Culture & Society Blog: Trump's America: Trump, The GOP & Fox News Managed To Make Nazis Mainstream (Hitler Is Probably Laughing In His Grave At His Afterlife Win Of WW2!)

Jan 5, 2018

Trump's America: Trump, The GOP & Fox News Managed To Make Nazis Mainstream (Hitler Is Probably Laughing In His Grave At His Afterlife Win Of WW2!)

Background:
1. The Charlottesville Terror Incident: Conclusive Proof That The GOP & Its Media Networks Are Really Just Nazis Re-Labeled As Something Else (Such As "Nationalists", "Conservatives" etc.)
2. An Introduction To, & Overview Of, The Mainstream Corporate Media

3. Mitt Takes One Of Obama's Comments Out Of Context & Makes It His Campaign Strategy!

FLASHBACK: Cornel West & Rev. Traci Blackmon: Clergy in Charlottesville Were Trapped by Torch-Wielding Nazis

We continue our roundtable discussion on violence that erupted in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend as thousands of neo-Nazis, KKK members and other white nationalists began descending on the city to participate in the “Unite the Right” rally. Thousands of counterprotesters met in Charlottesville, including clergy, students, Black Lives Matter activists, and protesters with the anti-fascist movement known as “antifa.” We are joined by two clergy members and a local Black Lives Matter activist who helped organize the demonstration. Rev. Traci Blackmon is executive minister of Justice and Witness Ministries of the United Church of Christ. During a live interview with MSNBC at the march on Saturday, she was forced to flee as counterprotesters were attacked around her. Cornel West was also on site and describes the scene. We also speak with Jalane Schmidt, an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia.

How Trump, the GOP and Fox News became a Nazi movement ...

VIDEO: How Fox News is mainstreaming white supremacists and neo-Nazis

Fox News has been trying to normalize white supremacy for years. But since Donald Trump’s election, hosts, guests, and contributors on Fox are now openly defending white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

Everyone is well aware that Trump has been continually signaling his support to white supremacists since the 2016 presidential campaign. He retweets them, refuses to immediately disavow them, and even defendsthem. And Fox News is right there to validate him at every turn.

Fox News personalities repeat his talking points without question (and he repeats theirs). They claim that Trump has done everything he can to condemn these groups and everyone should accept it. They tell viewers to be more understanding of where neo-Nazis are coming from, but don't extend the same empathy to NFL athletes who have been peacefully protesting racial injustice by taking the knee during the pre-game national anthem. They praise Trump for not jumping to any conclusions. They make ridiculous comparisons that falsely equate white supremacists with minority groups fighting for equal rights. Fox host Tucker Carlson has even promoted a social media app that’s been called “a haven for white nationalists.”

When white supremacists hear the White House and a major news network repeating and amplifying their ideas, they rejoice because, according to Heidi Beirich at the Southern Poverty Law Center, “It builds their ranks ... because instead of being considered racist kooks by the majority of people, if their ideas are verified in places like Fox News or places like Breitbart, whatever the case might be, they have something to point to say I’m not extreme.” Beirich has called Fox News “the biggest mainstreamer of extremist ideas” and explained that “the horror of this is that people turn on their TV they go to cable, [they] assume this has got to be mainstream," but “what you find is radical right ideas being pushed on Fox.”

Since white supremacists and neo-Nazis “are deeply involved in politics, [and] are a constituency that is being pandered to at the highest level of political office,” and because Fox News is elevating their movement, Beirich urges mainstream outlets to “talk about their ideas, … to talk about the domestic terrorism that’s inspired by white supremacy, and … about hate crimes.”

Republicans kept saying that what we need are successful businessmen to run the government (irrespective of whether thier business was constructive or destructive). Politicians, with experience of how the United States Government works wasnt necessary, even damaging to the nation. And while lobbying does make the politicians appear to be corrupt (& they are because the system is corrupt and if they accept it then they have accepted corruption as a part of doing politics), the main abusers of Government power ALWAYS seems to be the one saying they want to reduce Government power (the right wing). With a business made successful from his rich father with a history of failed business propped up by debt and loans that he got because of his family history, we now have the perfect example of how dictator like and un-American a pure lazier faire corrupt crony capitalist can be.

