We all have that one family member who likes to constantly talk shit about minorities right? Come on, you know, that one uncle, or that one father or husband you have who constantly says and tweets racist sentiments and willfully employs many white-supremacists?
You don’t? Oh, cool. Me either. I guess I count myself lucky in that none of my close friends or nuclear or extended members are white nationalists.
Or, is it luck? Maybe if you find that this is your circumstance then your family is simply steeped in immorality and being a douchebag is in your genes and that’s why you find yourself not tipping your Postmates driver when he brings you some yellowtail?
Of course, we can’t pick who our father is. Or our husband. We Must All Marry Pathetic Man with Lot of Money, Yes?
So, if you are a creepy mannequin such as Melania Trump or, say, Ivanka Trump, and you and your sallow white-collar-criminal trust-fund-creep husband happen to be, absent from even the flimsiest qualifications, appointed to high-ranking positions within the White House, and you are forced to say something flattering about your bonafide bigot piece of shit father, what are you supposed to do?
Surely having a backbone and just admitting you’re a languid and complacent ineffectual zero of a human being isn’t much of an option.
Eventually, you’re going to have to give a speech at the Republican National Convention as part of your job, and, as part of your speech, you’re going to have to reap praise on a buffoon of a man who is outwardly vile.
How should you couch this? What types of euphemisms should you use? How to you downplay the overt bigotry of a fat orange baby?
This dog-whistling and misdirection is usually handled by the pencil-dicked white-supremacist right-hand-man Stephen Miller, whose breath smells of turpentine.
Miller likely wrote this portion of Ivanka’s speech. The strategy bore out that she flashed a smile of acknowledged embarrassment, and then minimized President Trump’s rhetoric as being “unfiltered.”
“My father has strong convictions. He knows what he believes and he says what he thinks. Whether you agree with him or not, you always know where he stands. I recognize that my dad’s communication style is not to everyone’s taste and I know that his tweets can feel a bit unfiltered… He is so unapologetic about his beliefs that he has caused me and countless Americans to take a hard look at our own convictions and ask ourselves what do we stand for?”
That’s a good question. Remember the Central Park Five? They were a group of black teenagers who were falsely accused of gang-rape and later had their names cleared. They spent significant time in prison – while being innocent.
Donald Trump spent $85,000 on an advertisement which ran in multiple New York newspapers, which, in reference to these innocent kids who were exonerated based on DNA evidence, read:
BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!
What do we stand for again, Ivanka? I’d like to be specifically reminded.
After a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville which saw an innocent bystander murdered by Neo-Nazis in bi-curious looking polo shirts, President Trump said there were “good people on both sides.”
This is what Donald Trump stands for.
In a May of 2018 meeting on immigration at the White House, Donald Trump said, in reference to undocumented immigrants, on record, “These aren’t people. These are animals.”
He does this type of thing every day. He married an undocumented immigrant. This is what he stands for. Bullshit and racism.
Melania Trump didn’t address the issue at her indiscernible Slovenian language speech at the RNC, and opted to simply wear a communist dictatorship inspired pseudo-military outfit and talk about her garden.
So, flat unacknowledgement – a decent method of deflection. There are several other strategies incorporated by Republicans to minimize the filth that Donald Trump spews. Coy faux-denial and blatant propaganda are most common.
Yet, I would submit that the most noble manner of handling this situation would be unabashed honesty. It might be difficult, but on your deathbed you’d feel better if you just said something like:
“We all know my father is a racist piece of shit. But, some of us believe we can benefit financially if he is reelected. Frankly, all of us are some variation of xenophobic and racist as well. I myself have almost no life experience outside of buying clothes in Manhattan and look down upon people who don’t descend from real estate empires. I could give a fuck about America and I’m not even vaguely educated on the subject to begin with. My dad thinks racist people like it when he says racist things. They are old pathetic losers whose lives have passed them by and they are misinformed narcissistic idiots – but they do vote. Anyway, I have to go treat my husband’s ear infection now. Auf wiedersehen.”
Of course, it’s easy for me to recommend this alteration of Stephen Miller’s speech, since I am not related to and don’t associate with any racist assholes so therefore I don’t have to defend them.
I don’t want to come off as condescending – but let that be a lesson.