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He dreads with every racist, misogynistic fiber in his body the rise of Harris and the intensity of her support, and also the organizing might of Black women voters.
One of the nation’s best-known Black Republicans is former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In the 21st century (and perhaps ever), no African American woman rose higher in Republican politics than Rice, who served as President George W. Bush’s national security adviser and then his secretary of state, both firsts. Like her or not, agree with her politics or not, she brought significant experience, knowledge, and professionalism to those positions.
Former President Donald Trump’s first public words about Rice date back to 2006 when he labeled her with a vile term. In a speech before 8,000 people in New York City, he said, “Condoleezza Rice, she’s a lovely woman, but I think she’s a bitch. She goes around to other countries and other nations, negotiates with their leaders, comes back, and nothing ever happens.” There was no justification for Trump using such repulsive language other than his own toxic petulance and racist misogyny against Black women.
The stunning upheaval in the 2024 presidential race has, in fact, brought into sharp focus Trump’s longstanding animosity toward and war against Black women.
His vulgarity and sexism toward Rice foreshadowed a political future of hateful attacks on women—particularly women of color—with whom he disagrees. That incident provides some context for a recent New York Times report that, in private, Trump has referred repeatedly to Vice President Kamala Harris, his most formidable challenger for the 2024 presidential race, as a “bitch.” His campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung shamelessly and unbelievably stated that, when it comes to the person many would view as the most profane president ever, “That is not language President Trump has used to describe Kamala.” In fact, Trump’s longstanding and fixed sense of patriarchy and the cruel slurs against women that go with it are well documented.
The stunning upheaval in the 2024 presidential race has, in fact, brought into sharp focus Trump’s longstanding animosity toward and war against Black women. President Joe Biden’s June 21st decision to drop out of that race propelled Harris to become the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, which means Trump now faces the one opponent who not only threatens his return to office, but also triggers his worse racist and sexist behavior.
In her first weeks running for president, he has publicly called Kamala Harris “dumb as a rock,” “nasty,” a “bum,” and “real garbage.” In front of thousands of his followers, he has deliberately and repeatedly mispronounced her name, claiming, “I don’t care” when called out on it. At his rallies, some of his supporters can be seen wearing and selling T-shirts that say, “Joe and the Ho Must Go,” or some variation on that, deplorable mantras that date back to 2020. Neither Trump nor his campaign have ever denounced such unacceptable activities. His effort and that of many MAGA adherents to “other” Harris is not just meant to humiliate her but degrade and dehumanize her as well.
Nor is this one-off focused on Harris. Trump has done the same to other Black women and women of color for decades. Before, during, and after his presidency, he specifically targeted Black women with a kind of venom he rarely aimed at white women or men.
He’s gone after Black women, whether elected and appointed officials (Republican or Democrat), journalists, athletes, prosecutors, or celebrities. Here are just a few examples of his loathing:
The examples of Trump’s enraged responses to Black women who criticize or call out his lies, ineptitude, insecurities, and ignorance are endless. He is also fully aware that his attacks put targets on the backs of those women. In fact, that may be exactly the point.
While the journalists and celebrities that he goes after are part of his bullying approach to life, with some added racist and sexist spice, he clearly feels most threatened by Black people and Black women in particular who could send him to prison. Georgia Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, New York State Attorney General Letitia James, and Washington, D.C. District Judge Tanya Chutkan have all felt the pressure of Trump’s inflammatory wrath as they oversaw legal cases attempting to hold him accountable for his criminal behavior. They have all experienced countless death threats since taking on his cases. In addition to referring to them as “racists,” “animal,” “rabid,” “liars,” and worse, he also called Willis and James “Peekaboo,” a nickname he has yet to explain but that seems awfully close to the racist slur “jigaboo.” It’s an obvious dog whistle similar to his calling them and others prosecuting him “riggers,” which, of course, rhymes with the “N-word” and which he normally spells out in caps in social posts to make sure it gets attention.