Matthews: A US President sided with Nazis You only get one reputation, Jack Kennedy warned. Donald Trump has let himself get associated with those pictures ever since Saturday. That's plenty of time for the impression to sink in. Duration: 1:20

Ex-neo Nazi: What white supremacists hear from Trump Christian Picciolini used to be a leader in a white supremacist group. Now, he works to help others escape that racist world. He tells Lawrence O'Donnell what white supremacists and neo-Nazis hear when they listen to President Trump's rhetoric. Duration: 6:59

The Uncanny, Frightening Ways That Trump's America Mirrors Hitler's Germany Even the usually restrained Barack Obama warns Americans we're slipping dangerously close to authoritarianism.

President Obama has come right out and said it: "You have to tend to this garden of democracy, otherwise things can fall apart fairly quickly. And we've seen societies where that happens.”

Yes, he invoked Nazi Germany, adding, “Now, presumably, there was a ballroom in Vienna in the late 1920s or ’30s that looked and seemed as if it ― filled with the music and art and literature and the science that was emerging ― would continue into perpetuity. And then 60 million people died. And the entire world was plunged into chaos.”

It was a shocking reminder of Milton Mayer and his seminal work, They Thought They Were Free, first published back in 1955 by the University of Chicago Press.

Shortly after World War II, Mayer, an American journalist and college instructor, went to Germany and befriended a small group of 10 “ordinary Germans” who had lived and worked through the war, and interviewed them in depth.

Mayer’s burning question was, “How does something like Nazi Germany happen?”

What he learned was every bit as shocking as President Obama drawing the same parallels. He wrote, presciently, “Now I see a little better how Nazism overcame Germany - not by attack from without or by subversion from within, but with a whoop and a holler. It was what most Germans wanted - or, under pressure of combined reality and illusion, came to want. They wanted it; they got it; and they liked it.

“I came home a little bit afraid for my country, afraid of what it might want, and get, and like, under combined pressure of reality and illusion. I felt – and feel – that it was not German Man that I met, but Man. He happened to be in Germany under certain conditions. He might be here under certain conditions. He might, under certain conditions, be I.

“If I - and my countrymen - ever succumbed to that concatenation of conditions, no Constitution, no laws, no police, and certainly no army would be able to protect us from harm.”

Mayer tells the story largely through the words of the Germans he got to know during his year in Germany after the war. One, a college professor, told him:

“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security....

Why Trump’s cabinet meetings have a cult-like quality

Donald Trump hosted his first full cabinet meeting in June, and the political world wasn’t fully prepared for how much it departed from traditional presidential cabinet meetings. As regular readers may recall, the Republican went around the room, offering each member of his cabinet an opportunity to talk about how happy they are to be on his team.

The result was downright creepy. CNBC’s John Harwood‏, apparently flabbergasted, said at the time, “Honestly this is like a scene from the Third World.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and his staff quickly put together a satirical meeting in the senator’s conference room, mocking the tone and the rhetoric of Trump’s gathering.

The mockery apparently didn’t bother Trump World, because yesterday’s cabinet meeting was arguably worse.

Trump asked HUD Secretary Ben Carson to say grace, and Carson proceeded to thank God for “a president and for Cabinet members who are courageous, who are willing to face the winds of controversy in order to provide a better future for those who come behind us.” Then, as the Washington Post reported, it was Vice President Mike Pence’s turn.

Over nearly three minutes, Pence offered plaudit after plaudit after plaudit, praising Trump’s vision, his words, his strategy and his results in light of the passage of tax cuts. By the end, Pence offered 14 separate commendations for Trump in less than three minutes – math that works out to one every 12.5 seconds. And each bit of praise was addressed directly to Trump, who was seated directly across the table.

After the cabinet meeting, the White House issued a written statement quoting members of Trump’s cabinet talking about how impressed they are with Trump’s record.

Somewhere, Kim Jong-un could be heard saying, “Jeez, I think you guys are overdoing it a bit.”

I imagine some of the president’s supporters might suggest it may not be Trump’s fault that these cabinet meetings seem to have a cult-like quality. He doesn’t know what members of his team are going to say in advance, so maybe he’s surprised by all the gushing adulation.

