Trump's Rise Empowered White Nationalists To Be More Open With Their Hate

Donald Trump is not responsible for racism in America. But his ascent to the presidency undeniably gave racists in the United States all the permission they needed to wear their hatred and bigotry on their sleeves. The mask has been torn off, and we are now seeing how deeply the hatred in this country runs. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins talks about how all of this has happened with author and Salon.com contributor Chauncey DeVega.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Donald Trump rose to power in part because he played on the white fears and insecurities among what was at the time, not a huge portion of the population. But after several years of fomenting this just racial hatred, really, among his base and allowing its to spread and grow, this racism has almost become a tenant of the official Republican party at this point. They're no longer trying to hide it. They actively believe that the white people in the Republican party are the victims and everybody else are the aggressors. Joining me to talk about this is Salon.com contribute, contributor, Chauncey DeVega and Chauncey of course, he has his own podcast as well. He's been a great friend of the show for many years. So Chauncey, welcome back to Ring of Fire.

Always a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

And you know, I, I go to Salon.com pretty much every day, every time I go there, you've got a piece up. So I don't know how you're able to churn these things out so quickly. It's phenomenal and I love it. So let's chat though. You, you've had a couple pieces recently that I want to talk with, including one, you know, about a conversation with Joe Walsh. So let's, let's start there because Joe Walsh, as we all know, came, came to power as part of the tea party movement back in 2010. But even though maybe his politics haven't changed so much, he does recognize what the Republican party has become. So, so tell us about that.

The enemy of my enemy is very often going to have to be my friend. And that's a lesson a lot of these liberal progressive, quote unquote, pro-democracy types with their purity tests are gonna have to learn. Joe Walsh, tea party Joe Walsh, anti Obama Joe Walsh, now truth teller Joe Walsh. I think he is one of the premier truth tellers now. Former he's an unabashed conservative. He owns his lineage. He owns his relationship to the Republican party and that monster that it has fully become in terms of full on embracing of white supremacy, terrorism, January 6th neo fascism. And he and I had a series of conversations, a lot of wonderful truth telling there. And the basic point being, this is an existential struggle for this country. The Republican party, these Neo fascists, the Republican fascists, whatever you wanna call them, will just destroy America, instead of compromising.

They will destroy this country and we have public opinion data on this actually in terms of white Trumpists and other Republicans embracing fascism. If they're going to be forced to share any type of political, social, economic, and other power black and brown folk, instead of leaning into the futures, Joe Walsh and I discussed, Donald Trump, the Republican fascist who idolized an adored of Vladimir Putin. They're willing to burn it down to restore some fictive MAGA golden age where white folk like them, at least in their minds, ruled over every area of American life. That is the existential struggle we're in. And unfortunately too many of our white brothers and sisters, especially these white suburban centrist Democrat liberal types, they are not prepared to embrace that truth. They're in deep, deep, deep denial.

They, they really are. And you know, we, we do see inklings of this coming out and I wouldn't even say inklings, you know, it's full blown an assault right now with the legislation coming from Republicans at the state level. You know, they're, they're not trying to hide it anymore.