His attacks on Judge Chutkan led to the arrest of a woman in Texas who threatened to murder her and a swatting attack on her home, bringing the police to her house in response to a false report of a shooting there. Chutkan is attempting to move forward with the case against Trump in Washington, D.C., although there will clearly not be a trial before the November election. If Trump loses the election, the case will likely go forward with the strong possibility that he’ll be convicted and punished. If he wins, he’ll undoubtedly order the Justice Department to drop it.
While Black leaders in politics, the media, women’s groups, and community organizations consistently denounced Trump for his chauvinist attacks, there was dead silence from his best-known Black women supporters. MAGA devotees like far-right commentator Candace Owens, social media celebrities like (the late) Diamond and Silk, conservative abortion extremist Reverend Alveda King, and others said nary a word as he raged and ranted.
Notably, in his businesses and during his presidency, very, very few Black individuals were either in Trump’s employ or in his inner circle. In his White House, only three Black women held high political or staff positions: the briefly tenured Manigault Newman, the briefly acting Surgeon General Sylvia Trent-Adams (from April 2017 to September 2017), and Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) official Lynne Patton.
Only Patton worked for Trump for any period of time. Prior to 2016, she worked for the Trump Organization and the Eric Trump Foundation for at least a decade, eventually becoming a “Trump family senior aide.” After taking office, Trump appointed her administrator of HUD Region II under Secretary Ben Carson. Like Carson, she had no background or expertise in housing policy, yet was put in charge of hundreds of thousands of public housing units in New York and New Jersey. She made excuses for Trump’s unsuccessful effort to cut millions of dollars from the New York Housing Authority budget that could have led to a potential 40% rent increase for public housing residents.
She was scandal-ridden throughout his tenure, caught, for instance, misrepresenting her education background on her government résumé, implying that she had attended and graduated from Quinnipiac University School of Law and Yale University when she hadn’t. She dropped out of Quinnipiac and only took summer classes at Yale. When caught, she responded: “Lots of people list schools they didn’t finish.”
It’s not just Trump’s hateful words but the policies and initiatives he pushed while in office that harmed Black women as well as millions of other Americans.
Her most notorious scandal occurred on February 27, 2019, when she volunteered to be a political prop for then-Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) at a congressional hearing. To repudiate the testimony of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who was accusing him of being racist, among other charges, Meadows had Patton stand silently behind him while he ludicrously stated that Trump couldn’t be racist because Patton had worked for him and she was a descendant of slaves.
Like other White House staff under Trump, Patton repeatedly violated the Hatch Act, which doesn’t allow federal employees in the executive branch to engage in political partisanship. She was first warned by the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) in September 2019 but continued her transgressions. She and other Trump staffers broke the law, but the Trump administration did little to enforce it. However, when Biden came into office, the OSC did apply the rule of law. In response, Patton was forced to admit her violations and reached a settlement. She was fined $1,000 and banned from holding any federal government position for four years. And yet she still remains loyal to Trump.
Following his recent disastrous interview appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists, Trump’s campaign issued a statement claiming that Trump, who slung insults, spewed endless lies, refused to answer questions, and hurried off early, was the victim of “unhinged and unprofessional commentary.” His most noted unbalanced remark—and there were plenty of them—was his contention that Kamala Harris had only in recent years “happened to turn Black.”
At the Republican National Convention, where African Americans were only 3% of the attendees, eight speakers were Black, seven of them men. The only Black woman given a prime speaking spot was rapper and model Amber Rose, whose Trump-loving father converted her to support him. Rather than include an elected official, state party leader, or conservative scholar, Trump selected someone who fulfilled his gendered view of Black women as either spectacles or subservient.
It’s not just Trump’s hateful words but the policies and initiatives he pushed while in office that harmed Black women as well as millions of other Americans. Much of what he’s done and is planning to do is laid out in policy proposals detailed in the Heritage Foundation’s racially discriminating Project 2025 report, written by many of Trump’s former officials and those aligned with him. These include policies relating to abortion rights, education, criminal justice, civil rights, and healthcare access, among many other concerns.
