Does Donald Trump have a tin ear? Is he blind to symbolism?
Yesterday in a rambling campaign speech, he abandoned his prepared remarks and spoke defiantly about the anti-Hillary tweet that used a six-pointed star, which many assumed to be an anti-Semitic slur.
His Jewish son-in-law had referred to the tweet’s imagery as “careless,” but Trump said he should never have deleted the tweet.
He is his own worst enemy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m merely Jewish by heritage and have never practiced Judaism, so maybe I’m unqualified to comment. However, how does this use of the Star of David work, exactly? If someone runs an ad that I believe was meant to suggest that a candidate, Hillary Clinton, is in the pocket of the Netanyahu government and its financial backers – a suggestion that doesn’t strike me as ever slightly a stretch given her latest AIPAC speech, by the way – that’s a clear case of antisemitism, but AIPAC can use that same symbol to raise money for supporting the Netanyahu government and its regressive policies towards Palestinians and other Israelis of Muslim and/or Arab background without anyone suggesting that AIPAC is antisemitic?
Kind of like the use of any number of words that are so shocking to many that they can only be referred to in polite company by their first letters? If you’re not part of the “tribe,” don’t dare use the word, but heritage comes with a lifetime pass to use the word whenever one likes.
Far be it from me to think that Donald Trump would not have gotten where he is (whatever we think of him or where he is) by being a closet or open antisemite. I doubt he has the most enlightened views of anyone not “just like him,” but his alleged antisemitism didn’t stop him from fitting in nicely with a series of Jewish mayors of NYC or keep the (heinous) Roy Cohn from wanting to mentor the young Donald. We know there is still real antisemitism in this country (and around the world) and there is a polite flavor of it that still exists in posh, exclusive country clubs, board rooms, etc., just as racism flies behind closed doors of some rich, powerful, and/or educated elites.
Still, the idea that someone in the Trump campaign decided to blow an anti-Jewish (rather than an anti-Israel) dog whistle seems a little bit doubtful. Even more doubtful is the notion that said genius brought it directly to Trump for approval, whereupon Trump said, “Yeah, that will get those _ _ _ _’_ where they live!”
That Hillary and supporters are playing this as antisemitism by Trump is weak in my opinion. And it’s familiar. Lord knows, I can’t abide Donald Trump, but I’m no fan of Hillary Clinton either. Given some of the vicious lies the Clinton camp continues to spread daily on the Internet about Bernie Sanders, this is pots calling kettles in need of washing.
It is the confluence of the cash with the Star of David superimposed over it that means to many that Hillary is bought by Jewish money. Not at all sublte.
However Trump has taken a fortune for Sheldon Adelson, despicable Right Winger who made his fortune in successful casinos world wide, unlike Trump whose casinos went bankrupt. Live and learn.
i posted this some days ago…it merits re-posting. Trump is giving free access to haters to be open about their philosophy.
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Ellen Lubic
July 5, 2016 at 5:57 pm
This more of what Trump has unleashed. This was sent to me last week by a list serve for PDA. The lazy Progressive Dem who maintains this list did not vet the Naomi Wolf video. It is posted by Renegade Tribune, the most racist anti black, anti Semitic, pro White group I have run across lately. Because she did not vet this garbage before sending it on, others on her list also sent it on.
The lesson is to NEVER send out something without carefully finding who sent it. Naomi found herself talking to a White Separatist cult of Libertarians who all moved to a commune in New Hampshire. Amazing she would deign to speak to them.
Please read this link carefully and explore all aspects of Renegade Tribune.
Even the books they advertise are right out of the Third Reich. This is our New World Order of Trumpism.
http://www.renegadetribune.com/naomi-wolf-exposes-government-staged-terror-attacks/
Ellen: A pretty racist vulgar site indeed . I am not sure that the Libertarian group Wolf addressed was White Separatist. Though quite far right libertarian .I could not find them listed as a hate group. Perhaps no worse than the rest of the Ayn Rand crew we have buying the US congress. So I’ll give Naomi a pass . Not the turkey who forwarded it. Perhaps she needs a new agent.
Joel..thanks for your follow through. I did a search on this group and though they are self identified Libertarian White separatists who choose to live apart, they do not have a history of any aggression, nor connection with other activist hate groups like the KKK or Skinheads. So there is no reason for them to be listed as a hate group. My point is that the video comes unidentified, by being posted on a HATE group website. People need to be more careful at what they publish and/or re-publish. Things like this can be checked at the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ADL, and other easily accessed agencies.
