May 5, 2016

Everyone Is Getting Today’s Trump Tweet Totally Wrong

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I think everyone is badly misinterpreting this tweet from Donald Trump:

This is not an awkward and embarrassing outreach to Hispanics. It’s not aimed at Hispanics at all. It’s aimed at white people. This is the kind of thing that Trump’s base—the white working class—views as a perfectly sincere appreciation of Mexican culture. It says, “Yes, I want a wall, and yes, I want to deport all the illegal immigrants in the country. But that doesn’t mean I hate Mexicans.” It’s basically an affirmation to Trump’s voters that they aren’t racists.

Plus it gets a ton of attention, and it also induces loads of mockery from overeducated PC liberals who don’t understand a compliment when they see one. It’s really a genius tweet.

Does everyone understand now? Trump is playing this game at a higher level than most of his critics.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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