reflectivepundit

Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Risk of Returning Trump to the White House

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Last week, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wrote that the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris team should not run again in 2024 listing his age and her inability to gain traction in the American public, not even among fellow Democrats. If Biden and Harris “campaign together in 2024, I think Biden risks undoing his greatest achievement — which was stopping Trump.” Ignatius warned.

As I read the thoughtful column, I agreed with the notion that the Democrats need a changing of the guards on the very top. President Biden’s approval ratings are low, Vice President Harris’s are lower. A series of recent campaign polls had Biden and Trump in dead heats with some showing Trump a few points ahead.

Not surprisingly, voters express their concerns about the presumed top contenders’ age in next year’s election, when asked by pollsters. Joe Biden will be short of 82 years old on Election Day 2024 and Donald Trump 78. The sitting president appears more aged as we see him walking and talking on the screen than his predecessor.

And in today’s world, whether true or false, appearances become reality.

That reality overshadows, in the mind of too many people, President Biden’s good qualities—his commitment to uphold democracy, his sound judgement on policies designed to help the American people, his accomplishment in foreign policy, and his never-ending efforts to reach out for bipartisanship.

For whatever reason, during the Biden presidency Kamala Harris did not get the same opportunities to show leadership qualities as Joe Biden did during the Obama presidency. Also, she has not gotten a fraction of the news coverage that Congresswomen Majorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and similar lightweights receive regularly.

Contrary to many pundits who claim that there are no strong alternatives to the Biden/Harris team among Democrats, I believe there are good choice. On top of my list are Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer as presidential candidate and Maryland Governor Wes Moore as second on the ticket—a woman and a Black man both exceptional leaders.

However, as of now, the Biden/Harris team will run for reelection. With Trump on top of the GOP ticket (or someone like Ron DeSantis), perhaps enough Americans will again vote in favor of democracy and Joe Biden.

I will.  

The Criminally Charged Ex-President and the Morally Challenged Would-Be Presidents

By Brigitte L. Nacos

The shamefulness of the positions taken by the majority in Wednesday’s television line-up of GOP hopefuls for their party’s presidential nomination became even more clear, when their idol was arrested in a Georgia prison and forced to pose for a mug shot. A day earlier, with the exception of Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson five male competitors (DeSantis, Pence, Ramaswamy, Scott, and Burgum) and the lone female candidate (Haley) had promised to vote for Trump if he becomes their party’s nominee--even if he is criminally convicted in a court of law.  

 

Instead of taking the moral high ground like Christie and Hutchinson, even former vice president Mike Pence, who, along with his family, was physically threatened by the violent crowd invading the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 said that he still would vote for Trump again. Did he forget the rapidly erected gallows and the horrible screams “Hang Mike Pence” by those marching in the name of the then president and waving Trump flags as they launched their violent assaults?

The most obvious Trump clone on the stage, Vivek Ramaswamy, was declared the winner of the debate by Mr. Trump. That was hardly surprising because the young entrepreneur with bully manners declared that “President Trump was the best president of the 21^st century.” Moreover, he promised that as president he would pardon Trump. He then attacked Pence for not making the same commitment.

Pence refused—but left the door open for a pardon--although Trump did not take any action to call off his attack dogs in the Capitol when Pence and others were acutely threatened; moreover, Trump continues to spread the Big Lie about the 2020 election outcome.

Yes, Mike Pence deserves our respect for protecting the US Constitution and our democracy on that infamous day in January 2021. But after that courageous act, he somehow lost the courage to stand up to Trump and Trumpism and the MAGA movement--all enemies of democracy.

Ramaswamy may be auditioning for joining Trump as running mate. He will not succeed. Trump will only accept a low-key person like Pence in his team, not a hotdog like Ramaswamy. Tim Scott may fit the bill.

When asked about Trump’s mug shot, John Bolton, for a while National Security advisor in the Trump White House, said, “He could’ve smiled. He could’ve looked benign. Instead, he looks like a thug!”

Even a mug shot with a thug-like image does not matter to Trump's supporters.  Instead, there are already signs that he and they will treat this picture like a badge of honor.

