The Rio Stanton Report

Tag: Donald Trump

Racism Did Not Disappear. It Learned to Dress Better.

I have shared videos of Ku Klux Klan members and other racists explaining what they believe on my Facebook page. What interests me is how familiar some of those beliefs sound once you look past the robes, the slurs, and the willingness to say the quiet part out loud.

The KKK does not represent every American. Nor should one town, one interview, or one group stand in for the whole country.

David Duke wanted to make the KKK more acceptable to theAmerican public by presenting a more polished and white collar image of the group.

But that does not mean the ideas expressed in those videos exist only among people who openly identify as racists.

The belief that Black people are inherently less capable, less civilized, more dangerous, or less deserving can appear in different forms and degrees. Someone can reject the Klan and still accept assumptions that have a great deal in common with its worldview.

That is what I want people to examine.

For generations, racism helped justify conquest, enslavement, colonial exploitation, and exclusion. People dressed those justifications up as science, religion, common sense, and concern for civilization.

The cruelty came with an explanation. The explanation made the cruelty easier to defend.

We still need to pay attention to that process.

Racism can become so familiar that people stop recognizing it unless it appears in its most extreme form. They know a hood and a burning cross when they see them. They know an explicit slur when they hear one.

But a polished commentator making insinuations about Black intelligence, criminality, or belonging? Suddenly, we are supposed to consider whether that person is simply a misunderstood truth-teller.

Apparently, racism becomes harder to recognize when the speaker has a studio, a suit, and a respectable vocabulary.

Nick Fuentes is literally a self-professed Nazi (or Nazi sympathizer) who can get away with much of what he says, and was invited to Donald Trump’s mansion for dinner because he isn’t seen in the uniform of White supremacy.

I am tired of the idea that avoiding the N-word automatically makes an argument free of racism.

What is the argument asking us to believe? How is the evidence being used? What context has been left out? Is a problem being examined, or is an entire people being assigned a negative character?

Those questions matter more than whether the speaker remembered to avoid a slur.

Statistics deserve scrutiny too. A number can be accurate while the story built around it is misleading. Selective comparisons, missing context, and sweeping conclusions can turn data into a tool for reinforcing prejudice.

If someone uses a statistic to suggest that Black people are inherently defective, the presence of a number does not make that suggestion objective.

A spreadsheet does not wash racism out of an argument.

Charlie Kirk’s “truth” was nothing more than racism using cherry-picked and out-of-context statistics. These are often quoted on his podcast and while debating undergrad students on college campuses.

One of the things I wanted people to notice in those videos was the date.

When were these people saying these things? When were the incidents happening? How long after the major civil-rights victories were communities still facing intimidation, exclusion, and openly racist hostility?

Too many people talk as though the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 closed the book on racism.

Those laws were extremely important. But passing a law did not instantly change everyone’s beliefs, dismantle every discriminatory practice, or erase the advantages accumulated under the old arrangements.

Some attitudes changed. Some people changed. Others learned to conceal what they believed or express it in language that gave them plausible deniability.

We should recognize progress without pretending that it finished the job.

That is also why I keep returning to the contrast between how Barack Obama and Donald Trump have been judged.

I am not arguing that every criticism of Obama was racist. I criticized him myself. His policies and decisions deserve examination like those of any other president.

But I watched people demand that he be endlessly calm, polished, articulate, restrained, and reassuring—and still treat him as illegitimate, threatening, or fundamentally out of place.

He could meet their stated standards and still fail the test.

Then I watched some of those same people celebrate Trump’s belligerence, insults, and disregard for restraint as signs of strength.

Conduct they would have treated as disqualifying in Obama became proof that Trump was authentic and willing to fight.

Donald Trump can get away with egregious behavior that Obama is not able to get away with. Obama had to mostly remain stoic during his presidency, while Trump can be angry and belligerent.

What changed—the standard, or the person being judged?

That question deserves more than a reflexive accusation that I am “making everything about race.”

I do not need to claim that every measure of the country’s condition was better under Obama to make this point. Presidents should be judged on evidence, and different outcomes require different comparisons.

My concern here is the permission some people grant one leader while demanding constant reassurance from another.

If restraint is essential to presidential character, it should matter when Trump lacks it. If inflammatory rhetoric is dangerous, it should not become admirable simply because the speaker is someone you support.

And if intelligence, preparation, and dignity are the standards, meeting them should count regardless of the president’s race.

Too often, that consistency disappears.

This is why the openly racist videos matter to me. They make certain assumptions easier to hear. Once we recognize those assumptions in their bluntest form, we should be willing to examine where else they appear.

