The media made it clear this week that its favorite way to think about Donald Trump is by comparing him to former Democratic Alabama Gov. George Wallace, a segregationist.
On Monday and Tuesday, the New York Times editorial board, a Washington Post columnist and the editor of National Review have directly compared Trump to Wallace, just before Trump was slated to win several more states in primary elections on Tuesday.
Referring to a planned campaign rally in Chicago last week that was canceled by the Trump campaign out of safety concerns, National Review Editor Rich Lowry wrote Tuesday that Wallace “would have to admire how Donald Trump parlayed a canceled Chicago event where supporters and protesters shoved and punched one another into wall-to-wall media coverage…”
On Monday, the Times, also referring to the rally, called the Republican candidate “this season’s version of George Wallace.”
Liberal Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen said that Trump is “the ugliest national candidate I’ve seen since George Wallace…”
Accusations of racism have become commonplace in national politics, but what makes it remarkable in this case is that the parallel between Trump and Wallace is drawn by both liberal and conservative journalists.
Conservative George Will of the Washington Post opened one of his columns in February declaring that Trump’s candidacy was the “fulfillment” of “Wallace’s wish.”
“Donald Trump is the GOP’s George Wallace,” the Daily Beast stated in December.
A January headline, again, in the Times: “What Donald Trump owes George Wallace.”