The question, then, is and remains: How will the American electorate at large react and vote next year?

Does the Constitution Prohibit Trump from Being President Again?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Two renown experts on the U.S. Constitution, liberal Harvard law professor Laurence H. Tribe and conservative former judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit J. Michael Luttig, wrote earlier this month in The Atlantic that the Constitution disqualifies former president Donald J. Trump from becoming U.S. president again. Similarly, two conservative law professors, both members of the Federalist Society, William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of St. Thomas University, concluded in their not yet published law review article according to the New York Times, “Donald Trump cannot be president — cannot run for president, cannot become president, cannot hold office — unless two-thirds of Congress decides to grant him amnesty for his conduct on Jan. 6.”

While this should be a good reason to rejoice for everyone who opposes Trump’s reelection to the highest office in the land next year, the four experts’ views have not exactly dominated the news. Obviously, most of the leading media organizations do not take the argument serious enough to give it “breaking news” prominence.

All four constitutional scholars point to the 14^th Amendment’s Section 3 that deserves to be fully cited here:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House remove such disability.

Clearly, as an officer of the United States Trump took an oath to support the Constitution of the United States. And clearly, the indictments filed by special council Jack Smith in the District of Columbia and by District Attorney Fani Willis in Georgia charge in detail Trump’s involvement in efforts to violate the constitutional change of power process after Biden won the 2020 election.

But the former president has not had his days in either of the two courts. He has not been convicted. The clause in the 14^th Amendment does not spell out, whether charges or convictions trigger the exclusion from holding the mentioned public offices.

Luttig and Tribe have no doubt that the charges are sufficient to ban Trump from returning to the White House. They write, “The disqualification clause operates independently of any such criminal proceedings and, indeed, also independently of impeachment proceedings and of congressional legislation. The clause was designed to operate directly and immediately upon those who betray their oaths to the Constitution, whether by taking up arms to overturn our government or by waging war on our government by attempting to overturn a presidential election through a bloodless coup.”

The Jan. 6 Indictment of Donald J. Trump: Less Shock Value Than New Normalcy—and What Now?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

After eight years of Donald Trump’s reality show performances on the political stage, his demagogic hate speech, lies, authoritarian tendencies, corruption, and a violent coup attempt to overturn the 2020 election results--nothing can shock the American public and political class with respect to the former president and current presidential candidate.

Thus, Tuesday’s four count conspiracy and obstruction Jan. 6 indictment did not result in a public shock wave but rather in a business-as-usual perception. It was simply the same as the reaction to Trump’s earlier indictments in the classified documents, hush money illegalities, and sexual assault cases.

To be sure, there was a burst of breaking news coverage in the hours following the release of the Jan. 6 indictment the other day. Talking heads spoke about the first time a former U.S. president was charged with unlawful conspiracies and obstruction to falsify election results to stay in office. What the 45-page indictment describes eloquently were not the actions of a president who respects the Constitution and the traditional democratic rules and values but of a rogue leader and long-time admirer of past and present authoritarian strongmen.

Worse yet, although Trump faces prison, if found guilty, he is the dominant candidate for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination. His best bet for beating one or more criminal convictions is a victory in next year’s election and his return to the White House.

The most recent opinion polls show that Trump and President Joe Biden are in a tied race. Of course, these numbers can change in the 15 months to next year’s election day.

But in the first hours after the latest indictment a multitude of Republicans in Washington and around the country attacked the “Biden DOJ” for charging their “innocent” leader. While Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and Asa Hutchinson spoke of the serious charges against Trump, the more Far-Right candidates Ron DeSantis blamed the “weaponized [Biden] government and Vivec Ramaswamy called the indictment “un-American.”  Nothing changed.

In the past, political observers wondered why a man like Donald Trump was able to win the 2016 election. I do not want to rehash in detail that Hillary Clinton won the total number of national vote but fell short in the electoral college that is a vestige of the undemocratic features of the US Constitution. One way or the other, some 70 million Americans voted Trump into the White House seven years ago.

