Reporters have been fervently asking President Donald Trump to denounce white supremacy since Tuesday night’s debate, when he told the violent far-right street gang the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” But to be honest, this request is getting repetitive, and there’s a better way for the press to make its point: Connect the dots between Trump’s response to these questions and his continued white supremacist rhetoric even after the debate, at his Wednesday night rally in Duluth, Minnesota.
And so far, a handful of media outlets are on the right track.
“Biden will turn Minnesota into a refugee camp — and he said that,” Trump falsely claimed at his rally, “overwhelming public resources, overcrowding schools, and inundating your hospitals.”
He also attacked Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who immigrated to America during childhood as a refugee from Somalia — with his supporters engaging in their signature chant of “Lock her up” — as he then said Omar “tells us how to run our country.”
On Thursday morning’s edition of CNN’s New Day, co-anchor John Berman made the connection during a panel discussion. “While the president says, you know, ‘Oh, I’ve always condemned that,’ without saying what it is — while he refuses to say the words ‘white supremacists’ — he's using language again that will delight white supremacists. He went to Minnesota and held a rally there, and attacked Ilhan Omar, the first woman Muslim ever elected to Congress, and warned of refugee camps in Minnesota.”
After showing a clip, Berman explained further: “The part there that is, honestly, it’s part of the lexicon of white supremacist groups and the way that the Proud Boys talk — ‘our country, our country.’ As if this U.S. member of Congress, who happens to have a skin color different than most of the Proud Boys, isn't part of ‘our country.’”