Eugene Robinson: Trump’s Talent in Driving Wedges Is Unique

EXCERPT:

ROBINSON: "Yeah. Actually, I don’t think a lot of people who are opponents of Donald Trump take that position. That everybody who voted for him is a racist or is — will never be accepted back into the polite society again. That’s the way Trump and his most fervent supporters portray the opposition. And this is really Donald Trump’s genius, is for driving wedges and for exacerbating the divides that already exist in the society, and for increasing anxieties rather than soothing them. So he tells people, you know, 'Be afraid of demographic change. Be afraid of immigration. Be afraid of all the change that is happening organically around you because it threatens you.' Whether it does or not, he tells people that it does. And so this sort of split that Andrew is writing about and the — it isn’t happening in a vacuum. It is all being encouraged by a president whose talent for driving wedges is really unique. We haven’t seen anything like this in American politics in a long, long time, and certainly not from a president. This is just — it’s an extraordinary time, and I use 'extraordinary' in the — you know, in its — in the sense — not a good sense, nut in — it’s something that we just really haven’t seen before."