But that’s ultimately unpersuasive. Trump has set the tone in this White House, and he’s made it painfully clear that he expects more than just loyalty and hard work – he also wants to be celebrated and praised by those around him. Those who fall short of flattery risk retribution.

In other words, the president doesn’t have to host creepy cabinet meetings; Trump just seems to prefer them this way.

Over the summer, the Washington Post published an interesting piece noting the “outlandish” praise Trump’s aides use when talking about the president, and the article quoted Mike Murphy, a longtime Republican consultant, saying, “It’s insecure, over-the-top. I call it Great Leader-esque.”

Conditions in the White House have apparently not improved.

No nazi scumbags allowed in the US military Rachel Maddow rounds up some of the military-related stories in the news, including the U.S. service chiefs speaking out in condemnation of racism and hate, and notes that in the U.S. military it is illegal to be a nazi scumbag. Duration: 15:54

These are Hitlers/Trumps minions tactics (so be aware of them when you see it - Note: I in no way think Trump is Hitler... I think Trump lies far more blatantly than Hitler ever did and would be much worse if he wasn't also an uneducated silver-spoon fed idiot... that's why some Republicans are upset, i.e. because Trump won't pretend to be American while he continues taking GOP policy to its fruition of pure American-style Nazism... I mean, how could you possibly try or stick to a lie about inauguration crowds that can be investigated using actual photographs? It's like a 9/11 style lie but for crowd size));

12 Most Insane Rules From the Biggest Neo-Nazi Website on the Internet White supremacist style guides are...different.
1. Always blame the Jews. 2. Go easy on the swear words, heavy on the racial slurs. 3. Demean women, gays, black folks and, of course, the Jews every chance you get.
4. But also, be sure to keep things fun and funny so people want to join the...clan!
5. Again, avoid overt hatred, despite the fact that it’s precisely what you’re peddling.
6. Quote liberally from mainstream media sources to borrow their validity and authority.
7. Note the media outlets covertly helping us do our dirty work.
8. Take inspiration from—who else?—Adolf Hitler!
9. By all means, stir up the anger and rage of violent racist readers, but do it in a way that ensures we can feign innocence in court. 10. Use popular culture as a vehicle for the white nationalist message.
11. There’s no such thing as bad press.
12. Even the payment system is a 'jokey' homage to Hitler.

Cable news almost silent on neo-Nazis allegedly attempting to murder counterprotesters at Richard Spencer rally

NBCNews.com reported that three of Spencer’s apparent neo-Nazi supporters -- Tyler Tenbrink, William Fears, and Colton Fears -- were arrested outside of Spencer’s speech, after one of them fired “one shot, which hit a nearby building” after the others in the car urged him “to shoot at the protesters.” NBC News also noted that the supporters “displayed Nazi salutes and shouted chants about Hitler.”

Spencer is “one of the country’s most successful young white nationalist leaders” and was one of the leading forces behind the violent August 12 white supremacist and neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, VA, where 32-year-old counterprotester Heather Heyer was killed

Across the three cable networks, MSNBC’s AM Joy was the only program that mentioned that the Spencer supporters were arrested after they “literally fired shots at anti-fascist protesters.” During the segment, ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson noted that he had interviewed Tenbrink after his involvement in the Charlottesville rally, and that Tenbrink told Thompson, “‘I hate the leftists. The leftists are evil. They’re bringing degeneracy to our country. … I’m fighting against multiculturalism, the press of multiculturalism on Western society, and I’m fighting for my children.’” Thompson added, “Fast forward to this week, he shows up in Florida at the Richard Spencer event, and according to police, opens fire on counterprotesters with a handgun.”

