It’s bad enough that he couldn’t just keep his mouth shut, but President Trump stuck his own foot squarely down his racist throat with a despicable attack on Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) today after she held a rally to launch her campaign for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020.
Today Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to by me as Pocahontas, joined the race for President. Will she run as our first Native American presidential candidate, or has she decided that after 32 years, this is not playing so well anymore? See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2019
The world recoiled in horror as Trump repeated his racist Pocahontas reference that he seems to think is a joke but is far more offensive than Senator Warren’s acknowledgment of her trace ancestry of Native American heritage as proven by genetic testing.
It was his reference to seeing Warren “on the campaign TRAIL” that caused an eruption of outrage on Twitter as readers took his capitalization of the word as a reference to the “Trail of Tears” — the forced relocations of Native Americans from the Southeastern United States to designated “Indian Territory” west of the Mississippi — an event now universally recognized as an act of genocide on the native peoples of this continent.
Thousands of Native Americans died on the ‘Trail of Tears’ — https://t.co/ji25xvAUzC
— Josh Campbell (@joshscampbell) February 9, 2019
This is an extremely racist “joke” — the punchline is a riff on genocide — and would probably get him kicked off Twitter if he weren’t the President https://t.co/F4gt8DO8nf
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) February 10, 2019
Pro tip: You don't need all caps, let your genocide pun sell itself. https://t.co/aalAgEYs0F
— J. Elvis Weinstein (@JElvisWeinstein) February 10, 2019
If the average American gave a shit about Native Americans and the apocalyptic genocide committed against them, we’d have to completely rethink literally everything about the United States of America lol
— Abraham Riesman אברהם ריזמאן (@abrahamjoseph) February 10, 2019
Because genocide is hilarious (if you’re a bad person) https://t.co/ALvOps9Z4U
— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) February 10, 2019
Applauding the genocide of indigenous people to own the libs.
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) February 9, 2019
The same week in which the political world has united around the notion that posting a black face pic on your yearbook is a cause for resignation, the president makes a joke about Native American genocide, his son cheers it, and it will likely be viewed as par for the course.
— Sam Stein (@samstein) February 10, 2019
I try to never dignify this man’s tweets, but there is little doubt here that he uses “TRAIL” to evoke the genocidal Trail of Tears, and does so to land a political jab. Warren has taken justifiable heat on this issue—but he used the murders of Indigenous people as a punchline. https://t.co/LiyK2iruDF
— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) February 9, 2019
There is no way that Donald Trump, who talks about how much he loves Andrew Jackson all the time, does not know about the Trail of Tears. There is no other interpretation of this tweet that I understand. He is making a joke about genocide against Native Americans. https://t.co/71DuX0mhy0
— Ben Dreyfuss (@bendreyfuss) February 9, 2019
Joking about genocide is a new low for the Trump family https://t.co/0qFEQ25lcR
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 9, 2019
I said from day one that Trump should have been banned from twitter.
— Tom Tomorrow (@tomtomorrow) February 9, 2019
Twitter responses aside, Trump will hopefully face his own trail of tears when his karma catches up with him, preferably through the revelations contained in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report when it’s finally finished. His belief that he will still be in a position to run against a Democratic candidate in 2020 rather than rotting in prison will be proven to be the biggest of his many delusions if justice is ever truly served.
Follow Vinnie Longobardo on Twitter.
Original reporting by Bob Brigham at RawStory.
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