I just posted this on FB, and I thought I would do so here as well. I will not send a separate email communication concerning this short post.
Everyone should watch this brilliant Jake Tapper interview with Tom Bossert, Donald Trump's Homeland Security Advisor. During the election, conservative friends and friends of friends criticized me for defending those claiming the Trump campaign engaged in dog whistling to hate groups. Now, even after Trump's utterly pathetic response to the Charlottesville riot and murder, Bossert repeatedly resists, again and again and again, Tapper's insistence upon a clear statement condemning not just "groups," but specifically white supremacists, KKK members, and Nazis. Tapper does not receive such a statement until Bossert is backed into a corner, 10 minutes into the interview. Today, there is one defense to the dog whistling claim: The signaling from the Trump administration that it will do whatever it takes to cater even to the absolute most hateful members of its base is so loud and clear that it is now ironic to refer to it as dog whistling. Jake Tapper has, in my view, emerged a media hero, a single minded reporter with clarity, integrity, and drive who will relentlessly press to get at the bottom of what increasingly appears to be this President's bottomless pit of incivility, lack of character, lack of vision, and utter incompetence.