In addition, Black women have been disproportionately suffering from the abortion bans implemented since the significantly Trump-built conservative Supreme Court ended Roe v. Wade in 2022. According to the Democratic National Committee, “More than half of Black women of reproductive age now live in states with abortion bans in effect or with threats to abortion access.” Close to 7 million Black women, ages 15 to 49, reside in those states. Worse yet, Project 2025 advocates a nationwide ban on abortion for a future Trump administration. He himself has become increasingly coy in addressing such an electorally damaging issue by deferring to whatever states want to do, fearing otherwise that he might lose a majority of women voters, but not wanting to anger the Christian nationalist extremists in his base.
That same Trumpified Supreme Court also ended affirmative action at colleges and universities. In 2023, it ruled that colleges and universities can no longer consider race in admissions. As yet, it’s not clear whether acceptance rates have fallen, particularly at elite schools. What is clear, thanks to the ruling, is that many colleges and universities have cut or dramatically redefined hundreds of scholarships worth millions of dollars that were previously targeted for Black and Latino students. This particularly hurts Black women students (who attend college in disproportionate numbers compared to young Black men).
Black women voters have responded in kind to Trump. In 2016, he won about 6% of the Black vote overall, but there was a stunning gender gap. While he gained about 14% of Black male votes, 98% of Black women voted for Hillary Clinton. Four years later, in 2020, Trump garnered about 8% of the overall Black vote, but only 5% of Black women.
Given those numbers (and his sexism), it’s clear why Trump has focused his “Black outreach” on Black men. However, the wedge he seeks to build may not be as stable as he imagines. Not only have Black women rallied behind the Harris-Walz ticket, but it appears that Black male voters are shifting as well. In a poll conducted in late July by the Howard University polling service, the Howard Initiative on Public Opinion (HIPO), of which I’m a member, we found 96% of Black women and 93% of Black men expressing their intention to vote for Harris. Meanwhile, a Zoom gathering of 40,000 Black men voicing their support and suggestions only days after Harris was rising to become the nominee suggested that the Trump campaign’s hope for an irreversible gender split among Black voters wasn’t on target.
As New York Times columnist Charles Blow noted, Trump is the “totem” of contemporary patriarchy. He is also the embodiment of what Black feminist scholar Moya Bailey terms “misogynoir,” the marriage of misogyny and racism.
Certainly, he dreads with every fiber in his body the rise of Harris and the intensity of her support, and also the organizing might of Black women voters. In Georgia, in 2021, it was the on-the-ground mobilization of Black women that led to the defeat of Trump’s preferred Senate candidates and the victories of Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
Count on one thing: Donald Trump is now running scared. What he assumed barely a month ago would be an essentially uncontested victory has been transformed into his worst nightmare: facing a smart, confident, younger Black woman who has stolen his momentum and whose possible victory in November would be a defeat from which he could never recover.
George Shultz, a prominent cabinet member of both the Nixon and Reagan administrations, holding posts at State, Treasury, Labor and the Office of Management and Budget, died over the weekend at age 100. His death prompted no fewer than three fawning tributes in the Washington Post, in addition to the paper's official obituary.
Former George W. Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who considered Shultz both a mentor and friend, was given column space at the Post (2/7/21) to wax poetic about how Shultz "never lost sight of the centrality of freedom to the human experience and to human dignity," and concluded that "we are all so much better for having been a part of the consequential life that he lived."
Minutes later, the Post published a tribute from the paper's former reporter Lou Cannon (2/7/21), who lauded a man who "spoke truth to power" and "lived his life in service to his nation and humanity."
The next day, Post columnist David Ignatius (2/8/21) offered yet a third hagiography. Ignatius gushed:
Watching him over so many years was an education in the fact that the good guys--the smart, decent people who take on the hard job of making the country work--do sometimes win in the end.
Ignatius noted that Shultz "was Post publisher Katharine Graham's favorite tennis partner," and the warm, fuzzy feelings clearly persist at the paper long after Graham's departure.
