Donald Trump and his MAGA allies' repeated emphasis that the Ohio community affected by the toxic train derailment is being ignored because residents are overwhelmingly white is the latest twist on the race-baiting campaigns the former president likes to run, notes a Guardian columnist.
Rather than railing about crime in inner cities and "woke" diversity in schools, education and the military — all attacks on people of color — this time Trump and his supporters are focusing on what they claim is the victimization of whites only. During his visit to East Palestine earlier this week, Trump called the community plight a "betrayal" by the Biden administration that doesn't care about working-class whites. It's a Trump theme.
"The race and class-baiting happening here" by Trump, his supporters and the right-wing media is "eerily reminiscent of the Republican Party's poor-white-victim strategy of 2016," writes Guardian columnist Tayo Bero.
"Back then, conservative dog-whistling about how white people in red states are pariahs in their own country who need to beef up their political muscle in order to ensure their own survival was a tactic that helped Trump win a presidential election," she notes. And I'm ruefully reminded of that period as I watch him and his supporters take advantage of East Palestine the same way."
East Palestine residents have "a lot to be upset about" — but not because they are white, Bero adds.
Trump is conveniently ignoring his attacks on a host of safety and consumer protection regulations he obliterated while in office that seriously impacted all Americans. Some of those regulations were created by the Obama administration to help protect against toxic train derailments, killed with Trump's help by the powerful, deep-pocketed rail lobby.
The Democrats are happy to remind Trump — and the nation — of that fact. “Congressional Republicans and former Trump administration officials owe East Palestine an apology for selling them out to rail industry lobbyists when they dismantled Obama-Biden rail safety protections,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates noted in a statement following Trump's Ohio visit.
