The Party of Malice
www.theatlantic.com
Donald Trump has made the Republican Party cruel, xenophobic, exclusionary, and bigoted.

You knew it was coming.

As soon as former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley emerged as the main threat to Donald Trump in the battle for the Republican nomination, it became inevitable that she would be targeted by him. Any front-runner would do the same thing. But Trump did it with his typical touch.

Last week Trump reposted on his Truth Social account a conspiracy theory that Haley, who was born in South Carolina, was not qualified to be president because her parents, born in India, were not U.S. citizens at the time of her birth. In fact, the Fourteenth Amendment establishes that any person born on American soil is a citizen of the United States and therefore can serve as president.

…

By Friday the former president of the United States was referring to Haley as “Nimbra.”

There are two things to know in order to understand what’s unfolding. The first is that Haley’s given name is Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. She has gone by Nikki since she was a child—a local newspaper referred to her as Nikki when she was 12 years old and she had a role in a production of Li’l Abner; and she dropped her maiden name when she married Michael Haley in 1996.

Non-paywall link

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
          18·
          10 months ago

          True, but the level that it is at now goes past Nixon. This is legitimate John Birch Society stuff. And the Birchers used to be laughed at even by most Republicans.

          Reagan started normalizing them and it’s continued from there.

          • averagedrunk@lemmy.ml
            3·
            10 months ago

            “I’m a faithful follower of Brother John Birch and I belong to the Antioch Baptist Church, and I ain’t even got a garage, you can call and ask my wife.”

            –Charlie Daniels

            The line was spoken by a green toothed hillbilly in a song he wrote. He was making fun of these types and painted them as drunk hicks.

            For reference, 15 years later he had a song (the second part to this song, funny enough) that did its best to make fun of half the queer community.

        • Mario_Dies.wav@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          81·
          10 months ago

          I feel like the media just has to pretend it’s a new story to keep people engaged.

          It’s the same with all this generational crap:

          Gen X: “They are slackers who never leave their parents’ basement and don’t want to work. How will society survive?”

          Millenials: “They are slackers who never leave their parents’ basement and don’t want to work. How will society survive?”

          Gen Z: "“They are slackers who never leave their parents’ basement and don’t want to work. How will society survive?”

          And then we all get cultural amnesia and pretend that none of this has ever been said before.

          Hell, I’m pretty sure they said this about boomers too in the 60s, though I wasn’t around.

        • Shiggles@sh.itjust.works
          6·
          10 months ago

          Nitpick, you’re thinking of “21st century breakdown”, not american idiot. Because one album about the problems with american society didn’t cover enough of the issues.

        • creamed_eels@toast.ooo
          3·
          10 months ago

          Not really related but your comment made me remember an old EP I have where one of the songs starts with a recording of a speech GWB was giving about what the American Flag stands for and it immediately devolves into a depraved rant-I have no idea how they reproduced his voice so well but it’s almost seamless the way the impersonator moves into talking about dripping acid on skin and torturing people with hot irons. This was long before AI.

          • creamed_eels@toast.ooo
            1·
            10 months ago

            It’s Shaolin Punk, who have barely any presence at all online it seems-if they are even still together as the EP was from 2004: https://www.last.fm/music/shaolin+punk/Distorted+Child

            It’s song #3, which I wasn’t able to listen to on the site-not sure if it’s because I don’t have an account there or it’s actually not playable. IIRC they used to make several different versions of songs so I wanted to make sure it was the same version as I was remembering. I’ll just transcribe the intro from my copy below:

            “The American flag stands for corporate scandals, recessions, stock market declines, blackmail, terror, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and r*pe”

    • lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee
      11·
      10 months ago

      I was thinking the same thing. They’ve always been that way. He just told them it’s ok to say the quiet part outloud.