Rally rhetoric reflects Trump’s divisiveness

Opinion editor’s note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Minnesota Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.

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Even amid an increasingly coarse culture, let alone campaign, the words from a series of speakers at the Trump campaign rally on Sunday night at New York’s Madison Square Garden should shock.

Puerto Rico — and by extension Puerto Ricans — was called a “floating island of garbage” by one “comedian,” who also used racist and sectarian tropes to stereotype Hispanics, Jews, Palestinians and Black people, including one rallygoer who was identified with a watermelon reference.

Another speaker related former President Donald Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, to a prostitute with “pimp handlers,” while one of Trump’s childhood friends equated Harris with the devil and “the Antichrist.” Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson slurred her Jamaican-Indian ancestry by saying she was trying to become “the first Samoan-Malaysian, low IQ former California prosecutor ever to be elected president.” The misogyny didn’t stop with Harris, however; Hillary Clinton, a former first lady, senator, secretary of state, Democratic presidential nominee and, most profoundly, a human like the rest of us was called a “sick son of a bitch” by another speaker.

After the roars of the crowd were met with backlash, the Trump campaign sought to distance itself from the comments on Puerto Rico, saying “this joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.” Notably, the notorious comments coming beyond those on Puerto Rico were not disavowed.

Actually, the entire rally does reflect on Trump and the campaign. And it reflects badly, but accurately, how he constantly seeks not to unite but divide the country he’s running to lead again. And to the degree it’s a case of the campaign not carefully vetting the speakers or their comments, that reflects a dangerously lazy, irresponsible and incompetent approach to campaigning that would very likely extend to governing, just as it did during Trump’s previous White House years.

The vetting failure should also lend perspective, if not alarm, to reports that top Trump campaign aides are floating a proposal that if Trump is elected, he should be allowed to bypass law enforcement background checks and give appointees immediate access to classified information. This would be a terrible idea under any president-elect, but, as the rally vetting attests, especially so regarding Trump.

Even if the offending comments were from comedians and others, what the former president said at his rally was also disgraceful, especially because he could soon be empowered to act upon it: He once again referred to some American citizens as “the enemy within” and described the news media as “the enemy of the people” — a Stalinist phrase banned by his Soviet successor, Nikita Khrushchev, because it “was specifically introduced for the purpose of physically annihilating such individuals.”

Such reckless rhetoric is just one reason why three former military leaders who served Trump — former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, former Chief of Staff and U.S. Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley — have warned about authoritarian tendencies in Trump.

For her part, Harris began the penultimate sabbath before the election speaking at the Church of Christian Compassion in Philadelphia. Later, she warmly greeted diners at a local Puerto Rican restaurant, where she announced an “opportunity economy task force” for the island.

The contrast for Puerto Ricans couldn’t be clearer. It should be for the rest of their fellow Americans, too.