Donald Trump may have left the Republican Party, but he’s staying put in his role as the right’s racial conspiracy theorist-in-chief.
On Wednesday, Trump tweeted his endorsement of the latest bit of holiday cheer from the extremist ant-Obama right. As the story goes on more than one conservative blog this week, Obama declined to offer an official statement marking Christmas, but made sure to get one out celebrating Kwanzaa.
This tale is as blatantly racial as it is demonstrably false, and it comes in the grand tradition of accusing Obama of supporting Ramadan over Easter and the old Trump favorite that Obama got into the Ivy League because he’s not white, not because he’s smart.
The trouble with the story about Christmas and Kwanzaa is that it’s 100% untrue. Here’s Obama using his taxpayer-funded weekly video address to wish Americans “a Merry Christmas” this past weekend:
Here’s a picture of the nativity scene on display at the White House for Christmas a couple weeks ago when TPM’s Benjy Sarlin snapped it while on a visit:
Quick summary: Obama, a Christian, publicly celebrated and mentioned Christmas in public and put a depiction of Jesus’ birth in the White House. He also issued a pro-forma statement on Kwanzaa, just like George W. Bush did every year between 2001-2008 (as Crooks and Liars catalogs.)
Despite all those facts, here’s Trump’s tweet Wednesday:
It’s worth remembering that Trump was until recently a major figure in Republican politics. Despite the protestations of some in the establishment GOP, most of the presidential candidates (including frontrunners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich) traipsed to New York to visit The Donald. Trump gets regular slots on Fox News as an analyst and until he decided to bolt the GOP and once again kick around the idea that he might run for president as an independent, his endorsement was anticipated.
Just because you meet with and praise Trump, of course, doesn’t mean you, too, subscribe to the racial conspiracies about the President that made Trump briefly a player in the presidential race earlier this year. But it’s hard to imagine the candidates would get away with standing this close to guy who thinks what Trump thinks if the guy wasn’t Trump, who gets a surprising pass on all this stuff most of the time.
Trump’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the tweet, or the facts about Obama’s public Christmas celebrations.
