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Donald Trump has a special way of polarizing opinions. Some think he’s a crystallization of all the things wrong with American excesses, some people think that he’s anointed by God to save the country. But some things written about Donald Trump are just true. He eats his steaks well done & with ketchup. His birthday is June 14h. He is incredibly self-serving and caters to white nationalists because they are an important subset of his fanbase. You don’t have to go far to prove the last one — Vanity Fair did a great write up on how he he lashed out against Paul Ryan for being critical of “His People” back in 2017:
Donald Trump flipped out at then House Speaker Paul Ryan for condemning white supremacists after the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a new book claims…“These people love me. These are my people,” Trump raged at Ryan in response. “I can’t backstab the people who support me.”
When the Oregon Bar released a statement accusing Donald Trump of catering to white nationalists — which again, is true, they were met with pushback. A member of the bar sued the Bar for presenting their Trump denouncement as if everyone agreed with it. The Oregon Bar may have thought that an honest assessment of the facts wouldn’t be something that its members would be opposed to, but Trump is the King of Alternative Facts after all. At first, the lawsuit was swept under the rug and dismissed. But then the Ninth Circuit got involved, now the Bar has to actually deal it. Reuters has coverage:
A unanimous three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the 2018 statement accusing Trump of catering to white nationalists, which followed violent demonstrations in Oregon and Virginia, improperly suggested that all of the group’s members agreed with it.
Reversing a judge who had dismissed the 2018 lawsuit, the court said that individual state bar officers who signed onto the statement violated plaintiff Daniel Crowe’s right to freedom of association under the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The case will be sent back to determine the appropriate relief. The appropriate relief should be a “spot the difference” style quiz comparing Barack Obama’s clear decision to move his campaign away from Rev. Wright:
Obama withdrew an invitation to Rev Wright to give an invocation for his campaign because Wright had been quoted saying this country “believes in white supremacy and black inferiority more than we believe in God” and they worried what Fox News would say.
— Nathan J Robinson (@NathanJRobinson) November 22, 2020
And Donald Trump’s clear decision to move his campaign away from an (at least in part) white supremacist group like the Proud Boys:
Spoiler: Obama did. Trump didn’t.
Oregon Bar’s Anti-Trump Statement Violated Lawyer’s Rights, US Court Rules [Reuters]
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.