Ex-NPR Host: Trump Slogan Based on Promise of 'White Prosperity'

NewsBusters.org ^ | January 1, 2017 | Tim Graham

[Kaslin]

CBS’s Face the Nation led off 2017 with a political panel where everyone was completely disgusted by President-elect Trump. The two Bush White House veterans – speechwriters Michael Gerson and David Frum – talked in dark terms about an election stolen by Russia and a forthcoming “constitutional crisis.”

On the Left were Jeffrey Goldberg, the Obama-polishing editor of The Atlantic magazine, and former NPR anchor Michele Norris, who left the taxpayer-funded network when her husband took a job in the Obama White House. Norris declared that Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan clearly had a racial component, since America was “built on the promise of white prosperity above everything else.”

MICHELE NORRIS: In the phrase “Make America Great Again,” there is one word that if you are a person of color that you sort of stumble over. And it’s the word “again.” Because you’re talking about going back to a time that was not very comfortable for people of color. They did not have opportunities. They were relegated to the back of the line. And this is a country that, you know, to be honest, was built on the promise of white prosperity above everything else. And for a lot of people when they hear that message, “Make America Great Again,” deeply encoded in that message is a return to a time where white Americans can assume a certain amount of prosperity because....

JOHN DICKERSON: Michele, did you-- since the Race Card Project [which began as a race-relations segment on NPR], you’ve spent a lot of time looking at the conversation about race in all of its different forms in America. Did you - when you saw the racial aspects of this campaign, say, “That’s what I’ve been hearing,” and that’s been bubbling under the surface for the last four years or six years you’ve been working on this? Or--

NORRIS: More particularly in the last two years. I don’t want to say that I told you so, but I was not as surprised by Donald Trump’s victory because I saw a lot of these sentiments coming in, you know, over the transom. A lot of people feeling a lot of vertigo in this country for a lot of reasons. Some of it is, you know, racial fragility and not necessarily feeling like their feet touch the floor, feeling that they’re not at the front of the line. But also technological disruption. Even though the economy, all these indices of the economy, suggest that we’re doing fine, people don’t necessarily feel it. And Donald Trump was able to tap into a message where people felt a lot of discomfort. And-- and that again is somewhat retrograde. I mean, fear is not our brand, you know, in America. And-- and that is so much sort of the bright vein that ran…through this campaign.

Norris also trashed Trump voters by dragging out the usual liberal media lamentation that these Republicans refuse to agree on a “common set of facts” – like Trump’s slogans are based on racism, for example.

NORRIS: In this country, we’ve always assumed that technology was a good thing. We embraced it. We assumed that it was propelling us forward and that it would perhaps even though it was displacing jobs, that it would make for a better society, a better flow of information. I think we’re going to start to really question that now-- on-- on a lot of levels because of what it’s done to democracy, because certainly what it’s done to the level of American discourse. And as journalists, you know, we have to learn how to operate in a world where there is no longer a common set of facts. People get their news in such a way that it usually affirms or confirms everything that they already believe. We have someone who is about to occupy the Oval Office who is dismissing many of the publications that we work or have worked for and is trying to bypass us and go directly to people. So as we try to explain this surreal universe, we find ourselves in-- in almost a room of funhouse mirrors trying to figure out how to describe what’s going on.

As for the old Bush faction, Frum babbled about “The idea that a foreign power has reached into the United States, and tampered with American democracy, and maybe chosen for Americans a president that the larger number of Americans didn’t want for themselves.” Trump’s victory represents a “threat to democratic institutions in this country and around the world. And I-- I don’t think we do people a service by saying, “You know, there have been bad things in the American past before.” There have been. This is our bad thing, and it’s about as bad a thing as has happened in any of our lifetimes.”

Here we go again. Trump’s win is somehow worse than 9/11. Gerson added “I think there’s a pretty much even chance that we’re going to have a constitutional crisis or have a completely incompetent presidency that doesn’t know how to exercise power."

