It was certainly bound to happen. After all, one of Donald Trump’s earliest backers hosted the same crowd when she was running for national office. This is what happens when a politician plays into the anger with more anger and blame and bluster and racism and Islamophobia and, above all, ignorance.
Look, Bernie Sanders has some angry Democrats at his rallies, but Sanders is a responsible, thinking adult who knows that the way you channel anger is to turn it into positive energy and constructive policies.
But the Republican Party has denied climate change for so long that they didn’t see the political climate shifting underneath their Gucci loafers. And now that both the planet and the right-wing are heating up to the point that there’s no turning back, we have our first political super storm. And it’s ugly. Trump has fed the storm for years with his claim that President Obama was not a citizen and that Ted Cruz should be barred from the GOP race. He’s also claimed his own reality when it comes to his finances, his bankruptcies and, in the aftermath of his canceled Chicago rally, the claim that if he hadn’t brought up immigration, it wouldn’t have been an issue in this campaign. Of course it would have: the difference is that maybe we could have had an adult conversation about it, not a white-hot ethnic slur-fest that’s resulting in more Hispanics applying for citizenship so they can vote against Trump (shudder) in November.
The motley crew’s endorsement of Trump – from the Klan to the Illinois Nazi Party to Chris Christie to Ben Carson – makes it quite clear that his message is dangerous and that he needs to be careful about stoking emotional outbursts. Trump needs to rebuke all of this in a national statement, but I’m not holding my breath.
In the meantime, the deniers will ensure that the atmosphere just gets hotter.
