Greg Sargent: “It should be a much bigger story that the president of the United States has now enthusiastically endorsed the congressional run of a virulently Islamophobic far-right conspiracy theorist. This isn’t just highly newsworthy on its own. It also illuminates the stakes of the 2020 presidential race in a fresh way — one that should help forestall the sort of terrible errors in media coverage of President Trump’s hate-mongering that we saw in 2016. In late-night tweets, Trump congratulated Laura Loomer for winning a GOP primary in the Florida district that’s home to Mar-a-Lago. This came just after he delivered a speech in Arizona spewing all kinds of depraved lies about Joe Biden’s immigration agenda.”
“These things are often described with euphemistic phrases such as ‘stoking our divisions’ or ‘betting on the culture war.’ But Trump’s championing of Loomer should compel a much clearer reckoning, one that faithfully conveys what we’re really seeing here: reactionary illiberalism, naked bigotry and nativist incitement of anti-immigrant hate. “