But assessments that judge Shultz to be one of "the good guys," with a commitment to things like freedom, human dignity and humanity, necessarily gloss over his role in both the Iraq War and the Iran/Contra scandal.
It was Shultz's influential assertion in the mid-'80s of a right to pre-emptively strike against "future attacks"--what was dubbed the "Shultz Doctrine"--that helped pave the way for the endless War on Terror, and led the Wall Street Journal (4/29/06) to call Shultz "the father of the Bush Doctrine" of unprovoked attacks on nations deemed threats. Shultz was a mentor to both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, as well as Rice, and after 9/11 Shultz chaired the pro-invasion "Committee for the Liberation of Iraq." As FAIR (8/2/10) argued more than 10 years ago, when PBS aired a glowing documentary about Shultz that omitted his role in the Iraq War:
His advocacy for a new norm of international law that legitimizes "active prevention, pre-emption and retaliation" against terrorism is one of the most abiding, and controversial, legacies of Shultz's tenure at the State Department, providing the justification for two ongoing wars.
None of the three Post contributors mentioned Bush, Iraq or the War on Terror. Perhaps even more disturbingly, neither did the paper's nearly 3,000-word obituary for Shultz (2/7/21).
The Post also attempted to avoid or rewrite another key piece of Shultz's history--his role in the Iran/Contra scandal, in which the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Iran in order to fund, against congressional prohibitions, the right-wing Contra terror squads working to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. As Iran/Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh concluded in his final report (Extra! Update, 4/94):
The evidence establishes that the central National Security Council operatives kept their superiors--including Reagan, [Vice President George] Bush, Shultz, [Defense Secretary Caspar] Weinberger and other high officials--informed of their efforts generally, if not in detail, and their superiors either condoned or turned a blind eye to them.
The Post obituary, written by Michael Abramowitz and David E. Hoffman, tried to spin this, relying on the account of the Reagan administration's hand-picked investigative board:
By Mr. Shultz's account, he argued vigorously in private against the arms sales to Tehran, which were designed to gain Iran's help in freeing US hostages in Lebanon. But he was criticized afterward for not taking on the matter more directly.
"Secretary Shultz and Secretary Weinberger in particular distanced themselves from the march of events," concluded the board chaired by former Sen. John Tower (R.-Texas) that reviewed the Reagan administration's handling of the matter. "Secretary Shultz specifically requested to be informed only as necessary to perform his job."
As if worried that even this apologetic assessment might still put the deceased in an unfavorable light, the paper quickly softened the blow:
Once the matter became public, however, Mr. Shultz, reflecting the lessons of what he had seen during Watergate, urged others in the administration to come clean. Historian Malcolm Byrne, in his book Iran/Contra, wrote that "Shultz alone proposed to engage the US public rather than keep a tight hold on information."
And the Post didn't even mention Shultz's position on the Contra half of the scandal--perhaps because he actively participated in discussions regarding how to get around the congressional prohibitions, and almost made a solicitation himself to the Sultan of Brunei (FAIR.org, 8/2/10).
In Ignatius's telling, Iran/Contra was an illustration of Shultz's "good judgment":
He could detect bad ideas taking shape in the bureaucracy almost as if by smell. And he tried to stop them, even when that meant challenging Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, whose policy ideas he mistrusted, or President Ronald Reagan, whose National Security Council staff concocted a bizarre plot--to fund the contras in Nicaragua by selling arms to Iran--that Shultz abhorred.
Rice and Cannon simply omitted Iran/Contra in their columns. Either way, by exclusion or distortion, establishment obituaries rewrite history to make the official heroes fit for adoration (FAIR.org, 6/9/04, 7/9/09, 8/29/18, 12/7/18).
As the news broke on Saturday that former President George W. Bush had abruptly canceled his scheduled appearance this week in Geneva to avoid the risk of arrest on a torture complaint, my first thought was -- how humiliating, not only for Bush but, by extension, for all Americans.
