Andrew Yang, the only 2020 candidate who admits what other Democrats don’t want to say, dropped a nugget of truth on the debate stage Friday night.
“Donald Trump is not the cause of all of our problems,” he said. “We’re making a mistake when we act like he is.”
Rather, Trump is “a symptom of a disease that has been building up in our communities for years and decades.”
The president certainly didn’t help today’s polarized political climate, but he didn’t create it. Both his most vocal fans and opponents did.
Yang embraces a smart strategy by appealing to both sides of the aisle with his measured approach to Trump. While Yang’s peers act as if Trump created polarization, the truth is that some people freaked out last fall when Ellen Degeneres was seen laughing with George W. Bush, who hasn’t been president for 11 years.
No, Trump didn’t create our current political climate. Trump didn’t make House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rip up his State of the Union speech; he didn’t make Taylor Swift call a senator she dislikes “a homophobic racist”; he didn’t tell singer Ricky Rebel to show up at the Grammys with “IMPEACH THIS” spelled out on his bare backside.
We’ve seen plenty of bad behavior during the Trump administration, and the president certainly hasn’t discouraged it. But the trend toward incivility that has unfolded during his administration didn’t start in 2016. Yang is right: The disease has been there for years.
