Many Americans really are thinking terrible things — and proudly saying them out loud

“You know why I love Donald Trump? He is the first one who says what everyone’s thinking.” Anyone who has covered Donald Trump through two presidential campaigns — one successful and one that ultimately flopped — has heard that explanation lots of times. I know I have.

When asked exactly which out-loud thoughts resonated, answers varied. But the folks I spoke with at rallies especially reveled in insults once considered, if not taboo, then too edgy to say out loud — about immigrants, city dwellers and Black NFL players who knelt to protest police brutality. Things like that.

I dutifully recorded what caused all the excitement among those who stood in long lines to hear and see their idol, though, ironically, many streamed out of venues large and small once Trump’s shouted litany of grievances stretched past the one-hour mark.

But I wondered just how many Americans could be included in the assumed masses who were thinking such thoughts and felt exhilaration when a presidential candidate spewed them so convincingly.

Turns out Trump’s schtick worked in 2016 and came close in 2020. And after a recent free-for-all town hall on CNN that saw a curated audience of his followers laughing and applauding as he dodged questions on respecting democracy and mocked a woman who convinced a jury that he was liable for defamation and sexual abuse, I’m worried if not surprised.

There are plenty of Americans on the same page as presidential hopeful Donald Trump, and that includes leaders in the Republican Party.

What once was transgressive now defines the GOP, with politicians falling over themselves to demonize and scapegoat.

Reporters’ Roundtable

This is an historic day in presidential politics. Former President Donald Trump found civilly liable of sexual abuse and defamation against writer E. Jean Carroll, a deadly mall shooting. The race for the U.S. Senate heats up in Maryland and the killing of Michael Jackson impersonator Jordan Neely. We’re at the Reporter’s Roundtable discussing all of these stories.

Sacrificing democracy to belong to a shrinking ‘club’

It was a scene both disturbing and expected: former President Donald Trump embracing one of the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with the intention of overthrowing the results of the 2020 election.

Micki Larson-Olson was found guilty of a misdemeanor charge of resisting police as they tried to clear the grounds that day. Yet, apparently, there are no hard feelings against Trump. In fact, quite the opposite. After driving from Texas to the New Hampshire campaign stop of the current candidate and former president, Larson-Olson got emotional over the recognition, the photographic record of her meeting with him, and his autograph on her backpack.

“And he gave me the pen,” she said, according to a Washington Post report. That she belongs to a QAnon offshoot is also no surprise.

I understand.

She was thrilled to be a member of the club, one that is losing the culture and has been rejected at the ballot box, but needs to feel special, as special as the insecure little boys who once locked their ramshackle clubhouse before scrawling “no girls allowed” on the door.

All those Washington invaders who throw around the word “patriot” as they trash America’s ideals — all those “true believers” in election fraud myths, the Kari Lakes and Mike “My Pillow Guy” Lindells of the world, the veterans and police officers who found themselves on the wrong side of the law that January day — I suspect they realize in their heart of hearts that Joe Biden tallied the most votes in the last presidential election.

Their beef is where many of those votes came from.

Democratic candidates Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Biden may have won the presidency fair and square, but each failed to gain a majority of the white vote. That means a coalition of, in Trump loyalists’ eyes, “other” voters put them over the top — and that breaks the brains of a lot of folks.

A fantasy world of election-rigging schemes attempts to cover up their resentments, but instead it shines a spotlight on them.

Trump Heads to Court

In a history-making move, a grand jury voted to indict a former president. We’ll have more answers about the details of the charges after Donald Trump’s Tuesday arraignment, but what this means for the GOP nomination, the 2024 race, and for future presidents in politically-hostile states is still up in the air.

Guest: Ankush Khardori, former federal prosecutor for the U.S. Department of Justice.

Two visions of America’s past — and future

“I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.” And just to make sure everyone in the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference and those watching at home got the message, former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump repeated that last line: “I am your retribution.”

Trump revisited his “American carnage” 2017 inauguration speech to again paint a picture of an angry and divided America — with a promise to lead a charge into battle if elected.

On the same weekend, President Joe Biden traveled to Selma, Ala., to commemorate the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, that day on March 7, 1965, when marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge heading to the capital city of Montgomery for voting rights and for justice in the name of civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson — who was killed by an Alabama state trooper — were met with violence from law enforcement as the world watched.

The result of the marchers’ resolve and sacrifice was the Voting Rights Act, signed by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson on Aug. 6, 1965.

“No matter how hard some people try, we can’t just choose to learn what we want to know and not what we should know,” Biden said Sunday. “We should learn everything — the good, the bad, the truth — of who we are as a nation.”

And, after renewing his call to strengthen those same voting rights citizens had demanded that day in 1965, Biden concluded: “My fellow Americans, on this Sunday of our time, we know where we’ve been and we know, more importantly, where we have to go: forward together.”

At CPAC at National Harbor, Md., last week, the speaker’s list included Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, whose followers attacked his country’s capital city after his loss; and Kari Lake, still in election denial about her own November defeat in Arizona’s gubernatorial race. Notice the theme?

Attendees could choose between sessions on “Finish the Wall, Build the Dome” or “No Chinese Balloon Above Tennessee,” but there was no room for a lesson on the American history made on that Selma bridge 58 years ago.

Is Nikki Haley the GOP’s Future?