George Lincoln Rockwell was the founder of the American Nazi Party (ANP). He was a very articulate man who attended an Ivy League University (Brown University). Often, he would dress in Nazi uniforms but he would often dress in a suit and speak while smoking his signature pipe. Often, his message wasn’t necessarily antagonistic or violent, but they were exclusionary and racist.

The delivery may be smoother. The speaker may deny any prejudice. The audience may insist that it is all about policy, statistics, or “telling the truth.”

But we still have to examine the substance.

Racism does not need a hood, a slur, or a confession to operate.

And refusing to recognize it until someone supplies all three gives far too many people permission to keep doing it.

October 4, 2026
MAGA’s Messiah and the Myth of the Good Old Days

The thing that fucks me up about the MAGA cult is that so many of them genuinely, blindly, and sadly believe that Chump (Trump) is some messianic figure here to rescue this country from cannibalizing itself through neoliberalism, crony capitalism, and privatization.

To me, he represents the same appetite dressed up in a red hat. Nepotism, grifting, self-promotion, and incompetence sold as strength. Somehow, his petty belligerence becomes courage. His obsessive whining becomes a legitimate grievance. His need for applause becomes devotion to the country.

They see a professional con man and call him their savior.

And what, exactly, is he supposed to save them from? Those imaginary glory days when a White man could supposedly support a family with little education, women happily stayed in the kitchen, and Black people knew their place?

The visible rise of black people and other marginalized groups into socioeconomic positions once held exclusively by White people, including the presidency, created irrational fear and panic in many White Americans who felt that absolute power, wealth, and prestige belonged only to them.

Some people had real economic security during those years. But the picture being sold leaves out who was excluded, whose labor was exploited, and whose freedom was sacrificed to maintain it. Women were not universally happy with dependence. Black people were not content with segregation, domestic service, limited menial work opportunities, and second-class citizenship.

Your nostalgia does not get to erase our history.

The past they long for is part memory, part mythology, and part desire to restore a hierarchy they think should never have been challenged. They want the wages and purchasing power associated with that period, but too many also want its social arrangements.

During the United States’ economic golden age, Black people were still mostly working in menial jobs as domestics and laborers. They were being denied equal access to housing, especially in the newly built suburbs.

Those are two different things. And I wish they would stop pretending otherwise.

Personally, I never fell under the illusion that Biden (or even Obama) was a hero or a messiah. His presidency is over, and my standard remains the same: policies, actions, competence, and accountability. A diverse cabinet does not automatically transform an administration into a vehicle for liberation. Neither does putting a Democrat in the White House.

I wanted someone to do his/her fucking job. I also wanted more than competent management of a system that keeps squeezing working people while rewarding those who already own everything.

That criticism did not disappear because Trump returned to power.

My problem with MAGA is that its devotion to Chump repeatedly swallows the very accountability its supporters claim to demand. When something goes wrong, somebody else must have caused it. When he contradicts himself, they supply the explanation. When he disappoints them, they move the goalposts.

To many in MAGA, everything bad that happens during Trump’s presidency is the fault of Biden, Obama, or the Democrats. They see everything good as a direct result of Trump’s leadership.

At what point does the man you elected become responsible for the things he does?

The economic pain that helped create this movement is not imaginary. Communities have lost jobs, stability, and a sense of a future. But the explanation cannot begin and end with whichever president a cable news host tells you to hate.

Deindustrialization devastated communities built around factory work. Automation changed how many workers employers needed. Highways and suburban development reshaped cities, often at the expense of established neighborhoods. Energy markets changed. Smaller towns lost employers, young people, and resources.

Deindustrialization devastated once-thriving communities and neighborhoods, leaving them impoverished and blighted.

These changes did not all come from one president, one party, or one secret meeting of cartoon villains.

But political choices determined who received protection, who absorbed the losses, and who got rich from the transition. Decisions about labor rights, taxation, trade, public investment, and privatization were very important. And they still are today.

And administrations from both parties helped build or preserve arrangements that concentrated wealth and weakened working people’s bargaining power.

That is why I do not accept the idea that electing a billionaire with a talent for branding somehow frees us from billionaire power.

Chump offers people a villain, a slogan, and somebody to look down on. That does not necessarily give them a pension, affordable housing, healthcare, or control over their working lives.

You cannot pay the electric bill with the satisfaction of making somebody else miserable.

I suspect that part of MAGA’s appeal goes beyond economics. For some of its most devoted supporters, the fear is having to share power with women, racial minorities, immigrants, and people of different faiths, gender identities, and sexual orientations.

Equality feels like dispossession when you believe the country belongs to you.

They hear demands for equal treatment and imagine revenge. They hear criticism of White supremacy and imagine an attack on their existence. Meanwhile, most of the people they fear are trying to live, raise their children, work, and enjoy some relative peace and prosperity.