This is the thread where the image first appeared, several days before it made its way to Trump’s Twitter feed. If you can stomach it, you’ll notice more than a few straight-up, old-school anti-Semitic rants.
http://archive.is/E0Dto#-15767.5-458.378
Pretty disgusting stuff, FLERP.
The problem is not so much what the star may or may not represent, but the fact that Trump’s people repeatedly pulled images off that (now deleted) thread on the white supremacists site and used them during his campaign.
http://gawker.com/meme-makes-questionable-journey-from-neo-nazi-message-b-1783044492#_ga=1.37578854.776727299.1459963792
But instead of addressing that issue, Trump’s response is a barrage of re-directs, hate-mongering and playing the victim once again.
Man up and admit you’re clueless about hate groups and have fired those responsible OR admit you absolutely love the neo-nazi messages and can’t get enough of them! Model some type of honest behavior, you know, to counter the dishonesty you see all around you.
This just came from Bill Moyers…an important read. Photo was of Zucker, Trump, and his bare breasted Slovenian wife, the wannabe First Lady.
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“Jeff Zucker, then-president and CEO of NBC Universal, with Donald and Melania Trump in 2007. Zucker was NBC’s entertainment president when The Apprentice launched in 2004. He is now president of CNN Worldwide. (Photo by E. Charbonneau/WireImage for Focus Features) ”
How the Media Overthrew Party Politics
The 2016 campaign is less a populist revolt than a corporate media takeover. By Neal Gabler
READ MORE »
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you can find the entire article online…too long to post here. I am not going to chugalug some Pepto Bismol.
I’m not a fan of either candidate. Honestly, if a person sees this ad as racist then you’re looking through racist glasses. Most of us saw it as a symbol of law enforcement (a badge).
someluckydog,
As a Jew, I saw the tweet as anti-Semitic. Not racist.
The sheriff’s badge would have dots or small circles on the end of each point of the star.
It’s the star AND the money together that make this REALLY antisemitic. It’s trotting out the age-old antisemitic trope that, secretly, Jews own most of the money in the world and thereby control politicians and media worldwide. This “idea” has been around for centuries, but it really coalesced in the plagiarized and outrageous book called, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which came out in Russian in 1903 and was translated into dozens of languages. Henry Ford published the Protocols in his newspaper The Dearborn Independent in the 1920s (he was a rabid antisemite). It was proven as a forgery–lifted from a French novel that didn’t even have anything to do with Jews–in the 1920s, but, unfortunately, a lot of antisemites still use this “information” as if it were gospel truth.
For more information, please read this: https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007058
Again, as usual, I am with you Diane in your view of this as anti Semitic.
It doesn’t look remotely like a sheriff’s badge. But it’s not relevant what you or I thought it looked like…that’s the nature of a dog whistle. Only dogs can hear it.
The origin of the graphic is apparently from a neo-Nazi type site, so you’d have to be quite naive to think the design of the star was totally innocent.
I have no idea if Trump is an anti-Semite, but it’s common behavior for right-wing candidates to make bigoted remarks and then back away from them. Common enough that it looks like a strategy to convey a unity of purpose to racists while maintaining a plausible deniability.
I don’t care one way or the other. There are so many other flaws with Trump that I don’t really need to pin this one on him.
Whatever he meant to portray with the imagine, he sounds completely unhinged in that speech.
How can someone that thin-skinned believe he can be President? He’ll be criticized constantly as President, every day, from all quarters. It’s the nature of the job. He won’t last 2 weeks.
I wonder where all of you have been, especially the press, as Walt Disney has been using the same star in their movie commercial –
Trump’s tweet source for defense – on this issue I think the defense team did better than the prosecutors
Jscheidell@comcast.net
The star of David–six points–is not an anti-Semitic symbol. Juxtaposing it on a field of dollars promotes the medieval notion of Jews as money-grubbers. That is anti-Semitic.
Donald Trump, who was raised in the most privileged circumstances in one of the most diverse cities in the country really doesn’t understand “context”?
Come on. He knows a 6-pointed star on a pile of money with the word “corrupt” is different than that advertisement. If he doesn’t he should demand a refund from those fancy private schools he attended.
Whether he intends to offend people or not surely he understands the concept of “context”- that’s what “symbols” are- they’re images that have specific meaning in a particular context.
Many religious organizations use crosses as a symbol. However. A burning cross is a different symbol. I think an on-the-ball 6 year old would get that. Donald Trump can’t?
See the Russian book published in the 1920s, and fully discredited by scholars, called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This Trump ad is right out of that extreme, anti Semitic, ‘blood libel’ thinking.
