With Donald Trump‘s victory last week to win the presidency you knew former Daily Show host Jon Stewart couldn’t keep quiet on the subject for long. So this morning the satirist who in many ways became a champion for the left appeared on CBS This Morning discussing the election results with Charlie Rose.
Among the more specific topics were the Republican reaction to Trump’s win and the notion that no one actually asked the president-elect what made America great during the campaign.
However Stewart may have turned some heads when he defended Trump supporters and the perceived generalized notion that they’re all racist. Via the Boston Globe:
“I thought Donald Trump disqualified himself at numerous points. But there is now this idea that anyone who voted for him has to be defined by the worst of his rhetoric. In the liberal community, you hate this idea of creating people as a monolith. Don’t look at Muslims as a monolith, they are individuals, and it would be ignorance,” Stewart said. “But everybody who voted for Donald Trump is a monolith, is a racist. That hypocrisy is also real in our country.”
Stewart makes a good point. Generalizations are never good and it’s certainly agreeable that not all Trump supporters are racist. Now although the president-elect’s supporters may not all be bigots, racists or sexists they apparently condone that behavior to some extent (which is this case is the White House) considering they pulled the lever for him last week.
If you’re a Trump supporter and deny you condone those toxic character traits of Trump then how do you spin it the other way?
I’m not sure that’s a generalization they can live down.
