WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 8, 2020: Woman Wearing MAGA Hat at the Million MAGA March. (Shutterstock)
The other day, an old musician friend of mine in Nashville, sent along a zinger he knew would wind me up.
He’s only too aware I’m an easy target these days, because try as I might to stay loose during this relentless GOP attack on America, I’m wound tighter than one of his piano strings.
My troublemaking buddy had just come across a column in USA TODAY that needed to be seen to be believed, so he made sure I did just that.
It confirmed my worries that USA TODAY has almost become a caricature of itself in its decades-long pursuit of playing it straight down the middle to offer us both sides of a story or issue, even if one side is taking on water as it sinks deeper into the sewer.
Before getting out my plunger and clearing their latest clog, a quick word about that paper: I used to really like it. It wasn’t pretentious, and when it was born in the early-1980s was a lively alternative to the stuffy national papers like The New York Times.
We used to call it “reader friendly” in the newspaper business. If you laid a copy of USA TODAY and The New York Times next to each other, the former invited you in, and the latter stiff-armed you away.
Sadly, both papers have lost their way during the most dangerous time in America since the Civil War. Instead of treating the Republicans relentless battering of our democracy with the urgency it deserves, these papers have gone off looking for something comparable on the other side that simply doesn't exist.
On Monday morning, USA TODAY continued its death march, when it broke out a column from one of its pundits, Nicole Russell, who wanted the paper’s readership to know that she resented being thought of as a bigot even if she proudly and defiantly supports one.
Here’s the column, with the wordy slammer: “I CAN BE LET DOWN BY TRUMP WITHOUT REGRETTING VOTING FOR HIM”
Here’s the subhead: Voting for President Donald Trump doesn’t make us racists or bigots. His poor choices and mistakes are his own.
You can see where this was going …
I had to check several times to see if what I was reading was parody, but decided when I finally ended this free-flowing abdication of decency that it might have described a Trump supporter better than anything I have come across.
It was certainly an improvement on anything I had written on this sore subject, and longtime readers will know I’ve hammered away at it with regularity.
I’ve been pretty plain that proud MAGAs like Russell vote for Trump because of the racism, not in spite of it.
Seems pretty simple that if you support a bigot, you are a bigot, and there’s nothing lower than that.
By my reckoning, racism shouldn’t be treated as just a pesky little thing, because it is the thing.
I’ve had it with people like Russell, who have given themselves the privilege to minimize pollutants in our lives, just so they can breathe easier while acting out their warped beliefs.
And who are people like Russell? Well, when she started one of her death sentences this way: “As a Christian and conservative …” she gave the whole deadly game away.
Because as we all painfully know by now “Christian conservatives” are real paragons of virtue in 2026 America — poor put-upon souls who have heard enough about all those inconvenient truths in those silly history books that should just be banned for nagging us about unimportant stuff like our our ghastly bout with slavery, and myriad human rights abuses.
In their upper-crust Christian lives, there’s only one book that really matters, you see — the one featuring the brown, liberal guy who stood against social injustice, and preferred people were fed, clothed, and treated equally. He also didn't seem to be a real fan of compulsive sinners, who refuse to apologize for anything.
Except they’d rather just forget about that last part, so they can stay good and comfortable in these phony, pillowy lives they’ve weaved for themselves.
These people are just too damn much to take.
Russell excused her racism by typing, she’s “made peace with the fact that democracy is imperfect and that politicians are flawed.”
Failing to return a call from a constituent is a flaw, depicting Black men and women as apes, is despicable and should never, ever be tolerated from anybody, much less the President of the United States.
It is a deal-breaker and should damn well be a job-ender.
By the end of her whitewashing of the orange bigot, Russell worked her way to this special place:
“But for now, Trump's improving America more than (Kamala) Harris ever could have. That's why I'd vote for him again, even if I keep having to defend it.
“Improving America …”
She is telling us that there is nothing he could do that would shake her defense of a vile man who bragged he could shoot somebody like her in the middle of the street, and still wouldn’t lose her support.
He knows her better than she knows herself.
She is an unmovable object, and will defend whatever comes tomorrow no matter what happens today.
You know, maybe instead of scolding Russell for her defense of a disgusting bigot, I should have saved everyone a lot of time, and just spoken to her in wholesome, conservative Christian language that she understands and condones:
“Quiet, piggy.”
D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.