“Students who receive school vouchers to attend private schools in Ohio see significant drops in achievement, according to a study released today by the Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank.”
Why did ed reformers assume private schools were better than public schools in Ohio?
No one who lives here assumes that. It’s not like it’s “understood”. It’s flat-out not true where I live.
Are they snobs? Just knee jerk anti-public school? Why would they launch a huge voucher program with no evidence that it works? Maybe the better question is why did elected officials listen to them?
Some of the Catholic schools that take vouchers in Ohio get 70% of their operating revenue from the state. They can hardly repeal the huge voucher program now. Those schools will close. They’re (now) wholly dependent on public funding.
Reckless people. No consideration for the real effects of their experiments. Now we’re stuck with their agenda forever. It will be impossible to repeal.
I loved how the private schools pointed to “modest” gains for public school students and immediately linked it to competition and vouchers. Causation fallacy here we come. If anything, the study in Ohio demonstrates the gains in private schools are due to cherry picking and community support of the schools. Our son is ASD disorder and a Catholic school would handle his condition by locking him in a closet in kindergarten. If that is how vouchers are working, I want none of that. We complained and the principal told us to walk.
“Why did ed reformers assume private schools were better than public schools in Ohio?”
They did not assume anything . You are the one making the assumption . The assumption that they cared and that improved performance was their goal. And like you said “no one who lives here assumes that.” It must have been a moment of weakness .
As for the 70% funding we need a new Supreme court . Any question about the first amendment is answerable by the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom . Enacted January 16, 1786 submitted by Jefferson
“no person can be compelled to attend any church or support it with his taxes.”
“no person can be compelled to attend any church or support it with his taxes.”
Yet Jefferson himself regularly attended church inside the Capitol. I guess he did not have a nuanced view of what “support it with his taxes” meant. He also NEVER contemplated a world in which religion would be banned from participating in government. His “wall of separation” was only designed to keep the government out of the churches.
Fl Teacher:
Jefferson’s religious practices are not the issue here his vision for the nation and the interpretation of the very first line of the rights of the people are.
The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom written by Jefferson in 1777 and submitted to the Virginia legislature by Madison in 1786 makes it pretty clear what they intended . They saw the only way to maintain freedom of Religion was the to guarantee freedom from Religion .
So insistent was Jefferson of that separation that his opponents called him an atheist. His wall was designed to keep churches out of government in order to keep government out of churches.
His instructions for his grave.
“Here was buried
Thomas Jefferson
Author of the Declaration of American Independence
of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom
& Father of the University of Virginia”
The Walton foundations role in voucher schemes is no accident . It was and is a key part of the rights Southern Strategy. Which sought funding for segregated religious academies as a response to integration.
The Republicans are preparing for war in Cleveland. They may try to block Trump’s nomination. None of Trump’s VP choices are willing to do it. He may wind up with fellow big mouth, Chris Christie, although someone has suggested Trump’s daughter. Can you imagine? This is better than a soap opera!
Honestly, I don’t think Trump even wants it. He’s a billionaire, he can do what he wants when he wants to do it (or not). Why does he want to be tied down to the Oval Office or Capital Hill or Camp David all the time? Why does he want to spend his days meeting with senators, representatives, cabinet members, lobbyists, etc. when he could be out yachting or golfing or whatever it is he does to his heart’s content? I think he got into it as a lark (some have suggested as a favor to Hillary) and it just took off in ways I don’t think he expected. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he finds a face-saving way to back out some time soon.
I agree, Dianne. I think he just wanted advertising for his sagging business, since he doesn’t have free advertising via The Apprentice anymore. I fully expect him to abdicate (I know it’s resign, but he reminds me of an absolute monarch) within a few months, and/or outsource all of the work to other people.
The War is over . Trump only represents a less polished version of what republicans have been doing since Nixon . Perhaps even Goldwater. In polite circles your not supposed to do what Trump does . Your supposed to frame the issue around border security. Supposed to talk about makers and takers .Supposed to tell story about a Welfare Queen with twenty kids and a Cadillac.
Dienne ,is right he probably didn’t want it. Now he is caught with no way out . Worse the Democrats may have handed it to him by selecting the most vulnerable candidate in ages.
Dienne may be right. If I had to guess, Trump would love to take it all the way to the oval office. If he actually wins, THEN he’ll find a way to get out — once he proved to himself, and the world, that he’s “the best.”
Or maybe he’d actually give it a go for a while.
Who knows what is in that crazy head. I think I’ve figured out Hillary pretty good, but not quite Donald.