Many conservative White people fear acts of revenge from Black people. What they fail to understand is that most Black people just want to have equal opportunities for good neighborhoods, education, and jobs rather than plotting or enacting any form of revenge.

We should not have to remain subordinate just to make somebody else feel secure.

And Mango Mussolini’s constant need for praise does nothing to convince me that he is the tough guy he wants people to see. Pettiness is not strength. Vindictiveness is not leadership. Surrounding yourself with loyal sycophants does not make your judgment better.

Neither does refusing to accept defeat.

Trump lost the 2020 election and won the 2024 election. Both results can be true. Winning later does not retroactively turn an earlier loss into a stolen victory. If your respect for elections depends on whether your candidate wins, your loyalty is to the candidate.

That is the problem.

I have compared this kind of devotion to the danger represented by Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. That is a serious analogy, and the circumstances are different. But the warning behind it is important here: people become vulnerable when loyalty to a leader takes priority over evidence, judgment, and their own well-being.

A movement becomes dangerous when every criticism is treated as persecution and every demand from the leader becomes a test of faith.

MAGA devotion to Trump looks eerily like the devotion that many people had to Jim Jones.

Cultlike devotion to a person is never a substitute for political principles.

And yes, that applies to Democrats too. It applies to politicians I like. It applies to politicians you like. Nobody should receive a lifetime exemption from scrutiny because they once inspired us or made the right people angry.

I do not want a messiah. I want humane policies, accountable leadership, and a society where people can live without being sacrificed to somebody else’s profits.

My admiration for Bernie Sanders and the Squad does not come from a cult of personality. It comes from the policy solutions that they propose and the fact that they seem to address the needs of average Americans rather than corporations and the super-rich. They do this without engaging in culture wars and mindless platitudes.

The people I call “Y’all-Qaeda” are not going to disappear simply because an election ends or a politician eventually leaves office. The grievances, authoritarian impulses, and appetite for enemies require more than waiting for the next news cycle.

We have to confront the conditions that make people desperate, and the politics that teach them to aim that desperation at everybody except those benefiting from it.

Because the country does not need more people worshipping a man who promises to make them great.

It needs people willing to ask who gets the wealth, who holds the power, and who keeps paying the fucking price.

October 1, 2026
The Epstein Scandal Is Bigger Than Politics

I have been extremely critical of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement regarding the Epstein case. However, it is important to say something that often gets lost in the political shouting.

This case is bigger than Trump.

It is bigger than Jeffrey Epstein himself.
It is bigger than Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, or any other powerful individual who may have been connected to Epstein’s network.

And it is bigger than partisan politics.

At its core, the Epstein scandal exposes something much deeper: what happens when money, power, and privilege collide with the worst impulses of human behavior, particularly male behavior.

For decades, we have seen the same pattern repeat itself across politics, entertainment, religion, business, and other powerful institutions. Men with wealth and influence abuse their power to exploit women and girls, while the systems around them protect their reputations.

Victims are often dismissed, discredited, or accused of ulterior motives. Meanwhile, the perpetrators continue to operate with little consequence.

The Epstein case revealed a horrifying scale of abuse. Hundreds of young girls were trafficked and exploited. Some estimates suggest the number of victims could exceed a thousand.

And yet the reaction from many people has been to reduce the scandal to a political weapon.

Supporters of one political figure point to the involvement of another. Loyalists circle the wagons around people they admire. Victims become secondary to political narratives.

This reaction is part of the problem.

Sexual exploitation thrives in environments where powerful people are protected by wealth, influence, and social loyalty. When society treats abuse allegations as partisan ammunition rather than moral failures, accountability becomes almost impossible.

The disturbing reality is that this problem extends far beyond Epstein’s circle.

Reports in recent years have exposed online communities where thousands of men openly discuss drugging, assaulting, and exploiting women. Studies consistently show that sexual violence is far more common than many people want to admit. According to organizations such as the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), roughly one in six women will experience sexual assault during their lifetime.

These crimes are rarely committed by strangers hiding in dark alleys.

They are often committed by men known to the victim, such as friends, coworkers, acquaintances, partners, and authority figures.

This forces an uncomfortable conversation about male behavior more broadly.

If men are serious about ending sexual violence, the responsibility cannot be placed solely on law enforcement or individual criminals. Men must also examine the attitudes and behaviors that enable these crimes to continue.

That includes learning to accept rejection, understanding the meaning of consent, and rejecting the idea that status, wealth, or influence entitle anyone to another person’s body.

This is not about hating men or rejecting masculinity. This is not about pandering to women for dates or sex. It is about recognizing that power without accountability creates environments where abuse flourishes. This is about accountability and responsibility.

Many of the women harmed by Epstein’s network are now adults living with lifelong trauma. Justice for them should never be reduced to a political talking point.

