 700.
I’ll never get my head around this. We are very obviously a racist country being dragged through the dirt by such an obviously racist president, and an administration that is stuffed to overflowing with rich white men.
And they don’t want us talking about that. In fact, they are ordering places like our universities not to. Our government is under attack. Our museums are under attack. And our schools are under attack.
Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) have become evil words that will not be discussed in Trump’s racist America.
Well they will be here, dammit, because DEI was never about favoritism, it was and is about FAIRNESS.
We are not a just and fair country. Not even close … and it is vital for white people to start doing a whole helluva lot better, and start speaking out about what is so obviously wrong.
When I go to the polls on Nov. 3, my issue will be supporting candidates who support EVERYBODY, and not the few.
I will go to my grave working to build a country where all men and women are created equal, and “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
I am begging you to do the same.
D. Earl Stephens
D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. Follow @EarlofEnough