Terrorism perpetrated by right-wing extremists and white nationalists is often undercovered in the media. When the Trump administration released a list of supposed “underreported” terror attacks, it neglected to include numerous instances of terror and killings committed by white nationalists. In fact, white extremists are currently more dangerous than other extremist groups in the United States. As Foreign Policy reported in August, “the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security in May warned that white supremacist groups had already carried out more attacks than any other domestic extremist group over the past 16 years and were likely to carry out more attacks over the next year”

This racist tactic has been used by the GOP before (its actually how they do politics since Nixon) for example here is Jeb Bush acting like there was inconclusive evidence for the racist - linked to Fox News & The GOP - Charleston shooting. All Trump did was follow traditional GOP policy but extended it to Nazis whom the GOP would court privately but never publicly (i.e. All Trump did was make the GOP's link to white supremacy and Neo nazis, visible)

Research By Media Matters: Thanks to Trump, white supremacists had a big year in 2017

White supremacist, white nationalist, and “alt-right” figures successfully infected the scope of acceptable discourse in 2017 by regularly inserting racist right-wing extremism into the media conversation. From Confederate statues to the defense of the “It’s OK to be white” propaganda campaign on Fox News prime-time, the media normalized white supremacy during the first year of the Trump administration.

January: Trump empowers “alt-right” media

White nationalist media began 2017 by celebrating the inauguration of President Donald Trump, secure in the belief that their extreme views would be represented in the policy positions and political appointments emanating from the White House.

The new administration relied on a network of supportive right-wing media outlets, which lined up behind Trump during the transition period to push an extremist agenda. This included the new senior strategist to the president, Stephen Bannon, who, as chairman of Breitbart.com, described the site as “the platform for the alt-right,” and allowed white supremacists editorial control over content. Bannon was considered a primary architect of Trump’s first failed attempt at a Muslim immigration ban, alongside White House aide Stephen Miller.

February: The Daily Stormer gains more traffic than ever

The SPLC’s Hatewatch blog published data showing that the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer had seen a significant uptick in traffic “in mid-2016 and continued through the end of the year.” In the months leading up to the election, The Daily Stormer “had become the most popular English-language website of the radical right.” Andrew Anglin, the site’s founder and chief author, called Trump’s election a “referendum on the international Jewish agenda” and the newly-inaugurated president’s advisors were not very far out of step with Anglin. On February 14, Kellyanne Conway -- a former Trump campaign manager who joined his White House staff as a counselor to the president -- tweeted at an explicitly white nationalist account, then attempted to backtrack by saying she didn’t “know who had access to [her] account” and suggesting that her praise for the openly racist and anti-Semitic Twitter user was made in error.

March: The rise of “alt-right” fake news blogger Mike Cernovich

In March, media outlets helped bring far-right troll and noted rape apologist Mike Cernovich to mainstream attention. CBS featured an interview with Cernovich during a 60 Minutes segment about the ecosystem of fake news, which served to help mainstream his radical agenda. The segment failed to hold Cernovich accountable for his history of racist and misogynistic rhetoric, his encouragement of harassment, and his promotion of numerous conspiracy theories, including “Pizzagate.” Buzzfeed’s Charlie Warzel wrote that CBS failed to realize the interview “would simultaneously give [Cernovich] mainstream validation and the ability to criticize the program for a shallow understanding of the pro-Trump media ecosystem.”

April: Donald Trump Jr.’s interview with a racist NRATV commentator

Donald Trump Jr. attended the annual National Rifle Association meeting in Atlanta, GA, in April, where he was interviewed by Bill Whittle, a racist commentator for the NRA’s news operation, NRATV. In his conversation with Trump Jr., Whittle implied that former President Barack Obama was lazy based on a picture he saw of a pile of papers on Obama’s Oval Office desk. Previous lowlights of Whittle’s media career include an interviewwith racist “alt-right” blogger Stefan Molyneux in a conversation that advanced discredited theories about race, IQ, and crime. The appearance was praised by The Daily Stormer. President Trump also attended the NRA convention, where he gave the keynote address and promised to be “a true friend and champion” for the gun lobby.

May: Trump’s Civil War comments empower neo-Confederates

President Trump made a foray into Civil War revisionist history when he questioned why the conflict could not have “been worked out” in a May 2017 interview with CNN contributor Salena Zito on a SiriusXM radio program. Trump said he wished President Andrew Jackson had been alive “a little bit later,” because he believed the slave-owning president could have averted the Civil War. The sentiment was celebrated among the “alt-right” and white nationalists. Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer said Trump was “right” -- even though he was “fuzzy with dates” -- because “none of the modern wars … have advanced the white race.” American historian Jon Meacham, appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, said that Trump’s claim questioning why there was a Civil War “only comes up … in neo-Confederate circles.”