If this scandal means anything, it should be a reminder that accountability must apply to everyone. Holding criminals accountable should be the goal, no matter how wealthy, powerful, or politically connected they may be.

And for men in particular, it should also be a reminder that respect, consent, and responsibility must define how we treat women.

Anything less allows the cycle to continue.

March 10, 2026
Why Tangible Benefits Matter in Politics

The often-overlooked reality of American politics is that policy messaging often matters less to voters than tangible benefits they can see and feel in their everyday lives. This is something that the professional pundit class, political consultants, and many political analysts often miss.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, stimulus checks were sent to millions of Americans. Although the checks were authorized through legislation passed by Congress, many people associate them directly with Donald Trump because his administration ensured his name appeared on them.

Symbolism matters in politics.

For many struggling households, those payments were not abstract policy decisions. They were rent money, grocery money, or the difference between making it through the month and falling further behind.

This illustrates a broader lesson that many political strategists understand but that some policymakers still underestimate: voters tend to reward leaders who appear to deliver direct, tangible benefits.

In contrast, the Democratic Party has often struggled to communicate its policy achievements in ways that feel immediate and visible to ordinary voters.

The Biden administration did authorize $1,400 stimulus payments and temporarily expanded the Child Tax Credit, which significantly reduced child poverty while it was in place. Yet those policies were not framed with the same kind of direct political branding that many voters remember from the previous administration.

Even more importantly, the expanded Child Tax Credit was allowed to expire after only one year, despite its measurable impact.

For many voters, particularly those in economically struggling communities, this reinforces the perception that political leaders make promises but rarely sustain meaningful material improvements.

That perception fuels cynicism and political apathy.

When people feel that no political party consistently delivers real change, they often become disengaged or focus only on immediate personal survival rather than broader political issues. Concerns about systemic racism, economic inequality, or long-term policy debates can feel distant compared to the daily struggle of paying bills or putting food on the table.

This dynamic also shapes how people interpret political messaging. When leaders speak about justice, reform, or social change without delivering visible economic improvements, the message can ring hollow to those who are struggling the most.

None of these excuses the dangers posed by demagogic politics or authoritarian rhetoric. But it does highlight an important political truth: tangible benefits often carry more weight with voters than symbolic gestures and ideological arguments.

If political leaders want lasting support from working-class communities, they cannot rely solely on rhetoric about values or identity. They must deliver policies that materially improve people’s lives and make sure those improvements are visible and sustained.

Otherwise, frustration and disillusionment will continue to shape the political landscape.

March 9, 2026
Biden Didn’t Have “Open Borders.” The Numbers Prove It.

One of the most common claims made by conservative commentators is that Joe Biden created an “open border” policy. The problem is that the actual numbers tell a very different story.

According to data compiled by the Migration Policy Institute, the deportation numbers between Trump’s first term in office and Biden’s term in office are nearly identical (around 1.5 million people. In fact, deportations under Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton were significantly higher than under Trump. Conservatives love to cite those comparisons, but rarely provide the context that would actually explain what those numbers mean.

Rather than rehash arguments I’ve made many times before about who gets deported and why, it’s worth addressing the larger myth that keeps circulating: the idea that Biden somehow allowed unlimited immigration into the United States.

For the first two years of Biden’s presidency, the country was still operating under pandemic-era restrictions that limited cross-border movement. These policies were largely a continuation of the restrictions implemented during the Trump administration. During that time, many asylum seekers from Central American countries such as El Salvador and Honduras waited at the border for years or were detained while their cases were processed.

Allowing asylum seekers to enter the country after those restrictions eased was not an “open border” policy. It was the United States complying with its own asylum laws.

Those laws exist for a reason. After the United States turned away thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution in the 1930s—many of whom were sent back to Europe and ultimately died in the Holocaust—the country adopted legal frameworks intended to ensure that people fleeing persecution would at least have their claims heard before being turned away.

Jewish refugees aboard the MS St. Louis in 1939. They were waiting in Havana, Cuba, just to be turned away by the United States and sent back to Nazi-occupied Europe, where many of them would be killed.

In other words, Biden didn’t create open borders. He followed existing law.

If Americans truly want fewer people migrating to the United States, we also need to confront a more uncomfortable truth: U.S. foreign policy has often contributed to the instability that drives migration in the first place. For decades, the United States has interfered in the politics and economies of countries across Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia—sometimes installing authoritarian leaders or imposing sanctions and economic pressures that destabilize entire regions.

When people leave their homes out of desperation, they are not doing it for fun. They are responding to conditions that often have deep historical and geopolitical roots.

If we want fewer migrants at the border, addressing those root causes would be a far more honest place to start than repeating the politically convenient myth of “open borders.”

March 6, 2026