As the news broke on Saturday that former President George W. Bush had abruptly canceled his scheduled appearance this week in Geneva to avoid the risk of arrest on a torture complaint, my first thought was -- how humiliating, not only for Bush but, by extension, for all Americans.
However, those who might have expected Bush to be down in the mouth and sulk about the embarrassment were disabused of that notion as the TV cameras caught him and Condoleezza Rice -- his former national security adviser and Secretary of State -- in seats of honor at Sunday's Super Bowl in Dallas.
Doomed to become America's first better-stay-at-home former president, Bush could still take consolation in getting scarce tickets to big sports events - he also attended high-profile Texas Rangers baseball games last year - and he can expect to hear some folks cheer for him, so long as he stays in Texas.
I imagined myself with advanced training in the intelligence collection technique called speed lip-reading, enabling me to decipher from the TV screen what Condi Rice might be saying to her beloved mentor:
Not to worry, Mr. President, as I told those upstart students at Stanford when they kept asking about waterboarding, "By definition, if it was authorized by the President, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture." Period. End of story.
Remember, Mr. President, it was Richard Nixon who pronounced the principle of presidential impunity in his famous statement to interviewer David Frost, "When the president does it, that means it's not illegal."
Oh, the pardon? Well, you're right. Nixon did need to be pardoned, but no worries for you on that score. What luck that we were able to get Obama and Eric Holder to agree to ride shotgun for us, if anyone summoned the temerity to bring charges against us for torture.
And, you can always use the perfect squelch -- the one you used so effectively in talking about waterboarding in that TV interview with Matt Lauer on Nov. 8. You remember, you countered by saying, "The lawyer said it was legal." As a last resort, we can always blame it on Al Gonzales and the gaggle of lawyers who gave us legal cover.
Your reply to Lauer was masterful. Glad we rehearsed that one so thoroughly. Just keep remembering not to say that you told the lawyers what you wanted them to say. Then we're home free.
Speaking of home free, as Ollie North once said, "Is this a great country, or what?" Sure is nice not to have to worry, at least here at home, about anyone holding us accountable for what you called "alternative procedures" for interrogation; or for my asking George Tenet to orchestrate demonstrations of those procedures every couple of weeks in the White House Situation Room.
By the way, we just got a thoughtful thank-you note from George Tenet, who must be the most grateful of all ex-CIA directors. He wanted to remind us of an important anniversary coming up. No, besides Ronald Reagan's birthday.
You may recall that it was on Feb. 7, 2002, that you signed that action memorandum saying the U.S. did not have to abide by the Geneva Conventions in how we treat al Qaeda or Taliban prisoners. Tenet says that he and his boys know they owe you big time for putting down in writing the protection that made them comfortable going to the dark side.
I sure wish that other countries would simply read that carefully worded memo. Then, they might become as understanding as Obama and stop hinting that we are in some legal jeopardy. Staying safe at home is nice, but I really miss traveling abroad. And I'm about to forfeit thousands of frequent flyer miles.
Anyhow, I must remind you, Mr. President, you're not the only one grounded for fear of being detained abroad. I can't begin to tell you how many speaking offers in Europe and elsewhere I've had to turn down.
It's hard, embarrassing even, but you are right to decide to err on the side of caution. That way you are sure to avoid confrontations not only with the local gendarmerie, but also with people like those ubiquitous, obnoxious women from Code Pink who seem to spring up from nowhere with handcuffs.
Ubiquitous? Oh, that means they seem to be everywhere. Obnoxious you know, yes?
A recent Secret Service bulletin said some of those Code Pink women are even in Tahrir Square helping to give our friend Mubarak a hard time. And remember how they went around to bookstores and libraries last fall, putting your excellent book in the fiction or crime sections?
Code Pink is now doing the same thing with Rumsfeld's book, and even inserting a bookmark that says: "WARNING: This Book's Author is a War Criminal." Heh, heh; poetic justice for Rumsfeld. Serves him right. I'm told that he has a bunch of nasty things to say about the rest of us.