June: “Alt-right” affiliated candidate nearly wins GOP gubernatorial nomination in Virginia

An “alt-right” affiliated candidate, Corey Stewart, nearly won the Republican nomination in Virginia’s gubernatorial primary. Stewart has written multiple articles for Breitbart and granted an interview to Mike Cernovich in which he responded positively to Cernovich’s use of the derogatory term “cuck,” which is frequently used by far-right trolls to disparage their perceived opponents. Stewart also participated in a question and answer session on Reddit’s “The Donald” forum, which traffics in fake news, conspiracy theories, and fringe media stories. Stewart defended Confederate statues against citizen-led efforts to remove them as a central issue of his primary campaign.

July: The president’s bizarre “West”-centric Poland speech

President Trump toured Europe in July, making a stop in Warsaw, Poland to deliver a speech in front of a crowd of supporters reportedly “bused in to cheer for him.” During his remarks, Trump posited that “the fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.” Vox wrote that the bizarre speech “sounded like an alt-right manifesto” while ”alt-right” and pro-Trump media figures praised the speech and used it’s message to attack Muslims. The speech predictably was praised by Anglin at The Daily Stormer as well as on 4chan’s “politically incorrect” message board community, a haven for white nationalists. The speech was also popular among Fox News personalities, including prime-time host Tucker Carlson, who parroted the white nationalist talking point that “Western civilization is our birthright” and that “we’ve got to fight to preserve it.”

August: Trump’s disgraceful response to neo-Nazis in Charlottesville

The rise and normalization of white nationalism during the Trump administration came to fruition amid the white supremacist-led “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA. Violence erupted as the white nationalist rally-goers clashed with peaceful counter-protesters, and one demonstrator, Heather Heyer, was reportedly killed by a white supremacist who drove his car into a crowd of people. The rally was organized in part by Jason Kessler, who wrote for both The Daily Caller and white nationalist website VDARE. After Charlottesville, Media Matters found that Kessler’s author page had been removed from The Daily Caller. The pro-Trump outlet Right Side Broadcasting Network was also forced to part ways with host Nicholas Fuentes after he was found to have participated at the rally alongside neo-Nazis.

The Charlottesville rally also brought the debate over the removal of Confederate monuments into the mainstream media conversation. White supremacists were able to expand the scope of acceptable dialogue about removing such monuments and claimed vindication when President Trump equated the white supremacist demonstrators with the counter protesters. Trump’s comments that “both sides” were at fault was another instance of the president emboldening white supremacists. It also created the opportunity for pro-Trump media to also blame “both sides”, making them willing traffickers in white supremacist propaganda.

September: Racist response to NFL protests

President Trump attacked NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem to raise awareness for issues relating to police brutality and racial injustice. Trump suggested that NFL owners should punish players for kneeling, saying, “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, he’s fired. He’s fired!” His attacks inspired a massive wave of protest by players across the NFL. Reactions from right-wing and pro-Trump media outlets mostly involved attacking people of color for protesting or supporting the protests. Conspiracy theorist and prominent Trump backer Alex Jones said the protesting NFL players are “kneeling to white genocide.” One Fox personality complained that black NFL players should devote more time talking about black violence instead of police brutality, and another called them “cowardly.” One America News’ Graham Ledger called the supposedly “uneducated, partisan, racialist” NFL players “spoiled babies.”

One story that came out of the NFL protests in September was ESPN anchor Jemele Hill’s comments on Twitter calling Trump a “white supremacist.” The next day, Fox & Friends co-host called Hill a “girl” and lamented she got to keep her job, unlike former ESPN analyst Curt Schilling, who was fired for a transphobic social media post in 2016. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders appeared on Fox & Friends later in the broadcast and defended her own demand, made from the podium during a White House press briefing, that ESPN fire Hill.

October: Fox’s bigoted prime-time reorganizes

In October, Fox News reorganized its prime-time lineup to permanently fill the void left after Bill O’Reilly was forced out months earlier following numerous reports of sexual harassment. The new lineup featured Tucker Carlson Tonight, Hannity, and a new show with right-wing radio host and long-time Fox personality Laura Ingraham called The Ingraham Angle. Media Matters’ Matt Gertz remarked that the new prime-time shows resembled “Breitbart TV,” and were characterized by “anti-immigrant and anti-diversity invective, pro-Trump fanaticism, and vindictive opposition to the Republican establishment.”

