From the very first day Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president, he established his credentials as the Republican Party’s foremost spokesman for white nationalism and the racist hate groups who rallied to his campaign. And trump hasn’t been shy about his gratitude for their support. This week he even told a Fox News reporter that he isn’t concerned that white nationalists are “finding common cause” with his racist remarks.

Following Trump’s brazenly bigoted Twitter rants against Democratic women of color, there has been a deafening silence from his GOP colleagues. They are either too scared to take the ethical road and condemn Trump’s racism, or they agree with it. And now there is a new Reuters poll that really tells us all we need to know about today’s Republican Nationalist Party:

“Support for U.S. President Donald Trump increased slightly among Republicans after he lashed out on Twitter over the weekend in a racially charged attack on four minority Democratic congresswomen, a Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll shows. […] his net approval among members of his Republican Party rose by 5 percentage points.”

There you have it. Trump may be an avowed white supremacist, but his public utterances affirming that are clearly a deliberate strategy to appeal the members of his party who are lapping it up. They like him even more when he’s articulating overtly racist messages. That can only serve to incite ever more repugnant hate speech from the President and his Klannish confederates.

For contrast, approval from Democrats and independents both declined in the poll. And a separate poll from USA Today confirmed these findings. It showed that overall large majorities of 59 percent of voters called Trump’s tweets “un-American.” And 68 percent said they were “offensive.” But a majority of 57 percent of Republicans said they agreed with Trump’s racist tweets.

Contrary to the disgust by most Americans for Trump’s racism, he continues to dig himself deeper into the abyss of blatant bigotry. On Wednesday morning he quote-tweeted a Fox News commentary by GOP Sen. John Kennedy, who said that “the four horsewomen of the apocalypse” are “Wack Jobs.” And somehow Trump thought that would help his argument that he isn’t a racist scumbucket. He also tweeted a poll of his own to bolster his lagging defense:

New Poll: The Rasmussen Poll, one of the most accurate in predicting the 2016 Election, has just announced that “Trump” numbers have recently gone up by four points, to 50%. Thank you to the vicious young Socialist Congresswomen. America will never buy your act! #MAGA2020

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 17, 2019

First of all, let’s not ignore that Trump is once again maligning four women of color, who were elected to represent their districts, with his obviously sarcastic thanks to “the vicious young Socialist Congresswomen.” It’s part of his reelection strategy to fire up his Deplorable base by dehumanizing his critics.

As for Rasmussen, it is a thoroughly disgraced, right-wing purveyor of deliberately slanted surveys. Nevertheless, Trump posts a similar tweet every time Rasmussen puts Trump at 50 percent. Never mind that the same poll also shows Trump with a negative “approval index” wherein his strong disapproval always exceeds his strong approval. What’s more, whenever Rasmussen hits 50 percent for Trump, it only lasts a few days before he is once again in negative territory. And this is with the most Trump-friendly pollster on the planet.

So Trump is caught in an endless loop where Rasmussen puts him at around 47 percent, then he pops to 50 and Trump squeezes out a tweet. Then he drops to the mid forties again. Then he spikes back to 50 triggering another tweet. This has happened at least fourteen times just this year. You have to wonder if this is a strategy on Rasmussen’s part to give Trump some phony survey data to brag about.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Although, it hardly seems worthy af bragging when Trump can’t even manage to get half the nation to approve of him for more than a day or two in a notoriously pro-Trump poll (most polls have him in the low forties). And it is downright disastrous when Trump’s Republican Party support goes up after he spends several days ranting like the Klan’s Grand Wizard. But that should inform America’s voters that the problem isn’t just Trump. It’s the entire GOP. And in 2020, all of them need to be exorcised from our local and national governments.