When Donald Trump launched his presidential bid in 2015, many struggled to define his agenda.  Initially, the media and punditry labeled his platform “populist”.  As defined, a populist’s appeal is to “ordinary folk” who feel their interests have been marginalized by established elite groups.  Fair enough, candidate Trump certainly espoused those views, especially when touting his views on jobs and the economy

            But as Trump’s message increasingly incorporated the “Make America Great Again” tag line, this evoked a certain jingoism that caused the media and punditry to pair his populist label with that of “nationalist”.  As defined, a nationalist’s appeal is one of loyalty and devotion to one’s nation, vigorously supporting its interests, even to the exclusion or detriment of other nations.  Unquestionably, nationalism became a cornerstone of candidate Trump’s platform on trade, immigration, foreign policy and the US military.

            Both labels: “populist” and “nationalist” resounded well enough with the American electorate for him to garner nearly 63 million votes and handily capture the electoral college.  Both assignations seemed a fair and accurate description of the views Trump ran on, and won on.

            After the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in August 2017, the term “white supremacist” gained great traction among news outlets as a catch-all for the alt-right, neo-Nazi, pro-Fascist types which remain a blight on our national landscape.  Understanding that “supremacist” advocates the supremacy of one particular group over others, usually determined by race or sex, the term requires a descriptor in order to convey the identity of the group seeking recognition of its supremacy.  Hence, “white” supremacist would connote the idea that white people are superior to all other races. 

Such a descriptor is not necessary to define a “populist” or a “nationalist”.  One can be a white populist, a black populist, an Asian populist.  Assigning a racial identifier to a populist is superfluous to the term’s meaning, and is therefore not done.  Similarly, a “nationalist” is pre-supposed to favor the nation of their birth or citizenship regardless of color or gender.  One needn’t be a “black nationalist” or a “white nationalist” when invoking a rational advocacy for one’s preferred nation; a simple “nationalist” will suffice.  Surely we’ve all heard former President Obama called a socialist, but never a “black socialist”.  It is unnecessary.  Yet “white nationalist” is de rigueur when ascribed to Donald Trump.  Begs the question, if Trump was a socialist instead of a nationalist, would he be a “white socialist”?

But “supremacist”, (and its newly-arrived colloquial cousin “supremist” favored in the electronic media), does require some degree of specificity regarding the race, color, religion, or gender of the group claiming supremacy.

Fast forward to the second half of 2019 as the Democrat Party begins to field its array of presidential candidates for the 2020 election.  Many, if not all, of the participants ascribe varying degrees of bigotry and racism to Donald Trump.  Some point to his tweets, some to his speeches, some to his heart, others to his soul in order to support these notions.  Some accusations are flagrant, shameful and baseless, others sound more measured and are not entirely without merit.  Yet unabashedly playing the race card, so dog-eared by those appropriating victimhood as to render the slur inert; its stinging effect now blunted, much as the N-word has been desensitized by entitled rap artists.

What has emerged is the conflation of the terms “nationalist” and “white supremacist” into the new normal: “white nationalist”.  As painstakingly laid out above, injecting a racial qualifier into what is little more than a boisterous love of country is unnecessary, and in the case of this president, prejudicial by design.  With the free-style interchanging of “white supremacist” with “white nationalist”, news outlets and the pundit class pivot ceaselessly in stoking racial tensions by casting Trump as a white supremacist simply by conflating terms.  No one is called on it.  No one retracts or corrects or restates.  It’s just out there in the chatter-sphere.  Oftentimes unintentional, but many times pre-planned, this slip of the lip – this lazy and cavalier public discourse that is passed off as journalism goes unchecked until it just sticks.  

So naturally, this malaprop is seized by the candidate pool of democrat aspirants and exploited throughout every news story that can by tinged by race.  Deportations, mass shootings, urban decay, homelessness, crime, economic disparity, all so casually attributed to the “white nationalist” in the White House.

            Whatever that is.