Over the weekend, Donald Trump held a rally for GOP Congressional candidate Rick Saccone in Moon Township in southwestern Pennsylvania. It was vintage Trump. Whether that is good or bad depends on who you are.

In addition to not making friends in the press (I don’t know anything about Chuck Todd’s parentage and I think he looks more like a stunned mullet than sleepy, but Maggie Haberman was thought to be a flunky by the Clinton campaign), President Trump took a shot at California Congresswoman Maxine Waters:

“We have to defeat Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters, a very low I.Q. individual. You ever see her? You ever seen her? You ever see her? ‘We will impeach him! We will impeach the president!’ But he hasn’t done anything wrong. It doesn’t matter, we will impeach him! She’s a low I.Q. individual. You can’t help it. She really is.”

I was present at Maxine Waters’ inaugural performance in Congress. She was a freshman member of House Veterans Affairs Committee. The witness panel included my boss–this was back in the days when I was trusted to prepare Congressional testimony and to sit behind my boss to provide answers–but it also had the director of the Veterans Health Administration, this is the part of the Department of Veterans Affairs that oversees the VA medical system. Several of my contemporaries on the Committee staff were joking about Waters but they wouldn’t say anything specific. “Wait and see,” was all they would say.

Everything went fine. And then Waters unleashed on the head of the VHA for perceived misfeasance in another part of the VA entirely. All the poor guy could do was sit there and nod and agree to look into the horror she was incensed about. And the staffers were becoming incontinent from laughter.

So, if we are fact-checking the statement, I’d have to give it a “Totally True” rating. None of this justifies what I think is unpresidential, if amusing, behavior by Trump, but the worst I think can be said is that he stooped to her level (see here | here).

But this immediately became racism. Because apparently a black member of Congress, no matter how stupid they are, can’t be called dumb without it being racism. Like this guy Jon Favreau. He’s supposed to be someone…but whatever.

Right.

If this is the metric that we are using, that insulting a prominent African American is racist, the one wonders where these people have been as long as Clarence Thomas has been on the bench? More to the point, what is Favreau’s own record?

Think what you will about Carson, but you don’t get to be a neurosurgeon by being dumb and isn’t accusing him of drug use–at least I think that’s the implication–racist? Or as racist as whacking Waters over being a moron?

The underlying premise is that black politicians are simply too, too fragile to be subjected to the same rules as politicians of any other race or ethnicity. No sane person believes that.

Insisting that black politicians are above criticism–or insult–is simply bullying and race-baiting.

https://twitter.com/MaxinePWaters/status/972291126630678528

(Yes, I know this is a parody account, but it could be real.)