Fox News analyst Juan Williams hopped in the DeLorean and traveled back to 2016 while writing yet another op-ed explaining why those who support former President Donald Trump are drooling racists who cherish the thought of oppressing minorities.
In a piece for The Hill, Williams lamented the fact that recent polling shows 48 percent of voters are backing the former president in the upcoming election. He claimed this proves that “widespread racism” is motivating half of the voting public and not genuine concerns about the direction of the country and the problems everyday folks are facing.
Apparently, Williams hasn’t yet realized that pretending Trump’s support stems from racism isn’t exactly a winning strategy.
The author claims Trump’s supposedly racist language is central to his appeal among members of his base. “How else does it make sense…but for widespread racism,” he writes, noting the results of the recent Fox News poll.
As proof, Williams highlights ill-advised comments Trump made during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in which he repeated a yet-to-be-verified claim that Haitian migrants are “abducting and eating pet dogs and cats” in Springfield, Ohio.
The author referred to Trump’s past claim that illegal immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Williams then argued that Trump discussing crime in large cities somehow constitutes a dog whistle.
In this year’s campaign, one of Trump’s regular dog whistles at his rallies is his false claim that big cities, full of racial minorities and immigrants, are scary places full of crime and failure. Last week he flatly lied at a rally when he said a parent who leaves a child alone on the New York subway has “about a 75 percent chance that [they’ll] never see [their] child again. What the hell has happened here?”
It makes one wonder whether Williams would say the same about black and brown people who also complain about crime in their neighborhoods. Are they self-hating minorities, Williams?
The author contends that Trump’s supporters are aware of his racist remarks but choose to ignore them. He claims his voters “don’t excuse his racism so much as get the message,” which has emboldened them to be more open about declaring their racist beliefs.
Williams even points to racist comments made about Harris by supposed journalist Laura Loomer, who said the White House would smell like curry if she is elected, as if that is somehow Trump’s fault.
Lastly, the author warns of the “real consequences” of Trump’s rhetoric, claiming it encourages violence and racial division. He highlights an incident in which an Ohio sheriff allegedly encouraged Trump supporters to report neighbors who displayed Kamala Harris signs, comparing it to Nazi Germany.
What Williams has not yet grasped is that silly arguments like his are one of several reasons why Trump became president in the first place. After decades of falsely labeling conservatives and Republicans as racist for disagreeing with leftist policies, they decided they don’t care about being portrayed in this fashion. Even further, in Trump, they saw someone who would go on the offensive against the crybullies on the left.
But it is even deeper than that.
Those like Williams don’t understand that most Trump supporters back him because they like his policies, not because they despise racial minorities. His appeal to them lies primarily in his economic policies, his stance on immigration, and his “America First” platform, which resonates with wide swaths of the country.
Now, many of these individuals are going through tremendous economic hardships thanks, in part, to the Biden-Harris administration. They are concerned about jobs, wages, and border security. To simply dismiss these concerns as “racism” demonstrates the elitist thinking on Williams’ part that brought about Trump’s political success.
It is also worth noting that according to recent polls, Trump has almost doubled his support among black voters, a fact that is rather inconvenient for folks like Williams. Are these black voters motivated by self-hatred?
A Morning Consult survey of 11,501 registered voters conducted between August 15 and August 18, 2024, found that Trump has garnered significantly more backing from Black voters compared to his 2020 run. The 2024 poll shows 21 percent of Black voters supporting Trump, a 12-percentage point increase from a 2020 Morning Consult poll. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percentage point.
Williams’ simplistic assessment of Trump’s supporters betrays a stunning level of ignorance. It’s as if he has never even had a conversation with a Trump supporter. Folks like him can’t be bothered to do the hard work of understanding what people are thinking and empathizing with their valid concerns. But what else would you expect from one as intellectually lazy as Juan Williams?
