Trump’s white-nationalist dog whistles in Warsaw
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By Jonathan Capehart,
Okay, show of hands. How many of you watched President Trump’s speech in Warsaw? That’s the one where he finally gave full-throated support to Article 5 guaranteeing mutual defense of NATO allies. But not before a fair bit of lecturing (or hectoring depending on where you are in Europe) about defense spending.
Anyway, there was a line during Trump’s oration that sounded like an off-beat cymbal in his rhetorical sis-boom-bah in “defense of [Western] civilization itself.”
We write symphonies.” What on Earth does that have to do with anything? It’s bad enough Trump is doing the one thing his predecessors studiously avoided: engaging in the battle-of-civilizations talk that inflames anger and tensions with Muslims, particularly in the Middle East. In that one line, taken in context with everything else Trump said, what I heard was the loudest of dog whistles. A familiar boast that swells the chests of white nationalists everywhere. And Trump’s seeming non sequitur would have gone right over my head were it not for the past white-chauvinist musings of Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa).
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