CNN’s Jeff Zeleny, Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart, Vox find racism, ‘alt-right manifesto’ in Trump’s Warsaw speech
CNN took aim at President Trump and his supporters again as CNN White House correspondent Jeff Zeleny attacked the speech as a “throwback speech” as a “White America, America First kind of speech” finding racism in the remarks. Other left-wing journalists found racism in Trump’s words, calling it an “alt-right manifesto” full of “white nationalist dog whistles.”
Speaking during a panel discussion Sunday morning, Zeleny said it was one of his best speeches in terms of staying on a focused theme.
“This is not a speech he could have given really any place else. This is a white America, America first kind of speech,” Zeleny said. “It wasn’t a modern-day speech, if you will. It was sort of a throwback speech.”
He said it was one telling people to “be afraid” of what is happening in the world.
“It was praised in a lot of corners, but he probably couldn’t have given that speech here in America,” he added.
Read the full transcript of the Trump speech HERE
A Vox article said the speech sounded like an “alt-right manifesto,” and the Washington Post‘s Jonathan Capehart claimed it was full of “white-nationalist dog whistles.”
“‘We write symphonies.’ What on Earth does that have to do with anything?… In that one line, taken in context with everything else Trump said, what I heard was the loudest of dog whistles,” Capehart wrote. “A familiar boast that swells the chests of white nationalists everywhere. ”
Vox: “Trump issued a battle cry — for “family, for freedom, for country, and for God” — in a speech that often resorted to rhetorical conceits typically used by the European and American alt-right. It sounded, at times, not just like the populists of the present but the populists of the past.”
They attacked the Polish government, making the press out to be victims: “Nor did he note that Europeans widely see the Polish ruling party of today, which has tried to clamp down on the media and judiciary, as itself a threat to Western values.”