You are kidding yourself, Dienne. Trump is drooling at the prospect of being Leader of the Universe. His Slovenian wife whose country was in lock step with Hitler in WW2 in murdering its few Jewish residents, (and who has encouraged their legion of violent haters to attack her biographer at the New Yorker with verbal and even physical violence as she is a Jew), is also dying to be Empress of America. This foreign born, nude model, is a supporter of Trump’s vulgar behavior. She is a far cry from admirable First Ladies we have had, from Eleanor Roosevelt, Pat Nixon, Laura Bush, Ladybird Johnson, Roz Carter, Michelle Obama, and other Dems and Repubs who were/are born in America and highly educated women with credible careers such as teaching…and all with their clothes on.
The degradation of the WH with the Trumps would be unique and even more disgusting than that of the Clintons who bring so much of their own garbage to this top office. And the prospect of the decisions made by Trump on the world stage is as alarming as almost any event in our US history.
Ellen, yes, he would love being Emperor Trump… until he had to do all the things that a President (not Emperor) of the United States of America actually needs to do. Then, it might be in his best interest to say he won the game and bow out. In this way, he could have all the claim to fame that he ever wanted. He could say that he beat the whole United States, and even the office of the presidency wasn’t good enough for him. It was all just a joke of a game.
Maybe not, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if this were the case.
The shape is also one iteration of the Koch curve. I didn’t read this ad as anti-Semitic but what is telling is Trump’s reaction which is disturbing, as always. Honestly, the guy is mentally deteriorating and his kids are running the show. Candidates need to get past emails, skin color, religion, and insults and focus on jobs, the economy, education, health care, and national security.
Some of Trump’s speeches the past couple of days are totally insane, off the rails and nonsensical. And they are without significance, substance or meaning. A random collection of sounds. They are not fully formed sentences or thoughts. I will vote for Hillary to block this orange colored maniac from becoming the leader of the free world.
His Jewish son-in-law had referred to the tweet’s imagery as “careless,” but Trump said he should never have deleted the tweet.
Interesting. Careless is the same word FBI Director Comey used to describe how Hillary handled classified emails.
If we must choose the lesser of two evils, which candidate do you think is most likely to be held accountable by the establishment (the media and the criminal justice system)?
That this election is Trump’s to lose is a pathetic statement on Clinton. Fortunately he does a good job doing it. The FBI report was devastating not because of the .002% of inadvertently mishandle emails . But because of the cover up,the lying. The side by side Clinton & Comey videos will be played ad-infinitum .The FBI director just indicted her without a trail.
Not an accident by any means . He is a former Justice Department assistant AG . He knew an indictment would have ended her career , this may insure a massive defeat. We have Obama to thank for this , unlike Republicans and following in the grand Clinton tradition of triangulation, he insists on appointing Republicans to key positions only to get bitten in the end . He pushes Republican legislation like TPP , and Obama-Herratage-RomneyCare.only to have Republicans attack him for it. Relevant to this Blog he pushes an ed reform package dreamed up at the Walton as well as other right wing foundations and the Business Round Table a quarter century ago.
The Speaker of the House Ryan ,who should choke on a chicken bone , calling for her to be banned from National Security briefings will be played along side crooked lying Hillary till the election . There is a reason the Clintons are always surrounded by controversy. They create it !!!. I have said in the past I will vote Green in NY because NY don’t count. Clinton may have taken away that option.
It is time for her open the convention release all her delegates ,supper and pledged and let the convention decide . If at the end it is Sanders , Biden ,Warren or Clinton… I will support that candidate against any Republican . She wont.
“He is his own worst enemy” Not while I’m alive!
Trump is now defending the use of this appalling image by referencing Frozen? Are you kidding me? Presumably Frozen uses the image because snowflakes are six-pointed ice crystals (I taught science briefly in my teaching career). So … um … Hillary is an Ice Princess? They wanted to bring up winter images to refute global warming? I don’t think so.
A sheriff’s badge? Again, not likely. I’m old enough to remember my little brothers playing cowboy games, fitted out with cap guns, chaps, vests, and sheriff’s badges. Those stars have little circles on the end.
I am not Jewish, but half my family is. Also, my father was a WWII veteran. I have read a lot about that time period, seen the images, learned as much as I could about that critical point in history and what led up to it. When Jews were forced to sew the Star of David on their clothing, there was no ambiguity. When the Star of David was painted on shops and homes, there was no ambiguity. There is no ambiguity in the image posted by Trump either. It’s not even a dog whistle either. Anyone with ears can hear it.