Each of the Fox prime-time hosts brings their own brand of right-wing extremism to the network. After Charlottesville, Carlson spent less time condemning neo-Nazis than he did defending Confederate statues and tried to whitewash the legacy of American slavery by pointing out other civilizations that were built on slave labor. Sean Hannity spent much of 2017 defending accused pedophiles and sexual abusers, spreading false conspiracy theories to distract from Trump, and defending the president’s soft stance on white supremacist violence. Newcomer Laura Ingraham is known for her fear-mongering against immigrants, tirades against diversity, and hatred for the LGBTQ equality movement. She has also played a role in shilling for Breitbart’s “GOP civil war,” which seeks to remake the GOP in Trump’s image.

November: Tucker Carlson’s “dog-whistle” politics

The loudest promoter of white nationalist dog whistles on cable news in 2017 was Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Carlson’s defense of the so called “alt-right” campaign “It’s OK to be white” was an overt endorsement of white nationalism. The campaign, which fliered targeted cities and college campuses with the “alt-right” slogan, was praised repeatedly by Richard Spencer as an effective piece of white nationalist propaganda. The idea for the flyers was started on the “politically incorrect” 4chan forum as a way to elicit outrage from liberals. Carlson facetiously said “the sentiment ‘it’s okay to be white’ is now a hate crime” and said the left should stop “sowing racial division” because “these things never end well.”

Tucker Carlson also offered a strong defense of Trump’s anti-Muslim retweets of the right-wing nationalist group “Britain First”, and said the president’s ham-fisted response to hurricane relief in Puerto Rico cannot credibly be criticized as racist because most Puerto Ricans self-identify as white. He also said Trump’s birther attacks on President Obama weren’t racist, claiming it was “a dumb conversation.”

December: CNN hires Ed Martin, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim extremist

Ed Martin was hired by CNN to fill Jeffrey Lord’s seat after he was fired for tweeting “Sieg Heil” at the president of Media Matters. Martin had big racist shoes to fill as CNN’s go-to Trump apologist but has so far exceeded expectations in his ability to spew hatred, ignorance and bigotry on the network. It’s worth noting that before his hire, Martin attacked CNN, calling it “failing” and “fake news” that hasn’t “been credible for a long time.” Since joining CNN, Martin has demanded that the United States “stop all immigration” following a terrorist attack in November, and defended Trump’s decision to call Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) “Pocahontas” during an event meant to honor Native American veterans of World War II, and he also supported failed Republican senate candidate Roy Moore’s pro-slavery comments by arguing that Jews “were in bondage for years” and “they still loved each other.” Martin’s extremist positions should be no surprise given that he co-authored an anti-immigrant book in 2016 in an effort to boost the Trump campaign.

Trump intentionally fosters and promotes hate through hate speech....

Trump uses Twitter to promote extremist videos, faces backlash

President Trump shared videos supposedly portraying Muslims committing acts of violence on Twitter early Wednesday morning, images that are likely to fuel anti-Islam sentiments popular among the president’s political base in the United States. […]

Mr. Trump retweeted the video posts from an ultranationalist British party leader, Jayda Fransen, who has previously been charged in the United Kingdom with “religious aggravated harassment,” according to news reports. The videos were titled: “Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!” “Muslim Destroys a Statue of Virgin Mary!” and “Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!”

It is unusual to see an American president push out this type of content on such a powerful social media platform.

Over the summer, Trump insisted, “When I make a statement, I like to be correct…. Before I make a statement, I need the facts.” But before promoting anti-Muslim videos, Trump has no real interest in whether the unverified content is correct or not.

By all appearances, the president’s point was to help spread bigotry. It’s as simple as that.

It wasn’t long before Trump’s latest antics were noticed in the U.K. BuzzFeed reported, “Trump’s decision to retweet a British far-right politician was almost immediately raised in the House of Commons. Labour MP Stephen Doughty called a point of order on the issue, which the Conservative home secretary declined to answer.”

