Before Nick Fuentes: Seven times Trump’s overt racism didn’t affect his Republican support

Given that Donald Trump is not just a former president but also the front-runner for a major party’s next presidential nomination, his recent dinner with fellow bigots should alarm and revolt us. But it should not lead anyone to make the grave logical error of assuming it will substantially affect his support among Republicans or his prospects of becoming, for the third time, the party’s choice for the nation’s highest office.

As if his diet alone weren’t enough to stomach, Trump, like some racist Mad Hatter, recently convened a table at his gaudy Florida estate and classified records repository that included Nick Fuentes, an unreconstructed fascist who preaches hatred of everyone who is not a straight, white, Christian, male reactionary; and Kanye “Ye” West, the rapper whose recent turn toward anti-Semitism has been so thorough and unhinged as to make the trollish likes of Elon Musk and Alex Jones uncomfortable.

But did or will this indigestible meal lead to any widespread condemnation of Trump by his fellow Republican leaders or alter his relationship with the party and its base? Of course not.

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How do we know it won’t? Because Trump has repeatedly engaged in and associated with overt racism without suffering any discernible impact on his standing among Republicans. To review:

▪ He announced his first campaign for the presidency by accusing Mexico of “sending” people across the border who “have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems. ... They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” His administration went on to carry out a campaign of punitive separation of thousands of immigrant children from their families without keeping records to enable reunification.

▪ He called for a ban on Muslim immigration to the United States and subsequently targeted several predominantly Muslim countries for immigration restrictions in an effort to get around the unconstitutionality of his original notion.

▪ He referred to predominantly Black nations in the Caribbean and Africa as “s—hole countries” and said he would prefer more immigration from places like Norway. He also falsely insisted that Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, was born in Africa.

▪ He said there were “very fine people on both sides” of a 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate forces commander Robert E. Lee, whom he called “a great general.” Many of the pro-Confederate marchers had carried torches and chanted “Jews will not replace us,” and one of them killed a counter-protester.

▪ He provocatively called for the death penalty to be reinstated in New York after the 1989 rape of a jogger in Central Park that led to the wrongful conviction of five Black and Latino teenagers. Upon their exoneration in 2019, he refused to apologize, explaining, “You have people on both sides of that.”

▪ He called the novel coronavirus the “Chinese virus” and referred to COVID as the “kung flu” as part of a broader campaign to blame China for the pandemic, encouraging a wave of anti-Asian hatred and violence.

▪ He told the white nationalist group the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” after being urged to condemn right-wing racism and extremism during a 2020 debate with Joe Biden. The group went on to play a major role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress’ certification of Biden’s election, during which a Confederate flag was paraded through the Capitol. Trump has promised to pardon the insurrectionists.

What motivated the GOP’s recent anomalous bout of buyer’s remorse over Trump was not any of this; it was the fear that, as evidenced by their poor showing in the last two elections, he and his candidates might keep losing.

But as long as Trump appeared capable of winning elections — an appearance he may well retain or regain by 2024 — how did Republicans react to his endless carnival of virulent bigotry? They nominated him for president — twice.