The media have been on a rantfest lately, warning that former President Donald Trump will end democracy and execute his enemies.
Just consider what Bob Costas said over the weekend. “You have to be in the throes of some sort of toxic delusion in a toxic cult to believe that Donald Trump has ever been, in any sense, emotionally, psychologically, intellectually, or ethically fit to be president of the United States,” he said.
But that’s nothing compared to our Liberal Media Scream focus on Tom Schaller, the author of White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy, who went further to attack the half of the nation that has supported Trump over the years.
White rural voters, he told MSNBC’s Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski, “are the most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, and anti-gay geodemographic group in the country. … They’re the most conspiracist group: QAnon support and subscribers, election denialism, COVID denialism and scientific skepticism, Obama birthism.” And that’s just the start of his five scream rant.
From Monday’s Morning Joe on MSNBC:
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: As we barrel toward a likely rematch of the 2020 election, one candidate continues to have a hold over white rural voters. But it’s not Joe Biden, seen here as a boy on the right side of your screen, who went to public school, is the son of a used car salesman, and was born to a middle-class family in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Instead, it is Trump, here on the left side, a private school-educated son of a New York City real estate tycoon who became a millionaire at 8 years old and didn’t have to serve because he claimed he had bone spurs in his little feet. So, why is it that Trump appeals so much to a group he couldn’t be more different from?
Joining us now, professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Tom Schaller, and journalist and opinion writer Paul Waldman. Their new book out tomorrow is entitled, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy. Tom, I’ll start with you. Why are white rural voters a threat to democracy at this point? You would think, as we pointed out, looking at Joe Biden’s background and Donald Trump’s, that the opposite would be true.
TOM SCHALLER: “We lay out the fourfold interconnected threat that white rural voters pose to the country. First of all, we show 30 polls and national studies that demonstrate this. So we provide the receipts in Chapter 6. They are the most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, and anti-gay geodemographic group in the country.
“Second, they’re the most conspiracist group: QAnon support and subscribers, election denialism, COVID denialism and scientific skepticism, Obama birthism. Third, anti-democratic sentiments. They don’t believe in an independent press — free speech. They’re most likely to say the president should be able to act unilaterally without checks from Congress or the courts or the bureaucracy. They’re also the most strongly white nationalist and white Christian nationalists. And fourth, they’re most likely to excuse or justify violence as acceptable alternative to peaceful public discourse…
“I think this is the disconnect, right? They’d rather channel their rage. I think what a lot of white rural Americans have decided is that their economic fortunes are decided by globalization and frankly, late-stage capitalism, which is eating up all the mom and pop stores and taking away the extractive industries, in coal and farming and so forth, so they might as well vote on their culture issues, they might as well vote on God, guns, and religion because they feel like neither party is going to deliver any material benefit.
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“They’re not going to reverse the closure of rural pharmacies and rural hospitals and rural healthcare facilities, which are disappearing not because of communism and not because of socialism but because of capitalism, right? Rural pharmacies and hospitals are closing because they’re not moneymakers, and unless they’re part of a regional chain, they’re disappearing. So Trump comes in and says, let’s just hate on cities, let’s just hate on minorities, let’s hate on immigrants, and at least they can deliver on that. And so they’re not even voting in their material interest anymore, and that’s causing a further decay and decline of rural communities.”
Brent Baker, vice president of research and publications for the Media Research Center, explained our weekly pick: “So, if a class of voters prefers a candidate you don’t like, it couldn’t be that they just have a differing opinion with which you can respectfully disagree. No, you must impugn and demean them to discredit their irrational preference for the candidate you condescendingly have decided is not in their best interest. And since this makes MSNBC viewers feel superior, you get a welcoming platform on the left-wing cable channel’s morning show.”
Rating: FIVE out of FIVE SCREAMS.