Goldberg cracked “That side of the table is totally depressing.” CBS could have found someone a little more optimistic, but this is what liberals love to do – it’s a “common set of opinions,” everyone revolving around a conventional “wisdom.”

PS: Brent Baker video-tweeted Trump:

Video: @DavidFrum: Trump’s election “about as bad a thing as has happened in any of our lifetimes” #FTN #TTT16 pic.twitter.com/wKUyc8Trd3 — Brent Baker (@BrentHBaker) January 1, 2017

[Zuse]

“...talked in dark terms about an election stolen by Russia...”

I’m so confused.
Russia stole an election?
What is that all about?

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

On the so-called Republican/conservative side, both Frum and Gerson are fools who have been writing in leftist publications as “house conservatives’ and making good money doing it. Again, no Syrian refugees in their houses.

I guess they like being idiots and saying “Yessum Massa, I’ll write anything you like against Trump”.

I’d say “give them 40 acres and a mule” but since they are both egotistical elitist asses, they won’t need the mules.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

typo. Third sentence should have read, “Wonder have many homeless people she housed”.

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

You have to wonder at some point, what is it that makes people want to hear this crap? And especially after all this time of having heard it relentlessly, for 8 years, nonstop?

[A_perfect_lady]

I started to read this, and about a quarter of the way through I stopped and thought, “I don’t care how these people feel. They don’t care how I feel, indeed, they seem to think I have no right to feel at all. So... do I owe it to myself to wade through their endless complaints? No. No, I don’t think I do.”

[goodnesswins]

Sicko...

[Hodar]

Trump wants to “make America great” for everyone, who wants to work.

Therein lies the rub. White people are generally motivated to work hard to get ahead. Some minoroties are more motivated to do nothing and live off the hard work of others. These cannot manage to even feed themselves outside of America, and inside America these same minorities have no interest in work, but would rather be parasites and fees off the hard work of others. This is the welfare system.

[pepsionice]

Trump wants the job base to broaden, people out there working, and paying income taxes. Who would NOT want that....raise your hand? In eight years, the only real jobs created....are government jobs.

This gal needs to get in a car and actually travel around the US....meet real people.

[Eleutheria5]

Which woman? Michelle Noris? The others are sane? The others, even the ones with boy names, are actual males, who don’t want a wickiotomy in the name of social justice?

[HonkyTonkMan]

We have someone who is about to occupy the Oval Office who is dismissing many of the publications that we work or have worked for and is trying to bypass us and go directly to people

Money line, right there. This is about controlling the message, controlling the information.

[Vince Ferrer]

Keep it up, progressives.

[MEG33]

I did the same.
Indeed!

[brucedickinson]

I, too have reached maximum black saturation. I hit that quite a while ago

[Frank_2001]

“If npr isn’t defended this election has been a waste.”

I’m certain you meant “DEFUNDED”! ;)

[Jim Robinson]

"Trump Slogan Based on Promise of 'White Prosperity'"

Maybe we should try electing a black guy to suppress white prosperity while making black lives matter (more). /s

[FlingWingFlyer]

Norris is a racist bigot.

[Jmouse007]

These people are evil, and they HATE America. There is no other explanation.

[VeniVidiVici]

NORRIS: More particularly in the last two years. I don’t want to say that I told you so, but I was not as surprised by Donald Trump’s victory because I saw a lot of these sentiments coming in, you know, over the transom. A lot of people feeling a lot of vertigo in this country for a lot of reasons. Some of it is, you know, racial fragility and not necessarily feeling like their feet touch the floor, feeling that they’re not at the front of the line. But also technological disruption. Even though the economy, all these indices of the economy, suggest that we’re doing fine, people don’t necessarily feel it.

Dumb ... as ... a freaking ... rock.

Must be nice to get on TV simply because you're the right color.

[pallmallman]

I positively hate NPR and PBS.....why in the hell are they being funded with tax payer dollars again?

[alpo]

...completely incompetent presidentcy that doesn’t know how to exercise power...

Aka: Barak Obama