Trump Says Democrats Want Immigrants to ‘Infest’ the U.S.
One of the paradoxes of modern-day American politics is that white identity politics can be a potent political platform, as long as you don’t call it that. Policies with racist effects are often popular; explicit racism is verboten.
Thus Donald Trump can win the presidency while running, as my colleague Adam Serwer documented, on a program of discrimination, but when Corey Stewart, a Republican politician in Virginia, makes his white-identity politics too explicit he gets shunned by the GOP.
Sometimes, however, the president’s mask slips, usually at moments of national crisis, and , as memorably put it. This happened after race riots in Charlottesville, when Trump . And it’s happening again now in the context of separating families at the borders.