Yes, Trump lost in 2020 both in the electoral college and in the nationwide total of votes. But it was not a landslide for Biden but a slim victory.

Today, the support for Trump in his MAGA movement and the Republican Party seems solid and goes up with every new set of criminal charges against him. As the campaign and the various trials approach and begin, Trump will certainly go the mass rally route again and stir his followers hate of “the other side.” Last month, Trump told his supporters already, “I’m being indicted for you!” And he promises that only he can save the country from the evil liberals, socialists, globalists, and the likes.

I think that in today’s America we should no longer focus solely on Trumpism and its threat to democracy but rather on the many Americans who believe in the values of liberal democracy, the mutual agreement on the legitimacy of majority and minority parties, the peaceful transition of power from one party and one leader to the others, and so forth…

Why is it that we do not see a potent pro-democracy movement here? This question occurs to me every time I look at the images of protesting Israelis who try to prevent their state’s fall into illiberal democracy or theocracy. There are a multitude of former Republicans, anti-Trumpers, and PACs that support them; there are the usual groups supporting the campaigns of Democrats. 

We have not seen any efforts to mobilize Americans by organizing pro-democracy rallies and perhaps even a from-below movement.  

Typically, it takes politically skilled leaders to organize grass roots political actions over longer time periods or even social movements. But the story of an Israeli woman, a particle physicist, mother of five daughters, with no political past or ambitions, who became one of the several  organizers for the pro-democracy protests in her country, is inspiring.

Why not similar initiatives in defense of democracy right here and now—before it is too late?

Hate Rhetoric Becomes More Combative after Trump’s Federal Indictment

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Before and after his federal indictment last week, former president Donald J. Trump used the terms socialist, communist, and fascist interchangeably, when attacking his domestic enemies whom he described as greater threat to the United States than outside enemies. In his attack speeches in Georgia and North Caroline last weekend, he depicted the fight against the Left as a final, existential battle for America. Never mind that he is an admirer of the Communist strongman Vladimir Putin. Speaking of his domestic enemies, supposedly Democrats, Liberals, and the so-called Deep State he said, “Either the Communists win and destroy America, or we destroy the Communists.” GOP officials and the MAGA crowd responded with enthusiastic “U.S.A.! U.S.A! U.S.A.” screams.

His loyal supporters did not need his cues at public appearances. In response to the news of his indictment that his former Attorney General William Barr called “very damning,” they joined and repeated his immediate combative statement on his Truth Social platform. “We have now reached a war phase. Eye for an eye,” Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona tweeted.

The war metaphor was repeated in many variations on many social media platforms and in public statements in the days before Trump’s arraignment in Miami.

Speaking to a GOP crowd in Georgia the 2020 election denier Kari Lake issued an outright threat. “If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me,” she said, “And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the N.R.A.”

Was that an invitation to resort to handguns in order to fight for the twice impeached and twice criminally indicted leader who may have more indictments coming to him? Her words were posted on several social media platforms and favorably commented on.

While the law enforcement communities prepared to keep the area in and around the Miami court building safe, rank and file Trump supporters were tireless in expressing their absolute loyalty and devotion to their leader. They asked God to protect and help the “best president the country ever had,” posted Trump with a protective Jesus figure, and asked others to pray for him. As a caravan of Trump supporters drove on Sunday from Miami to Palm Beach, one woman posted on his social media platform, “There’s no better way to spend a Sunday than for God, President Trump, your Country, and Family.”

Some expressed their disgust with the pure reliance on combative words without matching deeds and their own readiness to change this. There were many posters who seemed to think of January 6, 2021 and the many violent protesters ending up in prison. They told their brethren to wear masks when protesting in Miami or elsewhere for Trump in order hide their identities.

The admiration of and devotion to Trump among MAGA/GOP followers seems absolute. The latest public opinion shows that about 4 of 5 Republicans continue to support their leader after last week’s indictment. Many social media posts I read lately reject and often condemn Trump’s challengers in the battle for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination. That is particularly true for Ron DeSantis who, like Trump, promises to destroy “leftism” and “woke ideology.” Hardcore Trump supporters consider him a threat to Trumpism just like Democrats.

