Tweet blind test: Was it David Duke or Donald Trump?

AROUND THE BLOCK

I learned…

I learned today that someone posted the following tweets: 

"So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly...

"...and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how...

"...it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!"

Ever curious, I went on Twitter to find out who would post such a vile harangue urging elected Congresswomen of color to “go back” to the country they came from, even though most of them were actually born in the United States.

Was it David Duke, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Steve King, Stephen Miller, Sebastian Gorka, someone channeling Robert W. Welch, Jr. (founder of the John Birch Society)? Nope, not them.

Who then?

I took a shot in the dark and guess what? I got it. It was none only than the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, who tweeted this contemptible claptrap.

But, as the Times’ Peter Baker reported, “it should have surprised few who have watched the way he has governed a multicultural, multiracial country the last two and a half years.”

Baker continued, “When it comes to race, Mr. Trump plays with fire like no other president in a century. While others who occupied the White House at times skirted close to or even over the line, finding ways to appeal to the resentments of white Americans with subtle and not-so-subtle appeals, none of them in modern times fanned the flames as overtly, relentlessly and even eagerly as Mr. Trump."

Baker went on to quote Douglas A. Blackman, the author of “Slavery by Another Name, a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of racial servitude in the America between the Civil War and World War II.  

“In many ways, this is the most insidious kind of racial demagoguery. The president has moved beyond invoking the obvious racial slanders of 50 years ago — clichés like black neighborhoods ‘on fire’ — and is now invoking the white supremacist mentality of the early 1900s, when anyone who looked ‘not white’ could be labeled as unwelcome in America.”

You know in advertising there's a commonplace gimmick — the blind taste test — Coke vs. Pepsi being the most famous.

Can you imagine blind testing that tweet? C'mon folks, was that tweet from David Duke or the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES?

Has it finally gotten this low?

But wait, what’s that echoing in my head?

Oh yeah, someone saying, “I am the least racist person you have ever met.” 

Who is that person again? Oh, now I remember – Donald J. Trump, the President of the United States.

In the tragically ironic words of the Ukrainian comic Yakov Smirnoff,  “What a country!”