Former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley announced that she is running to be president in 2024—challenging Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. How will she define herself in contrast to the former president—her former boss—without losing his base?

Guest: Ed Kilgore, political columnist for New York magazine.

It’s about more than one dinner and a man named Trump

A now 19-year-old white man who targeted shoppers in a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket in May simply because they were Black, according to authorities, this week pleaded guilty to murder charges and one charge of domestic terrorism motivated by hate. In his not even 20 years on this earth, this gunman, who casts serious doubt on the onetime hope of optimists that young people would save us, was nurtured by racist lies and fueled by conspiracies of “replacement.”

The white supremacist (and I won’t say his name), who murdered 10 human beings and wounded three others, was on a mission, and he seemed proud to livestream his heinous actions. He can live his life, something he denied his victims, and if spared the death penalty on federal charges, he will spend the rest of it in prison.

His beliefs, however, are not going anywhere. In fact, they are having a moment.

White supremacy, antisemitism, misogyny and all kinds of hate are being lifted up by some of those who want to lead the country and ignored or dismissed by others who, at the very least, are afraid of alienating the haters — people who would destroy everything America is supposed to stand for. After all, they could be voters.

It’s not a shock that former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump welcomed Kanye West, Nick Fuentes and a dude named Jamal to his Mar-a-Lago dinner table. Nor is it surprising that the few Republicans who have spoken out, at times tepidly, against Trump’s supper are being praised as heroes, proving the definition of that word has diminished over time.

In a dreary reminder that there is no bottom to GOP delusions, the usual suspects have continued to infantilize a 76-year-old man, blaming those around Trump rather than the man himself, as though what transpired at his Florida compound was a lapse in judgment, just a faux pas.

I know white guys are given the benefit of the doubt well past their sell-by date; they pretty much originated the term “youthful indiscretion” as a ready-made excuse. But to ask anyone to ignore Trump’s well-documented history, his both-sides wink at the deadly Charlottesville, Va., “Unite the Right” rally and his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol (both of which were graced with Fuentes’ presence), should be a step too far, even for the former president’s No. 1 apologist, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Remember, once upon a time, Trump also claimed he didn’t know who former Klan grand wizard David Duke was.

Knowing all that, it’s not that hard to imagine the conversation at Trump’s dinner from hell.

Local News Roundup: A local graduate among those killed at UVA, Tepper and Rock Hill come to an agreement, Juneteenth officially a holiday in Charlotte

The shooting at the University of Virginia hits the Charlotte area as one of the victims, Devin Chandler, was a graduate of Hough High School in Cornelius. Chandler was a member of the UVA football team, and his former high school team plans to wear decals on their helmets for the rest of the season.

The Carolina Panthers and Rock Hill have settled a legal dispute over a proposed headquarters and practice facility. Rock Hill will receive $20 million in the bankruptcy settlement. GT Real Estate Holdings, David Tepper’s real estate company, was set to build an $800 million facility. York County also filed a lawsuit but is not named in the settlement deal.

The city of Charlotte has adopted Juneteenth as a holiday. It commemorates the dates in 1865 when the last enslaved people in Texas were informed that they were free. Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021.

And after being benched earlier this season, Baker Mayfield is back as the starting quarterback for the Carolina Panthers with P.J. Walker injured. The team is 3-7, two games out of the lead in the NFC South, and travels to the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday.

Mike Collins and our roundtable of reporters dive into those and other topics this week on the local news roundup.

GUESTS:

Claire Donnelly, WFAE health reporter

Joe Bruno, WSOC-TV reporter

Nick Ochsner, WBTV’s executive producer for investigations & chief investigative reporter

Mary C. Curtis, columnist for Rollcall.com, host of the Rollcall podcast “Equal Time”

Reporters’ Roundtable

We have a lot to talk about at the Reporters’ Roundtable as we examine the top stories of the week. We have another building explosion in Montgomery County. Former President Trump runs again. Democrats keep control of The Senate… but Republicans have control of The House. The University of Virginia mourns the deadly shooting of members of its football team. HBCU bomb threats and the juvenile suspect and a Black man beaten by sheriff’s deputies in a Georgia jail.

Which party has a game plan for the future? We’re about to find out

Democrats get way too giddy about immediate gains and take their eyes off the ball, while Republicans excel at playing the long game. Overused sports metaphors aside, that has been the conventional wisdom because there’s a lot of truth in it.

Want proof? After Barack Obama’s historic 2008 presidential win, it was Republicans who ignored predictions of a “blue” future. They went to work. While Sen. Mitch McConnell did not ultimately succeed in his wish to make Obama a “one-term president” in 2012, he and his party delivered a 2010 midterm “shellacking” — to use Obama’s own word — that won control of the House and gained seats in the Senate.

In 2014, the GOP won that Senate majority McConnell craved, and the country still lives with the result — a solid conservative block on the Supreme Court, one that overturned Roe v. Wade and seems intent on rolling back voting rights and other signature issues claimed by today’s Democrats.

Few who watched McConnell’s block-and-delay strategy, one that shaped that court, would argue with his coaching skill and foresight. But after last week’s anemic midterm GOP showing, the wisdom of Republican guile and “Democrats in disarray” is looking a lot less conventional.

It’s Democrats who are being credited with thinking ahead.

So, was the blue team taking notes, or did Republicans get a little too cocky? Why did some of those best-laid plans backfire?