I suspect Rumsfeld may catch more flak than you did in promoting your own book. Remember how those Code Pink activists challenged him the first time he came out of hiding in May 2009 and showed up at the White House Stenographers, sorry, Correspondents Dinner? There they were, introducing him as a war criminal. Frightful people.
I've also been thinking of the very close call Rumsfeld had in Paris in October 2007, when he had to make a mad dash for the airport, upon learning that someone (I think the Center for Constitutional Rights was behind it) had filed a Convention Against Torture complaint against him with the Paris Prosecutor.
I mean, if I had my way, I'd tell Tenet's friends at Langley to round up the lot of them -- Code Pink, Center for Constitutional Rights, whatever -- and drop them off at one of the old black sites. I tell you I'd do it, if we were still in power. All I'd need, of course, would be the President's okay, preferably in writing -- like that action memo of Feb. 7, 2002.
Don't much care for Rumsfeld, but glad he beat the gendarmes onto the plane in Paris and is now, like us, safe at home. That episode could have ended very badly, setting an awful precedent. Luckily, you avoided that kind of scene by canceling out of Geneva.
"Canceling out of Geneva." Has a familiar ring. That's essentially what your February 2002 memo did, canceling the Geneva Conventions on treatment of detainees. That's how you authorized what followed, how you made it legal.
End of imaginary report based on lip-reading Condoleezza Rice's Super Bowl conversations with George W. Bush.
Now Dead Serious
It was White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales, who released to the press Bush's Feb. 7, 2002, memo. It was spring 2004, and the timing suggests that one main purpose was to deflect early reports about abuse of detainees. Gonzales may also have been motivated by a desire to get onto the public record documentary proof that it was the decider, not the lawyers, who signed that memo.
In any case, it turned out to be the smoking gun on Bush's torture policies. In it Bush wrote: "I determine that common Article 3 of Geneva does not apply to either al Qaeda or Taliban detainees." Article 3, which is common to the other Geneva conventions on prisoners of war, bans "torture [and] outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." The conventions permit no country to unilaterally exclude anyone from Geneva protections.
But Bush did so, while hiding the substance of his memo behind words that the White House lawyers thought would make Bush look humane. Bush's memo said detainees should be treated "humanely" and "in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva," but added the caveat, "to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity."
In other words, Bush and his high command could decide whether "humane" treatment would be granted or not. If they saw a "military necessity" for, say, waterboarding somebody 183 times, then they could so order.
That, of course, is not what Geneva demands; there is no way to square this circle. Bush's memorandum violated international law, creating the giant loophole through which Rumsfeld and Tenet drove the Mack truck of torture.
Bush Memo "Opened the Door"
After a lengthy investigation, the Senate Armed Services Committee concluded in December 2008 that it was President Bush himself who, by the Executive Memorandum of Feb. 7, 2002, "opened the door" to the abuse that ensued. Here is Conclusion Number One of the committee report:
"Following the President's determination, techniques such as waterboarding, nudity, and stress positions ... were authorized for use in interrogations of detainees in U.S. custody."
The direct result was torture and sometimes murder of detainees at Guantanamo in Cuba, Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Bagram in Afghanistan. One chilling phrase used by young soldiers describing treatment of detainees at Guantanamo was "rape by instrumentality."
When Congress attempted to draft legislation prohibiting this practice, Bush's White House lawyers objected citing their worry that such legislation might subject practitioners to prosecution under state and federal criminal statutes. Practitioners!
You may remember that one of the Bush administration's favorite slogans was that evildoers must be "brought to justice." Now, the world will be watching to see whether the evildoers of the Bush administration meet justice in the months and years to come.
Meanwhile, Bush, Rice, the lawyers and the hands-on "practitioners" of torture had best stay close to home. After all, some countries might not think that it's such a "quaint" idea to enforce international law. They might even believe in the old American principle that "no one is above the law."
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He spent almost 30 years as a CIA analyst and Army infantry/intelligence officer and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).