U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with journalists onboard Air Force One en route to Miami, Florida, U.S., April 3, 2025.
THE ANSWER: Racism.
THE QUESTION: How in the hell did we get here?
There is no other way to explain the American-attacking Trump’s rise to power, and most important, his ability to hold onto it despite being easily the stupidest, most dishonest, and openly bigoted man to ever step foot in our White House.
Just four years after trying to take a blowtorch to our votes, he is busy incinerating our life’s savings, and making measles great again, yet tens of millions of Americans are still stubbornly standing in his corner no matter what.
And I am not talking about the millionaires and billionaires who have gobs of money to gain while these markets are intentionally shorted, either. I am talking about Joe and Jane America, who are watching their retirement savings go up in smoke. I am talking about farmer Fred, whose Trump sign that he has defiantly planted in his field is now worth more than the crops he is growing at a loss.
I am talking about people who you know, and maybe even live with.
Go ahead and say what you want about this wretched, burnt-orange monster (please), but it's your friends and family who still support him who are to blame for this terrible, terrible mess we are in right now.
Without them, there is no him.
You can pretend this isn’t true if it somehow makes you feel better. You can invent high-minded reasons for them to go so low with their vote. You can make pathetic excuses for their absurd recklessness, but when you do that, you are helping to spread the seeds of hate.
You simply do not get to support a racist without being one yourself, and Trump is the most notorious bigot of our times. It is the sickening secret sauce to his political success, and a decade after he burst onto scene with all the grace of s--- to a shingle, we have completely normalized it.
Like his endless lying, it’s a given.
You seldom see either of these things mentioned in our press anymore.
He has eliminating swaths of important Black history from our government records, and it is being met with a shrug. He is doing away with decades of work aimed at giving EVERYBODY a chance at the American dream and it is being met with surrender.
There is absolutely no need to do any of this, but it is nonetheless happening at a furious rate.
Why?
The truth is, Trump has an endless capacity and craving to hate. His insatiable appetite to stoke racial unrest seems to come from a place deep inside him where the lights went out, presumably after his racist parents made it clear even they couldn’t stand to have him around the house anymore.
His big sister, Maryanne, called him, “a brat,” who has “no principles. A man who is “cruel and can’t be trusted.” A “phony.”
Because nobody knows you better than your big sister ...
The very minute this loudmouth used the shaky platform built for him from his ridiculous reality TV show to attack Barack Obama’s citizenship it should have disqualified him from getting within 500 miles of a pigsty, much less the White House.
Instead, it was his opening, the thing that separated him, and the foundation for every terrible thing that has followed the past decade or so. We are in danger of losing our democracy after 250 years, because Donald Trump is a racist, not in spite of it.
It is the only reason he was able reclaim an office he has completely disgraced, and why I have decided to circle back and underline this sore subject today, as our country descends into the sewer while dragging as many countries as possible down with us.
It is why the very first thing he did upon harrumphing back into the White House for a second term was take a sledgehammer to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts across the United States.
Trump knew that was far more important to his supporters than all this relentless bull---- we were hearing about their phony concerns over the price of gas and eggs. You don’t drag a rebel flag to a rally because you need a job …
Viciously attacking DEI and people of color with alacrity was the art of the deal that put him back in a job he is completely unqualified for. It gave him the capital among his supporters to exact his heinous revenge on the courts and the people, who had the gall to try to hold him to account for assaulting women and our country.
He lied to them that everything would be better on Day 1. They didn't believe that, because what was really important was putting those uppity people of color in this country back in their place.
Sure the 401k they have sweated their lifetime to build is taking a terrible beating right now, but at least they don’t have to hear about those damn Tuskegee Airmen anymore ...
Shortly after President Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, he told the venerable journalist Bill Moyers, who was a staffer at the time:
“Well, I think we may have lost the south for your lifetime – and mine.”
He undershot that prediction a bit, but it’s the Johnson comment to Moyers which preceded that one a year or so earlier that hasn’t stopped ringing in my ears ever since Trump was improbably elected the first time in 2016:
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Everything starts with Trump’s unrivaled, and professional bigotry.
He, and his revolting party, are so good at it, that lately I am watching Democrats fall all over themselves warning of the use of “identity politics” in their messaging. People are turned off by that, we have been told.
Really now … because “identity politics” are the only thing that have been turning the Republican Party and their supporters on for decades …
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, and follow him on Bluesky here.
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