GOP/RACISM/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Ever since Donald J. Trump laid waste to its ideological shibboleths with his victory at the polls, the conservative intellectual class has been scrambling to keep up with him. And earlier this week, at the first major gathering dedicated to wresting a coherent ideology out of the chaos of the Trumpist moment, the president was upending their efforts again. On Sunday [7-14-19] evening, some 500 policy thinkers, theorists, journalists and students gathered in a ballroom at the Ritz-Carlton here for the start of the National Conservatism Conference, a three-day event dedicated to charting a new path for conservatism under the banner of nationalism. And not the kind associated with tiki torches and Nazi salutes, the conference was at pains to make clear…But inconveniently, just a few hours earlier, President Trump had let loose with tweets calling for four freshman congresswomen of color to ‘go back’ to the ‘broken and crime infested’ countries they came from, throwing an awkward wrench into the messaging.”
–Jennifer Schuessler, “Polishing the Nationalist Brand in the Trump Era,” The New York Times online, July 19, 2019