Should White House decide if you should be offended?
Here’s another question that, back in the days when we had a president who cared about such quaint traditions as manners, we thought that we never would be asking ourselves: Should the White House decide whether we should be offended by something that the president has said?
That question came up Monday after President Trump’s notoriously short attention span got the better of him.
Standing alongside three Navajo code talkers in a ceremony to honor their service in World War II, Trump’s restless stream of consciousness took him offscript and into a sarcastic side comment about Sen. Elizabeth Warren without mentioning the Massachusetts Democrat’s name.
“I just want to thank you because you’re very, very special people,” Trump said softly. “You were here long before any of us were here, although we have a representative in Congress who, they say, was here a long time ago. They call her ‘Pocahontas.’ “
There he goes again.
No, there is no “they.” Only Trump has tried as a candidate and as president to rebrand Sen. Warren with the name of the legendary 17th-century American Indian woman who is associated with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia.
Warren, a progressive consumer advocate and former Harvard Law School professor, came under fire in 2012 for claiming Cherokee roots earlier in her academic career. But the Washington Post’s Fact Checker found no proof at the time that she ever marked a form to tell the schools about her heritage or that the universities knew about her lineage before hiring her. However, they did question Warren’s judgment for relying on family lore rather than official documentation.
But, if anything, Trump’s snide comment turned the spotlight back on his own impoliteness. Russell Begaye, the president of the Navajo Nation who was present at the White House event, called the president’s remark “derogatory” and “disrespectful to Indian nations.”
Warren easily joined that view. “It should have been a celebration of their incredible service,” she said. “But Donald Trump couldn’t make it through without tossing in a racial slur.”
“Ridiculous,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “What most people find offensive,” she said, “is Senator Warren lying about her heritage to advance her career.”
But as much as that charge has been made by her critics, evidence that she had benefited professionally from the claim has yet to be found. Warren has since become a favorite in the Democratic Party’s progressive wing as a possible presidential candidate. That makes her fair game for political attacks but not, as a matter of common decency, racial slurs. Should Trump be the judge of who should be offended by Trump? Not hardly. But as long as he has that loyal conservative base hungering for more liberalbashing red meat, we can expect Trump to dish it up.
His Warren go-round followed another racially tinged Trump eruption. Trump and LaVar Ball, outspoken father of Los Angeles Lakers rookie Lonzo Ball and UCLA forward LiAngelo Ball, went back and forth for days after LiAngelo’s shoplifting arrest in China.
Trump wanted to bask in credit for getting LiAngelo and two UCLA teammates back to the U.S., but LaVar instead questioned whether Trump had any role in the process. Not surprisingly, Trump launched a Twitter feud in which he called Ball an “ungrateful fool” and “a poor man’s version of Don King but without the hair.”
Ball offered to bury the hatchet by sending Trump a pair of Lonzo’s high-priced signature gym shoes, courtesy of the Big Baller Brand, which papa Ball founded.
Frankly, my response echoes the sentiments that Henry Kissinger allegedly expressed about the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s: “It’s a pity they both can’t lose.”
Instead, Trump and the senior Ball turn their thoroughly unnecessary dispute into gold. Trump uses it to fire up his political base and Ball uses it to bring in more customers for Big Baller shoes.
The big losers are those of us who long for some seriousness in government, especially when the time comes to salute brave heroes like the Navajo code talkers. They used their language skills to transmit the secret messages that helped all of us Americans remain free to speak out.