Trump is the rare leader who is in control of both a political movement and a political party. While social movements tend to attack elites inside and outside of governments, political parties are important parts of governments. With Trump’s complete grip on both, his MAGA movement and the Republican Party, his power over followers in both entities is greater than that of mere movement or mere party leaders.

That’s why there is little doubt that Trump will be the GOP nominee next year.

The Republican Party has become an appendix of the Trumpian MAGA movement after being earlier pushed towards the Far-Right by Tea Party hardliners.

Trump’s recent apocalyptic messages that call for the final battle between the righteous “us” against the evil “them” transcends the nature of legitimate political movements and moves the MAGA movement and the GOP and their leader further into fascist territory. January 6, 2021 may have been merely the beginning.

As Madeleine Albright wrote in her book on fascism, “What makes a movement Fascist is not ideology but the willingness to do whatever is necessary—including the use of force and trampling the rights of others—to achieve victory and command obedience.”

Trump Clone DeSantis is an even Greater Threat than the Original

By Brigitte L. Nacos

While I took a healthy break from following political news developments on a 7/24 basis during the last several weeks, I could not miss that media figures and their sources have become increasingly obsessed with reporting on alternatives to Donald Trump, most of all Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Some pundits have even given advice on how DeSantis should compete against his one-time mentor. But if the pundits expected that the Florida Governor would finally come out swinging at Trump and give the media an opportunity to dramatize the beginning of a bruising battle between the two competitors, the ill-fated Twitter Space announcement was a disappointment. DeSantis did not mention Trump’s name. Not once.

At this point, Trump has a healthy lead in opinion polls ahead of second-place DeSantis—all other declared and undeclared candidates are polling in modest single-digit numbers. Previous campaigns have shown that the early survey results can drastically change over time. What individual candidates do or fail to do matters but so do unforeseen developments and events (Perhaps the preponderance of Trump’s legal problems?).

For now, news reporting on the DeSantis campaign seems quite benign. And the commentariat focuses on the expected battle between the quasi-incumbent Trump and the challenger DeSantis. So far, though, almost all pundits failed to ponder the substance of the two politicians’ agenda and whether DeSantis would be a less threatening president than Trump. An exception was Gail Collins of the New York Times who said earlier this month in a published conversation with Bret Stephens, “If I was locked up in a room and forced to choose between DeSantis and Trump, I’d beat my head against the wall and then pick The Donald.”

I agree with Collins.

Both men are power-hungry narcissists with strong authoritarian, indeed fascist traits manifested in their admiration for strongmen and their plan to expand their own executive powers---if they win next year. The socially challenged, super-tense and angry looking and sounding DeSantis lacks Trump’s relaxed reality show personality. But whereas the political opportunist Trump changes his positions or forgets about them in the chaos he tends to create, DeSantis is a hardcore ideologue with Far-Right principles and the discipline and lack of empathy to adopt extreme and inhumane laws and enforce them. This he has shown relentlessly in Florida. And now he promises to bring the same “Blueprint Florida” to the rest of America. In the Twitter announcement show he spoke repeatedly about “woke” threats, such as the “woke mob” and “woke mind virus.” I assume, his banning of books and freedoms of certain expression comes in reaction to what he called last night “woke ideology.” Whatever that is.

The ruthless culture war that DeSantis is fighting in his Floridian empire has impressed moneymen in the powerful White Christian Nationalism movement. While they love Trump for all he has done for their reactionary agenda, they now want Trumpism without Trump to defeat Joe Biden and the rest of evil Democrats next year. Their super PAC has gathered hundreds of thousands of dollars to guarantee that DeSantis will be well financed throughout the primary season.

DeSantis is as arrogant as or perhaps more arrogant than Trump. Whereas it took the formation of the MAGA movement and the emergence of the QAnon conspiracy theory for Trump to give his nod to his supporters’ claim that he is the “The Chosen One,” yesterday’s DeSantis ad claimed that God made this fighter and sent him to govern.

Thus, Never Trump and Never DeSantis. The clone is an even greater threat than the original.

