By Dahlia A. Walker-Huntington, Esq
MIRAMAR – This past week has revealed to us that Steve Bannon is obviously more potent outside of the White House than he was inside.
Donald Trump as we have all come to learn in the last two years since he announced his bid for the US presidency, is an individual who thinks the sun rises and sets on him and him alone. In all references he takes full credit for his rise to the top of the Republican nomination and his ascendency to the Presidency. He gives credit to no one else.
Truth be told, books have already been written and will continue to be written about how exactly Trump won in 2016. Almost daily we learn more about Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election – not only with members of the Trump team, but most recently with their strategic use of social media to hurt the Clinton campaign and to help Trump.
Trump has always espoused racist views from his more recent questioning of President Obama’s US citizenship, to taking out full page advertisement condemning the Central Park Five, to his and his father’s discriminatory housing practices against people of color in the 1970s.
He has tempered this with his association with prominent black Americans in entertainment and managing to have his photos taken with them over the years. He couldn’t be all that bad? Right?
He linked with self-proclaimed Alt-Right Steve Bannon and together they were able with all the other outside forces to ride a wave into the White house. It is clear to me that if it wasn’t Bannon it would have been anyone else who would have stroked Trump’s ego, let Trump be Trump and tied into the ugly underbelly of US nationalism that would have helped Trump to win the 2016 election.
This week a MSNBC host in speaking about John McCain’s approach to the newest Repeal & Replace of Obama Care quoted the Jamaican saying, “We run tings, tings nuh run we”.
I believe that Steve Bannon showed Trump that it is he Bannon “run tings”, Trump is not really in charge of the Trumpism.
In the Republican primary run-off for Jefferson Beauregard Sessions’ US Senate seat in Alabama, Trump backed Luther Strange the Republican who was appointed to temporarily replace Sessions, and Bannon backed the winner, righter than right-wing Judge Roy Moore.
Moore is the epitome of right-wing, religious right, ultra conservative, white nationalist movement. What that election really said to Trump is – you are not Trumpism – we the Bannonites of the Alt-Right are Trumpism.
With Trump and Bannon a wave of white nationalism has been unleashed in America and it has taken over the Republican party.
The leaders of the Republican party were either hood-winked or gambled and lost in their support of Trump. Newsflash – Trump is not a Republican!
Could it be that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell did not read Trump’s narcissism and his inability to lead the country, and that it was the Alt-Right support that he had that was really driving the ship. Or, is it that they saw exactly what forces were at play, but ignored it or thought they could control it in exchange for their unyielding desire to have a Republican President?
Either way, the Republican party is in deep trouble, and they are learning that, “trouble nuh set like rain”.
I am reassured that the Alt-Right in America are in the minority – that there are more of us than there are of them. Organization, leadership and determination are needed to ensure that the Alt-Right are defeated at every level of government in America.
Democratic party, …. over to you.
Dahlia A. Walker-Huntington, Esq. is a Jamaican-American attorney who practices immigration law in the United States; and Family, Criminal & International Law in Florida. She is a Mediator, Arbitrator and Special Magistrate in Broward County, Florida; a guest columnist at SFLCN and a weekly columnist with the Jamaica Gleaner.
