He tweeted that Puerto Rico’s government “can’t do anything right” and that the island’s politicians are “incompetent or corrupt” and only “complain and ask for more money,” which they spend “foolishly or corruptly, & only take from USA.” He specifically called the mayor of San Juan “crazed and incompetent.”
Point of fact: Puerto Rico is part of the United States. It is a territory. Its citizens are U.S. citizens. The structure of Trump’s comments leaves open the possibility that he doesn’t know that, or conversely, knows it but doesn’t fully accept it or care about it.
If this were a one-off spat with politicians opposed to his conduct, one might reasonably write Trump’s comments off as politics as usual. Instead, this questioning of the competence of black and brown leaders is not anomaly but motif.
Trump has spent nearly a decade now trying to paint Barack Obama as not only an illegitimate president, but also as an inept, lazy, embarrassing one. He has called him a “sick,” “weak,” “incompetent leader” with a “horrible attitude” who “looks and sounds so ridiculous,” “has disastrous judgment,” is “a total failure” and was “perhaps the worst president in the history of the United States!”
Worse than the white supremacist Andrew Johnson, who did his best to obstruct Reconstruction, opposed the 14th Amendment and was impeached? Worse than Trump’s slave-owning hero Andrew Jackson, whose Indian Removal Act led to the Trail of Tears? Worse than slave-owning John Tyler, who during his time in Congress argued against the Missouri Compromise, which would restrain the spread of the “peculiar institution”? Worse than Millard Fillmore, who backed the protection of Southern slavery in the Compromise of 1850, which delayed Southern secession? Worse than Richard Nixon, who was forced from office? Worse than George W. Bush, who lied this country into the war in Iraq? Worse than Trump himself?
Let’s submit that Trump has in some ways been an equal opportunity offender and gone after all his political opponents to some degree — he incessantly called Hillary Clinton “crooked” and Bernie Sanders “crazy.”
Still, that doesn’t fully account for the particular consistency with which he attacks minority leaders and minority-led entities as inadequate, ineffective and incompetent.
According to Trump, former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams was “totally unqualified” and would “destroy” the state of Georgia. Abrams is a star, and the way that state’s election was handled will do more to destroy it than Abrams ever could.
According to Trump, former Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum was “a Dem who is a thief and who is Mayor of poorly run Tallahassee, said to be one of the most corrupt cities in the Country!” There is no evidence of theft by Gillum, and Tallahassee isn’t the most corrupt city.
According to Trump, legendary Congressman John Lewis’ district “is in horrible shape and falling apart.” It is not. PolitiFact rated Trump’s claim “mostly false.”
Even majority-black and majority-brown countries around the globe have been condemned and dismissed by Trump in this way. Haiti, El Salvador and African countries are “shithole countries.” Mexico has a “totally corrupt gov’t,” and it is sending “animals” and “rapists” across the border.
Yet he has lobbed praise at strongmen — mostly in Europe and Asia — for being great leaders. Think Russia and North Korea.
(Western nations have also piqued his anger when they have not been sufficiently ruthless with their minority populations. He said that Britain was “trying hard to disguise their massive Muslim problem,” and Germany “is going through massive attacks to its people by the migrants allowed to enter the country.” But Trump still maintains “a great feeling for Germany.” That feeling is apparently so great that he keeps lying that his father, Fred Trump, was born there, like he did again this week. Fred Trump was born in New York.)
To me, this marking of minorities as incapable of good governance harkens back to the Reconstruction period, when white supremacists promoted racist caricatures of newly elected black legislators acting uncouth as a way to fuel an angry backlash. This shows up in newspaper illustrations and in the film “The Birth of a Nation,” in which black legislators — eating, drinking and some without shoes — are shown in a state of chaos.
These white supremacists, many wealthy and powerful, used the threat of “black domination” to scare poorer whites into allegiance, warning them of race-mixing, miscegenation and the rape of white women and girls. They also warned about the crude attempt of black people to be civilized and judicious.
This is very similar to what Trump tweeted this week, trying to pit suffering farmers in the Midwest against suffering Puerto Rican hurricane survivors.
Trump tweeted that “Puerto Rico got 91 Billion Dollars for the hurricane, more money than has ever been gotten for a hurricane before.”
That, of course, was just another lie. As The New York Times reported:
“In fact, FEMA and other agencies have so far distributed $11.2 billion in aid to Puerto Rico, according to the Office of Management and Budget. Some $41 billion in aid has been allocated, while $91 billion is the budget office’s estimate of how much the island could receive over the next two decades.”
The farmers are mostly old, white men. As Modern Farmer pointed out in 2014:
“More than 92 percent of the country’s 2.1 million farmers are non-Hispanic whites, and more than 86 percent of those farm operators are men. The average age of farmers, which has been rising for decades, continued to inch up. In 2012, the average farmer was 58.3 years old, up from 57.1 years in 2007.”
Puerto Rico is 99 percent Hispanic.
Trump made his point clear: The mismanagement and incompetence of these brown people amount to stealing resources from these white people. As he tweeted: “Cannot continue to hurt our Farmers and States with these massive payments, and so little appreciation!”
The brown people were supposed to be thankful that white daddy in “the States” was helping them at all. As Trump tweeted, “The best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico is President Donald J. Trump.”
This is the kind of paternalistic white supremacy that doesn’t even require open hostility, although plenty often accompanies it. The logic goes this way: Everyone is better off, even minorities, when white people are in charge and calling the shots.
This is part of what drew so many white voters to Trump, whether they admit it or not: He promised to destroy, erase or replace everything Obama had done, thereby fixing the glitch in the narrative that the only true and good leaders of America were white leaders. In the white supremacist imagination, even this horrendous white leader is better than the most educated, articulate and erudite black man.
That logic also says to people like the Puerto Ricans that even in their suffering, minorities are better off being part of this country.
This reminds me of a letter Robert E. Lee wrote to his wife in 1856 in which he said:
“The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, and I hope will prepare and lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known and ordered by a wise Merciful Providence.”
For all minorities in America, the subjugation continues, particularly now that Trump wants to dictate who is worthy of assistance and who should be allowed to suffer.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.