Name Names, NY Times: Which Leading Republicans Won't Comment On Trump's “Really Strange” Remarks?

September 3, 2020

By Joan McCarter

As the squatter in the Oval Office continues to decompensate right before our eyes, it's getting hard for Senate Republicans to avoid talking about it. They're trying to stay mum, or invisible, as Donald Trump spouts wilder and wilder racist conspiracy theories, but that's not working any more—not even with The New York Times, which approached Republicans for comment on what they call Trump's "really strange" remarks.

As the untethered-from-reality thoughts expressed by Trump in his interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham dribbled out—i.e. the plane "almost completely loaded with thugs" wearing all black, Joe Biden being controlled by "people that you’ve never heard of, people that are in the dark shadows," and Jacob Blake being shot seven times in the back being like a botched putt in a golf tournament—the Times felt obliged to find out what leading House and Senate Republicans thought. "None cared to comment," the paper says, "at least not the dozen or so The New York Times tried to reach on Tuesday." This is the best: "'If the leader comments, I'll be sure to pass it along,' said a spokesman for Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader. As of Tuesday afternoon, there was nothing to pass along."

They got just one taker, Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who flirts with calling Trump the "r" word. "The comments and tweets over the past few days," Romney ventured, "including a retweet of a 2019 video clearly intended to further inflame racial tensions, are simply jaw-dropping." You can say it, Mitt: The leader of your party is a racist. In fact, it'd be a really good thing for one of you to say out loud. There's no other way the Republican Party is going to stop being a white supremacist organization. The first step to fixing a problem is to admit you have one.

The Times doesn't say which Republicans it reached out to who refused to comment, which is cowardly in its own right. Not that any of them are going to win a profile in courage award, but it would be instructive to see the list. It would strike an accountability blow for the Times, too, which is something the paper needs to do some work on.

Posted with permission