CNN Offers Donald Trump Once Again Free Propaganda Time

Brigitte L. Nacos

CNN has offered and Donald Trump accepted the cable network’s invitation to a May 10^th townhall meeting in New Hampshire 18 months before the 2024 presidential elections and more than 9 months before the start of the primary season. The rationale for the deal is clear: With ratings down, CNN expects from Trump’s performance a huge audience and great media interest, while Trump wants to show Fox News that he has alternative means to spread his propaganda.

Free mainstream media.

Although there are two other declared contenders for the GOP presidential nomination, Trump will be the only one in the 60-minute show that will be moderated by CNN morning show co-host, Kaitlan Collins. Some Republican and Independent audience members will get an opportunity to ask Trump questions.  

In 2015 and 2016, CNN was instrumental in over-covering Donald Trump’s toxic campaign performances and bringing the outrageous and scandalous news about the TV reality star turned presidential candidate to American and global audiences. The payoff came in form of  high ratings, high commercial rates, and healthy profits.

It seems that the CNN bosses have forgotten the frequent attacks on the network, its star correspondents and moderators by first-time candidate and later president Trump. They also must have forgotten that Donald Trump plotted with others to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory and incited the breach of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 by his supporters.

For years, Trump called the mainstream media “the enemy of the American people” and news organizations and individual journalists “liars.” That is an old trick of autocratic strongmen who violate the laws and conventions of liberal democracy. Not for the common interest but their own corrupt interests.

CNN’s bosses should know better. After all, the network was high up on Trump’s hate-the-press list that encouraged MAGA fanatics to threaten journalists covering Trump’s rallies.

Again and unfortunately profit imperatives matter more than the journalistic ethics rules of a free press. 

Nikki Haley’s “Softer” Touch: Posing with an Attack Gun

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, UN Ambassador during part of the Trump presidency, and now declared candidate for the GOP’s presidential nomination, runs as member of “a new generation to lead us into the future.” In the early stages of her candidacy, she appealed particularly for the support of female Republicans in Iowa and elsewhere. Yet, if anyone hoped that a woman as alternative to candidate Trump and potential male competitors would take a softer approach to her party’s outrage politics, she already dashed those hopes. For once, Trump may be right in calling her “overly ambitious.”

Like her onetime boss and now fellow-candidate, she wants to please the core of extremist Republican primary voters, many of them part of America’s deadly gun culture. In the midst of a mass shooting crisis in this country and nearly daily incidents in which children and adults are killed in public places and their own homes, Haley tweeted a photo showing her with an attack weapon with her finger on the trigger and the caption, “Making sure our military has the equipment they need to keep us safe is a priority…” Under the guise of supporting the

military candidate Haley promoted the very attack guns that can be bought and carried in most blue states. She also thanked the manufacturer of the gun she held and a gun-rights organization. At a campaign stop in New Hampshire shortly after the mass shooting in a school of Nashville, Tennessee, Haley rejected any gun-control measures. Instead, she assured fellow-Republicans, “Everybody wants to talk about gun control. My thing is, I don't want to take away your ability to protect yourself until they do those things that protect those kids." She said it is okay to have metal detectors in schools.

To emphasize the generational gap between herself (she is 51 years old) and the two heavy weights for 2024, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Haley called for mandatory mental competency tests for politicians 75-years old. But although Trump will be 77-years old in June, Haley exempts the former president from her “old age” campaign attacks on Joe Biden, who is four years older than Trump and will be 81-years old in November.

Many voters, Democrats and Republicans, are uncomfortable with the advanced age of both Biden and Trump along with the old guard in the Congress. Thus, it is quite legitimate to discuss the age of candidates for the highest offices in the land.

The question is, how to frame such discussions. And Haley has not come up with right answer. Instead, her public statement that it is unlikely for the Biden to live until he is 86 years old and that therefore a vote for Biden in 2024 will be a vote for Kamala Harris is as shameful as her mandatory pro-gun photo on Twitter.

But as the great Irish writer Finton O’Toole wrote in the New York Review of Books on Trump’s current legal problems and by extension the political culture the former president created, “the shameless cannot be shamed.”

