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If' you're wondering how we got here, it's a story that goes like this:
White nationalists looked at Republican Party demographics in 2012 and said "we have an opening here" foreignpolicy.com/2012/11/13/the…
On social media, they began to reach out and seeking engagement with Republicans foreignpolicy.com/2013/03/28/fri…
These social media efforts became more robust over time and crystallized around one specific candidate cchs.gwu.edu/sites/cchs.gwu…
Only one Republican was willing to really do the work of reaching back to white nationalists in an explicit way politico.com/magazine/story…
That story was from before the election, BTW.
Once elected, he began to craft policies designed to keep and embolden that constituency washingtonpost.com/posteverything… and warontherocks.com/2017/04/a-dang…
This is one continuous story. There's no point in discussing what Trump can or can't do or say. This is the bargain he made to take power.
Much of the coverage yesterday had a tone of "he can still fix this." He can't. This is who he is, who he always was. No fix will stick.
For as long as he remains in office, we're going to be dealing with this problem. An emboldened WN movement that has come in from the cold.
And while Trump was the only candidate to openly court WNs, most GOP leadership was willing to tolerate him doing so in exchange for a win.
That has to change, and that change needs to entail much more than ritual tweets of disapproval.
There's no point in calling on Trump to change. If you're a Republican dismayed by his words, you should be calling on him to resign.
