Normalizing Nasty: Bush Snarks → Obama Hate → Trump

I recently heard a statistic that 70 to 80 percent of Trump voters are also Obama haters. Scary, because if 35% of Americans are hard-core Trumpers, that means about 5% of Americans think Trump is full of shit—but they’re still mad because Obama was Black.

But the important question is: how did that become acceptable?

In the year 2000, America got George W. Bush—by way of the Supreme Court. He was widely mocked as “not the sharpest knife in the drawer,” with even his own mother quipping, “Jeb’s the smart one.” Between Bush’s “misremembered” lines and his proud claim to be “the Decider,” late-night hosts and political rivals alike branded him stupid. But here’s the problem: America, your children were listening. Anyone under 35 today was a kid or teenager when Bush took office. Grade-schoolers, high-schoolers, and college students all heard adults call the president stupid—and it stuck.

Because he was ... well, stupid

Fast forward to 2008. Barack Obama—constitutional law professor, senator, and one of the most gifted orators of the era—won a decisive victory. In that election, two million fewer Republicans voted than in the previous one. I assert that the significant drop in Republican turnout was because many soon-to-be Obama haters were so sure a Black man could never win in America that they didn’t even bother voting. When he did win, the only “logical” explanation in their minds was that he cheated. The “I hate Obama” movement began, which quickly morphed into “Obama is stupid.” However, many Americans—particularly younger ones raised on eight years of hearing Bush called stupid—didn’t see the racial undertones. To them, it was now perfectly acceptable to call the president stupid (though they decided to overlook the constitutional law professor and world-class orator part).

Because he was Black

Most Americans don’t want to think of themselves as racist. So the way to mask racial animus was to instead say, “I don’t like his policies”—even though many of those policies were centrist or borrowed straight from Republicans. The Affordable Care Act was essentially Mitt Romney’s plan for Massachusetts. The stimulus was packed with tax cuts. Foreign policy leaned more hawk than dove. But none of that mattered, because policy was never the point. Policy was the fig leaf.

This is the deeper danger: intellectual dishonesty. It was easier to lie to themselves than admit, “I think, maybe, I might be a little racist.” And once you’re willing to lie to yourself, lying to others comes easy. That’s how birtherism, conspiracy theories, and “alternative facts” gained traction.

And then came Donald Trump. He didn’t invent the movement—he stripped it of its mask. Where Bush normalized mocking the president as “dumb,” and Obama forced people to hide their racial resentment under the cover of “policy,” Trump gave permission to say the quiet part out loud. Suddenly, the coded language wasn’t necessary. The grievance was the point.

Because he hates who they hate

So how did hatred of Obama become acceptable? Slowly, through normalization, self-deception, and a refusal to name racism for what it was. By the time Trump arrived, the groundwork had been laid. All he had to do was open the door.

I'm just saying.