Politico Says Confederate Flag is Helping Donald Trump
It was one year ago today, and one day after Donald Trump announced his presidential campaign by warning that Mexican rapists are invading our country, that a racist murderer ended the lives of nine black parishioners while telling them that our country is being taken over by black rapists. As a result of the Charleston mass shooting, South Carolina Republicans were quickly pressured to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of the statehouse, and when he was asked about it about two weeks later, Trump said he agreed with the decision:
I would take it down, yes. I think they should put it in a museum. Let it go. Respect whatever it is you have to respect because it was a point in time, but put it in a museum. But I would take it down, yes.
Since then, Trump has continued run a campaign that trades on white resentment and racism, and has become more and more overtly racist over time, and according to Politico Magazine, Confederate flag adherents have noticed, and they’re not holding a grudge:
“It’s like they say: Take one flag down and 1,000 go up,” says Tim Boone, who as founder of Rebel-lution, one of the many pro-flag activist groups that formed last summer and handed out “No votes for turncoats” stickers targeting the newly unpopular Haley and anyone else who might vote to take down a flag.
…“I’m voting for him despite that [his statement about the flag],” says Boone. “The reason I’ll vote for Trump is probably the reason I feel most of the country is going to vote for him: They’re sick of the political correctness. We’re so worried about the minority getting their feelings hurt, with the flag, with transgender bathrooms and all that. Sometimes, the minority has to understand that their feelings get hurt too, and majority rules most of the time.”
The article goes on to explain that despite Trump’s ostensible stance against the flag, supporters of the Confederate flag still feel a kindred spirit in Trump. Perhaps that’s because Politico and other media outlets gave Trump a little too much credit for his stance on the flag at the time. Politico, for example, headlined Trump’s weak statement “Trump to Confederate flag: You’re fired!”
He wasn’t asked until well after every other candidate had been asked, and mostly agreed with the decision that Nikki Haley eventually made, and he wasn’t pressed to explain why he thought it should be taken down. This was no stinging rebuke of the Confederate flag as a racist symbol, it was a belated sidestep.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
