A Racist President

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On the one hand, I’m happy to put the recent years of bombast and subversion of Democracy behind. But I had an insight today I have to record.

The pre-Biden president vaulted into office with rants against immigrants from the south and promoted a wall to keep them out. But it struck me this morning that his real target was not Spanish-speaking columns streaming North but the previous president, a Black man.

The soon-to-be-incarcerated crook,cheat, and master of bombast was outraged: a Black man dared to mock him at a televised, press-sponsored presidential roast. With studied wit, T was mocked in a setting where he couldn’t respond. He sulked. He couldn’t clap his hands in self-applause — or rise in fury.

Obama was popular. His presidential ratings were consistently better than anything achieved by the balding womanizer of T-Towers. Obama was athletic and trim. He was Harvard Law. He was beautifully articulate. Read his memoir! But his abiding offense — in the T’s eyes — was that he was Black.

Obama, a Black man, had a full spotlight. That was disgusting, a perverse affront to the thin-skinned T.

Self-doubts afflicted him. Obama’s poise needled him. T’s self-doubts were exposed in his obsessive need to applaud himself whenever he strode to a microphone. Clearly he feared that if HE didn’t start it, the applause might never begin.

The self-doubts were papered over despite their blatant exposure in each new building, each new self-advertising Trump-Tower. To keep his name alive he endorsed everything from burgers to handkerchiefs.

Obama never had to win over the attention of his audience. He would never stoop to endorsing jockey briefs or golfing shirts. Trump wanted space on Mt Rushmore, too. It won’t happen. But I’d like to see an Obama statue in Chicago (or Kansas).

T’s animus was only secondarily against invented rapists and robbers from south of the border. It was primarily against a Black man who had the gall to be popular, articulate, athletic, charming . . . and presidential!

It’s a story for another time to figure out why T couldn’t openly suggest shipping Blacks — and Obama –– back to Africa. He had to resort to a soft-target: shipping Spanish-speakers back across the Southern border and walling out crowded columns headed North.

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