Another British lawmaker wrote, “Trump sharing Britain First. Let that sink in. The President of the United States is promoting a fascist, racist, extremist hate group whose leaders have been arrested and convicted. He is no ally or friend of ours.”

A Washington Post report added:

In June 2016, the Labour party parliament member Jo Cox was killed by an assailant alleged to have shouted “Britain first!” Leaders of the Britain First group said there were no ties between the attacker and their organization. The assailant, however, had links to neo-Nazi groups.

On Wednesday, Cox’s widower Brendan Cox tweeted: “Trump has legitimised the far right in his own country, now he’s trying to do it in ours. Spreading hatred has consequences & the President should be ashamed of himself.”

I desperately wish Trump were capable of shame.

Update: A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Theresa May said today that the American president “is wrong to have done this.” It’s part of a broader backlash against Trump from British officials.

Second Update: The White House isn’t saying whether or not the videos Trump promoted are real, but went on to suggest their legitimacy shouldn’t matter.

Trump is bringing out something that lies deep in the heart of the Republican Party and appears to animate all its actions...

Nazi rally in 1939 NYC: ‘A Night at the Garden’ film A shocking Nazi rally in New York City filmed in 1939 is depicted in the new documentary ‘A Night at the garden.’ Does it speak to alarming trends today? Duration: 6:11

Trump nominee's racist roots raises alarm Rev. William Barber talks with Joy Reid about his concerns about the racism of Donald Trump judicial nominee Thomas Alvin Farr. Duration: 5:58

Jake Tapper: Trump views black man protesting anthem as a "son of a bitch," but calls white man marching with Nazis fine person Tapper: "It is 100 percent true that the president never said anything about race. He did not have to, this entire discussion is about black men protesting racial injustice"

Clearly, Puerto Rico is not being helped for racist reasons...

Puerto Rico crisis lingers as Trump administration moves on Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz of San Juan, Puerto Rico, talks with Joy Reid about the challenges the island is still dealing with months after catastrophic hurricanes, problems made worse by the Trump administration's bungling of the response and the new Republican tax law. Duration: 9:33

WHY WASN'T DONALD TRUMP'S BIGOTRY A DEAL-BREAKER? 11/9/2016 Hasan Minhaj gives his shell-shocked take on Donald Trump's presidential victory and shares his fears about the rising tide of Islamophobia in America.

More Information:

To stop the alt-right, wrap up the “identity politics” debate this way Condemn politically correct excesses, but also those who exaggerate them

Donald Trump’s pardon of Joe Arpaio is only another of the hastening steps on his not-so-long march toward an authoritarian presidency. However incoherent his intentions, he's bent on becoming a tyrant — or at least trying to become one. And too many of us who know this are clueless about how to stop him, at least partly because we’re obsessed with secondary, almost irrelevant developments. Sometimes it seems as if we’d do anything but confront the most important challenge. Let me try, starting with how liberals have been dodging the full truth.

That haplessness in the face of a real challenge was on display at the Washington, D.C. bookstore Politics & Prose on Sunday evening, as Columbia professor Mark Lilla held forth on the dangers — and as he sees it, the evils — of racial and sexual identity politics before a seemingly contrite white audience. That was until a questioner asked him if he realizes he’s riding the crest of a lavishly funded, brilliantly orchestrated conservative campaign, led by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, to inflate identity politics’ noxious excesses in “politically correct” demonstrations on campuses in order to distract us from the far-greater dangers closing in on us.

Trump tries to change subject from Nazis to statues To further entrench Trump in his case for statues, his lead attorney on his legal defense team, John Dowd, is distributing pro-Confederacy talking points. Duration: 15:23

What Trump is agrueing is that statues of people who fought to destroy the United States (using tactics similar to the Kochs today) should be preserved (yes, alot of people don't know what these statues stand for but it doesn't mean you use them... you put them in museums as a trinket from the past. Like a King Tut statue);

PUTTING CONFEDERATE STATUES WHERE THEY BELONG 5/15/17 As Southerners debate the removal of controversial Civil War statues, Michelle Wolf weighs in on the only acceptable place for Confederate monuments to be displayed.

NOTE: