Over the years, I’ve been skeptical of the idea that Donald Trump and other right-wing extremists rose to power simply because America is racist. I agree that racism is a major reason for the ascendancy of the GOP since the 1960s, but I’ve never been fully on board with the idea that Donald Trump came to power exclusively because, as many people put it, we elected a Black president and white America went crazy. I think there’s a high level of racism in the Republican base, but Republicans have been taught to hate many other people as well. Among them: gay and trans people, feminist women, and plain old white liberals and lefties.
It’s that last category of hatred that the most racist man in America, Stephen Miller, is cynically tapping into here:
