Thread by @megbasham

Why am I not buying into the narrative that Trump’s accidental social media post is evidence of his latent racism? Or that Trump has presented some singular offense to the body politic? Because this is the oldest maneuver in the Democrats’ playbook.

We’ve seen it a million times—the left and their media allies take some mistake or totally innocent phrase on the part of a Republican and falsely depict it as racist or sexist. And no explanation or apology will satisfy them because they’re not really concerned about racism or sexism infecting politics. What they’re concerned about is protecting the effectiveness of a manipulative tool they can dishonestly wield against their opponents.

Let’s take a walk down memory lane.

In 2006 Democrats and their media allies claimed Virginia Senator George Allen was a racist for using what was to him a gibberish word, “macaca.” He said it offhand in reference to a troll who followed and harassed him on the campaign trail.

Dems insisted Allen was intentionally using a word that meant “monkey” in Portuguese and had been used in 19th century Belgian colonies as a slur against black people, even though Allen is not Belgian and his troll was Indian, not black.

Allen apologized and said he didn’t mean to use a word with any racial connotations. But of course Dems and the media did not accept that humble mea culpa, and throughout the campaign repeatedly referred to him as racist.

Allen ultimately lost, despite his apology.

Next let’s turn to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential run. Accused of sexist treatment towards women, Romney offered the inelegant response that he had “binders full of women” (by which he met their resumes) that he was considering hiring.

Democrats and the media insisted this showed his prejudice against women, even though the point of the remark was to illustrate that Romney was actually employing DEI standards in trying to fill his open positions with as many women as he could.

Throughout the race, the left never let up on painting him as having a bias against women.

Now, let’s dip into the way wayback machine of the Ronald Reagan presidency. Then, Reagan referred to the problem of welfare queens – – women who worked the welfare system to live lavish lifestyles on the public dole.

The legacy media and the Dems (which are essentially synonymous), insisted Reagan was racist AND sexist for these remarks.

This is a claim that they continue to make about one of our greatest presidents.

Coming back to more recent history, during the 2013 presidential race, the media and the Dems tagged Newt Gingrich as a racist for dubbing Obama the “food stamp president.”

Gingrich’s reason for doing so was obvious— Obama massively expanded welfare entitlements in his first term, especially food stamps, which grew by 50 percent.

Yet once again, throughout the campaign, the left called on Gingrich to apologize for his racist phrasing. Gingrich never did.

And it’s not just politicians with whom the left place this game. They routinely tried this maneuver on Rush Limbaugh because he was such an effective spokesperson for conservative values and policies.

Just one example—when Limbaugh tagged Michelle Obama as “uppity” for her entitled attitude, the media created a storm of controversy around him, insisting his criticism flowed from his bigotry toward black people,

I could go on and on with this. From Trent Lott’s innocent tribute to Storm Thurmond to Sarah Palin saying that Obama doesn’t see America the way ordinary middle class Americans do, there are hundreds of examples of the left putting on a histrionic display, pretending that some inadvertent remark or innocent comment is evidence of unprecedented racism.

So now, I’m not particularly moved now that they are applying the old strategy to Trump. Nor do I believe that Trump has made a unique and extreme mistake here. It definitely was a mistake and they need to tighten up their processes and standards. But in no way do I believe that this accident was disqualifying.

If you want to call that defending Trump, then so be it. But really it’s just remembering recent history.