Donald Trump doesn’t have a history of compassion for the plight of minority groups or women, despite his absurd claims that he’s somehow a champion for both.
Over the course of the last three years, Trump has i) referred to Mexicans as “rapists” and drug dealers, ii) implicitly characterized Latin American immigrants as insects, iii) made lewd comments about menstrual cycles, iv) branded Haiti, El Salvador and African countries “sh*tholes, v) tacitly maligned African Americans at virtually every turn.
Given that, you might be inclined to think Trump is a racist and a misogynist, but that’s not the case. Rather, the issue is that Donald Trump is simply more concerned about the plight of another historically disadvantaged group in American society: White males.
See, white males really have it bad in America and that’s been the case as far back as anyone can remember. The latest example of white men getting the short end of the stick is Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh who everyone knows grew up poor and, as he told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, had to “bust his butt” to get into Yale, because Yale is a place where white men are traditionally in short supply.
I’m just kidding. White male privilege is as American as apple pie and to say that the demise of the white man in this country is greatly exaggerated would be the understatement of the year.
But Trump’s political capital waxes and wanes based on how convinced white men are that their reign at the top of the American social pyramid is coming to an end. In that regard, the Brett Kavanaugh story plays right into Trump’s hands. This is, according to Trump and certain Republicans, Kavanaugh is another example of a blue-blooded American white male fending off a character assassination attempt by “liberals” and – gasp! – women. What’s this country coming to if the two-tiered justice system that favors white males over everyone else is crumbling before our very eyes?!
On Tuesday, while speaking to reporters on the South Lawn above the din of whirring helicopter rotors, Trump said the following about how worried “young males” should be about their future in a country where he says due process is being eroded:
Got that? When asked what he would “say to young men in America”, Trump responded that he would tell them it’s “a very scary time”. And let’s not pretend like he doesn’t mean “young white men”, because you damn well know he does.
Asked if he had a message for young women, Trump said this:
Women are doing great.
This is the very definition of absurd. There is exactly nothing “scary” about being a young white man in America. That’s the opposite of “scary”. Being a young white man in America is the rough equivalent of being a lion cub in the savannas. That is, barring illness or some unforeseen turn of circumstance, you’re on the way to becoming an unchallenged apex predator simply by virtue of being born.
But perhaps the most absurd part about Trump’s lament for the “scary” plight of the young American white male in the face of what he claims is a lack of due process and a creeping trend towards the presumption of guilt, is that this is the same Donald Trump who once called for the execution of five teen boys who were falsely accused of raping a woman in Central Park.
In 1989, Trump paid $85,000 for an ad calling for the Central Park Five to be executed:
Years later, after they were exonerated, Trump not only refused to apologize, he actually doubled down.
We’ll leave you with a brief trip down memory lane via The New York Times…
Donald J. Trump rarely apologizes. When it comes to the case of the Central Park Five, he has never even come close.
In 1989, after these black and Latino teenagers from Harlem were accused of assaulting and raping a white woman in Central Park, Mr. Trump spent $85,000 placing full-page ads in the four daily papers in New York City, calling for the return of the death penalty.
“Muggers and murderers,” he wrote, “should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.” Though he didn’t refer to the teenagers by name, it was clear to anyone in the city that he was referring to them.
Incredibly, 14 years after their sentences were vacated based on DNA evidence and the detailed and accurate confession of a serial rapist named Matias Reyes, Mr. Trump has doubled down.
“They admitted they were guilty,” he said in a statement to CNN this month. “The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous.”
