Liberal New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg excused the recent series of instances where White House officials and President Trump’s supporters were publicly harassed, saying that it should be expected because Trump is a racist.
In a column published Monday night, Goldberg said Trump is “degrading” democracy and that has led to clashes between protesters and administration officials over the past several days.
“It’s a little more complicated when the professional racist is the president of the United States,” she wrote. “The norms of our political life require a degree of bipartisan forbearance. But treating members of Donald Trump’s administration as ordinary public officials rather than pariahs does more to normalize bigotry than exercising alongside a white separatist.”
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders was asked to leave the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Va., Friday night by the manager after some staff had complained about her dining there. Prior to that, protesters showed up at the home of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who was also confronted by demonstrators as she dined at a D.C.-based restaurant a few days before.
Others, including White House adviser Stephen Miller, have also been targeted in public by protesters.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said during a rally on Saturday that, “The people are going to turn on them. They’re going to protest. They’re going to absolutely harass them until they decide that they’re going to tell the president, ‘No, I can’t hang with you.'”
“Sometimes, their strategies may be poorly conceived,” Goldberg wrote in her piece. “But there’s an abusive sort of victim-blaming in demanding that progressives single-handedly uphold civility, lest the right become even more uncivil in response. As long as our rulers wage war on cosmopolitan culture, they shouldn’t feel entitled to its fruits. If they don’t want to hear from the angry citizens they’re supposed to serve, let them eat at Trump Grill.”
