Donald Trump made quite a splash this Martin Luther King Jr. weekend with the overtly racist (and patently false) assertion that Representative John Lewis’s congressional district is “crime infested” and “falling apart.” Even without Trump’s trademark old-school racism (usually on display with comments about “inner cities”), his words were just patently false, so there’s really no defense for them—but that didn’t stop anyone for trying.
The go-to defense was that Lewis’ criticism of Trump—Lewis said he was “not a legitimate president” due to ongoing concern over Trump’s ties to Russia—was out of line compared to how Republicans reacted to President Obama, but we all know that’s absurd. First, Obama’s popularity during his transition was twice that of Trump’s, and don’t let anyone tell you polls don’t matter, since they only got the election results wrong by a handful of points. There was far less reason for anyone to question President Obama—people liked him.
More importantly, Donald Trump himself was a huge proponent of the “birther” movement that questioned whether President Obama was born in the United States and could constitutionally be president. Trump himself also threw a fit on Twitter when he thought Obama lost the popular vote (he didn’t) but still won the election in 2012.
Then, there was FBI Director Comey himself making excuses for silence on Trump and Russia by saying the FBI never comments on investigations in open forums. Just … let that sink in.
Once again, this would all be too absurd to believe if it were fiction.
(image via screengrab)
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