My Future Representative in Washington is a Liar and Crook

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Filling in for Fox News host Tucker Carlson, former Representative and former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard tore into Republican Congressman-elect George Santos for lying during his campaign about his education, job history, religion, and properties. She did not let him get away with the excuse that he merely embellished his resume “a bit”—and that Democrats are far bigger liars. “Do you have no shame?” she scolded him. She mentioned the people who will be represented by Santos in the lower chamber of congress, “If I were one of those in New York’s 3rd District right now, now that the election is over, and I’m finding out all of these lies that you’ve told, not just one little lie or one little embellishment — these are blatant lies…”

I am one of those people in New York’s third congressional district and disgusted that I will be represented by a liar and crook in the U.S. House of Representatives. There is no doubt that Santos will be sworn in on January 3^rd. While I did not vote for Santos but for Democrat Robert Zimmerman, I have no doubt that the GOP candidate won the election in the formerly Democratic but redrawn 3^rd district fair and square. Lies are no crimes. Only pressure from party leaders could perhaps derail Santos’s path to Washington.

But that will not happen.

The GOP House leadership has remained silent since the New York Times revealed details about Santos’s falsified biography. Minority leader Kevin McCarthy wants nothing more than become Speaker of the House and will welcome any member who promises to vote for him.

That’s what Santos has already done. He pledged to vote for McCarthy who has no vote to spare in his struggle with MAGA fanatics in his caucus.

Forget about MAGA Party leaders. They will not stand up for truthfulness, ethics, moral principles--and not for the ideals and ideas of our democracy.

That did not happen, when Donald Trump lied every day as candidate, as president, as ex-president, and now, again, as declared candidate for the 2024 presidential race.

George Santos indicated in interviews that what he calls “embellishing” his biographical information is a common practice among politicians. Everyone does a bit of it, he claimed.

In other words, he calls politicians collectively fellow liars and crooks.

That’s what is the legacy of the Trump years in the GOP.  

After Trump’s Call for the Suspension of the US Constitution…

By Brigitte L. Nacos

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that former president Donald Trump used his social media platform last weekend to call for the suspension of the U.S. Constitution. He wants to scrap laws and constitutional articles that are the foundation of our democratic system because he still claims falsely that the 2020 presidential election was rigged in favor of the winning candidate.

Obviously, he does not want to wait for voters to decide in November 2024 but rather tries to sell the idea of a second coup to his hardcore supporters. Many of them, most of all the QAnon conspiracists, believe all along that he must and will return to power well before the next elections.

Although Mike Pence, the former vice-president, and Mitch McConnell, the minority leader in the US Senate, had a few critical words for Trump’s attack on constitutional democracy, the bulk of GOP officials responded once again by remaining silent.

A shocking silence and proof that the power-hungry master of Mar-a-Lago continues to hold his grip on the GOP, if only, because the GOP’s elected officials fear the influence of the MAGA movement in their party’s primaries.

By now it is crystal clear: For the GOP, Trump cannot go too far with even the most extremist words and actions that were unthinkable for presidents or ex-presidents until this performance artist moved into the political arena.

Trump does not hide his hostility to democracy and his preference for strong-man rule. He publicizes his outrageous ideas and acts on them.

More recently, he displayed his preference of far-right extremism in several cases.

• He does not make a secret of his support for the organized terrorists and MAGA insurrectionists who supported his coup attempt on January 6, 2021 (1/6) by an unprecedented violent attack on the US Capitol. And he has promised the convicted 1/6 participants pardons once he returns to power. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green, a Trump disciple, plans GOP hearings into the Department of Justice’s “unfair” treatment of violent 1/6 offenders once her party takes over in the U.S. House of Representatives.

• He hosted the White Supremacist, neo-Nazi, and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and the anti-Semite Kanye West for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. If that was not a clear message of support to far-right extremists, among them violent ones, what would be? While Trump signaled his support for these elements among his supporters before, his get-together will Fuentes and West was an overt embrace and brought Trump a blast of the media attention he seeks.