Donald Trump stands on the stage before speaking at a campaign event on Aug. 3, 2024, in Atlanta. | Source: The Washington Post / Getty
At some point, Republicans are going to have to admit they are just as race-obsessed as they claim Democrats are. The difference is that when Donald Trump and the MAGA-fied GOP use race to galvanize voters, their “race-baiting” is typically done to appease white people.
Their adherence to the white nationalist “Great Replacement Theory;” their propaganda-reliant war on Critical Race Theory, DEI, and non-whitewashed Black history; their laughable insistence that it’s actually white people who are being discriminated against—all of these are examples of pro-white Republicans playing the pro-white “race card.”
Then there’s the way Trump and his Trump-humpers try to appeal to Black voters, which may not be quite as insidious as their campaign to placate white and fragile America, but it’s arguably even more obnoxious because of how superficial, transparent, insulting and revealing of how little they actually know about Black people and their attempts to court more Black people are.
Just look at Trump’s recent rally in Atlanta, where Black people were strategically placed right behind the podium in order to present the illusion that Trump’s rallies aren’t as overwhelmingly white as a “Put Raisins in EVERYTHING” cooking contest.
I mean, come on y’all. We all know what a Trump audience looks like. Even when Trump spoke at the Black Conservative Federation Gala in South Carolina during Black History Month, the audience was reportedly mostly white. The audience was so Caucasian that Trump made this racist-ass joke about it: “The lights are so bright in my eyes I can’t see too many people out there. But I can only see the Black ones. I can’t see any white ones. That’s how far I’ve come.”
Well, this time, Trump’s campaign has made it absolutely certain that the few Black people peppered into the sea of whiteness that his rallies usually resemble were front and center. Some people online have even speculated that they weren’t all Black people because a few of the tokens seen front and center kind of had a Robert Downy Jr. on Tropic Thunder look about them. I mean, it’s all unprovable speculation of course, but the Soul Man vibes were real in that camera shot.
Whether the few Black people at Trump’s Atlanta rally were all real or some were as fake as the AI images white Trump supporters use to pretend Black Trump supporters exist in yuge numbers, it should be clear that their strategic placement right behind the mic was intentional, and that wider shots of the audience would reveal it.
Anyway, during the rally, Trump defaulted to his usual dog whistle attacks on Harris, calling her a “really low IQ individual” as if he’s just itching for social media to remind him again that he thinks windmills cause cancer, disinfectant injections might cure COVID, and that batteries are too big for military boats and would cause them to sink causing passengers to be electrocuted and/or eaten by sharks.
Trump also brought to the stage real Black Trump supporter Michaelah Montgomery, who went viral in April in a video that showed her hugging Trump after saying to him, “I don’t care what the media tells you, Mr. Trump, we support you!” while the ex-president was visiting a Chick-fil-A in Atlanta before attending a fundraising event in the area.
What was Montgomery’s role as one of Trump’s token rally attendees this time around? Well, apparently, she was there to do what is almost always the one job a Black Trump supporter is there to do: Lie to Black people about Black people in front of white people.
“They don’t want to talk policy, they just want to use propaganda to steal your vote,” Montgomery said just before making a statement of propaganda that had nothing to do with policy. “The left is trying to tout this woman as a savior for the black community, but all she’s done is hurt the black community since she came into the game. See, the first step in destroying the black community is to dismantle the black family. So aside from her record as a prosecutor, why don’t we ask Mrs. Willie Brown if Kamala Harris cares about Black families.”
Montgomery wasn’t very specific about Harris’ record as a prosecutor—which wouldn’t have made sense anyway since that record shows she was somewhat “tough on crime,” which, supposedly, is a positive thing in the MAGA world so long as it doesn’t include Jan. 6 convicts and the commander-in-34-felonies-and-counting. Instead, she continued the same racist and sexist narrative that white conservatives have been harping on for weeks regarding a relationship she had in the 1990s with former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown. Montgomery decided to be the Black voice to take things a step further and call Harris a homewrecker whose relationship with Brown served to “dismantle the Black family.” Of course, if Montgomery actually knew things, she would know Brown and his wife at the time had been very publicly separated and estranged since 1982, more than a full decade before the relatively brief romance between he and Harris began in 1994.
But, again, Montgomery’s job wasn’t to be truthful—nobody in Trump’s world really has that job. Her job was to be Trump’s Black friend, which he certainly needed after his racist meltdown during his disastrous performance at NABJ last week, during which he decided it was his white business to question Harris’ racial identity.
Again, these people are obsessed with race while pretending America is colorblind. It’s pathetic.
SEE ALSO:
‘White Dudes For Harris’ Is Being Called Racist By Racist Conservatives
‘If You Don’t Vote Donald Trump, You Ain’t Black,’ Michigan Rep. John James Says At RNC
