Vanderbilt University Professor Michael Eric Dyson said Sunday that President Donald Trump’s election fraud claims are racist dog-whistles.
Dyson joined a panel discussion on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to discuss Trump’s ongoing legal challenges and comments in the weeks following the 2020 presidential election, and he argued that the president’s focus on large cities was due to the larger minority populations there. (RELATED: Liberal Fox News Contributor Refuses To Say If Kanye Should Be Forced To Vote Democrat Because He’s Black)
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Anchor Chuck Todd framed the question by saying that Trump was employing “dog-whistles” when he leveled fraud accusations against larger cities, and Dyson was quick to expand on that thought.
“A sitting president of the United States of America attacking with such vitriol and viciousness the very process of democracy that landed him the job to begin with,” Dyson began. “While he undercuts the prospects of American democracy, he’s undercutting his own legitimacy, the very thing which he’s been obsessed over these years.”
Dyson then turned to the idea of a “dog whistle,” saying that in some cases it was louder than in others. “He’s attacking Detroit: 79% black. He’s attacking Atlanta: 52% black, he’s attacking Philadelphia: 42% black, he’s attacking Milwaukee: 39% black.”
“We get what he’s doing here. He’s trying to have his cake and eat it, too, so to speak,” Dyson continued, noting that President Trump had actually seen an increase in black voters in 2020 and adding, “At the same time, he wants to be able to whistle to white supremacists and white nationalists he’s still their guy.”
Dyson concluded by claiming that Trump was attempting to tie the notion of fraud to the race of the people who lived in the areas where he alleged that fraud had been committed.
“This is destructive to the process of American democracy and one of the most powerful repudiations of enlightenment. Here’s a guy who is anti-science, he’s anti-race, he’s anti-everything that makes this country it seems the very great thing he wants to make it,” he said.