"You're Being Ugly"

I grew up in Alabama, and I'm old enough to remember acting when acting bratty would earn the rebuke, "You're being ugly."

Folks, Donald Trump is getting bad polling news, and he's acting ugly. We can count on it getting worse. 

Trump is losing support where it counts. Older voters, particularly women, and independents are turning against him. A recent FoxNews poll has Biden ahead of Trump by 13 points among independents and--hold your pants--17 among seniors. Trump won both groups in 2016. Even white evangelical support is crumbling, a possible explanation for Trump's insistence that churches be allowed to open on Memorial Day weekend.

Of course, Trump was on the golf course Sunday, not in church or worshiping online.

When the going gets tough, Trump whines louder, especially on Twitter.

• He repeated his conspiracy theory/accusation that TV critic Joe Scarborough committed murder while he was a member of Congress. Accusations like these damage democracy, but they also hurt real people. The widower of the Scarborough staffer who died in 2001 issued a request that Twitter delete Trump's tweets on the grounds that they are so harmful to him.
• Trump even attacked Democratic member of Congress Conor Lamb, a Marine vet, as "an American fraud," misspelling Lamb's name on Twitter. He labeled Lamb "a puppet for Lazy Nancy Pelosi," even though Lamb was one of few House members to vote against Pelosi's speakership.
• He retweeted several offerings from a GOP activist who can only be labeled a racist. One RT called called Hillary Clinton a "skank." Another called Nancy Pelosi "PolyGrip." A third went all the way in, combining the race card and portraying Stacey Abrams as fat.

This series of tweets was especially revealing, especially concerning Trump's racism. It indicates that Trump didn't come upon those tweets by accident but was scrolling through the troll's feed. (The account is John K. Stahl.) The guy is racist as hell, though he actually denies it in one tweet. That's what they do. In the same batch of tweets Trump was scrolling, Stahl referred to Abrams as Shamu and to Elizabeth Warren by Trump's nickname, Pocahontas. (What color is Shamu?)

In short, Donald Trump knows what kind of material he's retweeting and spends time in racist accounts.

Big Day with Trump and the Nazis

Every once in awhile Trump lets out his authentic Nazi. That sounds like a lot, but you know, his dad was a Nazi and his ex-wife, long before he was running for president, said he kept Hitler's speeches on his nightstand. 

Think for a minute how important something must be to Trump to get him to read.

Thursday was one of those "do your Nazi self" days for Donald. 

He visited a Ford plant in Michigan. Besides being told to wear a mask, wearing a mask, and then taking off the mask, Trump offered this beauty (video here): 

The company founded by a man named Henry Ford. Good blood lines, good blood lines, if you believe in that stuff, you've got good blood.

There's a lot going on here. First, Henry Ford was a strident anti-Semite, and his companies retooled their German operations to produce military equipment for the Nazis. (So did GM.) Moreover, Trump's dad was all about eugenics, the Nazi-friendly science of which groups had "good genes" and which did not. Trump seems obsessed with genetics. "Good blood lines," he said yesterday.

Over on Israel, you can bet Haaretz picked up the story. So did the Anti-Defamation League, which has a resource page on Henry Ford.

You know who else would have picked up on Trump's reference to Ford? American Nazis and other racists, whose own materials Trump has frequently retweeted.

At the Ford plant, Trump also repeated his lie about having been named Michigan Man of the Year. He's never received such an award. 

Trump also took the time to rage-tweet about FoxNews in his distinctive Nazi-whispering way.

Many will disagree, but @FoxNews is doing nothing to help Republicans, and me, get re-elected on November 3rd. Sure, there are some truly GREAT people on Fox, but you also have some real “garbage” littered all over the network, people like Dummy Juan Williams, Schumerite Chris....

 ....Hahn, Richard Goodstein, Donna Brazile, Niel Cavuto, and many others. They repeat the worst of the Democrat speaking points, and lies. All of the good is totally nullified, and more. Net Result = BAD! CNN & MSDNC are all in for the Do Nothing Democrats! Fox WAS Great!

The first four names, best I can tell, target Jews and African Americans. "Dummy" Juan Williams. "Schumerite" Chris Hahn. I don't know anything about Richard Goodstein, but I have a guess. Note too the Nazi rhetoric of people as "garbage."

If you're missing the Nazi messages, that's on you. The Nazis are not.

(Remarkably, I wrote all this before Joe Biden's "ain't black" comment. It's not mine to speak on behalf of black Americans. As a white American, I think Biden's comment is regrettable. In any case, this column isn't an attempt to exempt Biden from criticism that's due him.)