Quote · The Bulwark Podcast
Jane Coaston: POTUS's Racism Notches Another Win
Where this was said
Supreme Court Strips TPS from 300,000 Haitians
At 4:45 · chapter starts 1:40
Tim Miller opens the substantive portion of the podcast with what he describes as his greatest source of rage that morning: the Supreme Court's TPS decision, which he says effectively retroactively made illegal the status of over 300,000 Haitians who had lived and worked in the US under humanitarian protections. Jane Coaston broadens the frame immediately — the ruling affects Syrians and others too — before zooming in on the ruling's most striking detail: a split-screen between Justice Alito's majority opinion finding no racial animus in Trump's statements and Justice Kagan's dissent, which methodically catalogued Trump's anti-Haitian slurs, including calling Haiti a 'shithole country' and claiming Haitian immigrants were bringing AIDS. Coaston delivers the episode's sharpest early line: the conservative justices can see racism only when it targets them. [1] — Jane Coaston "Samuel Alito once decried anti-Italian racism in The Sopranos but found zero racism in Trump's documented anti-Haitian rhetoric. Conservati…" 03:31 As evidence she notes Alito once complained about the anti-Italian portrayal in The Sopranos — a vivid illustration of the selective outrage at work.
The Supreme Court ruling on TPS stripped legal status from over 300,000 Haitians who had fled their country under humanitarian protections.
The Supreme Court's TPS ruling affects not only Haitians but also people from Syria and other countries on temporary protective status.
Justice Alito found no racism in Trump's anti-Haitian rhetoric while Justice Kagan's dissent catalogued Trump's explicit slurs — a man who once criticized anti-Italian racism in The Sopranos.
Samuel Alito once decried anti-Italian racism in The Sopranos but found zero racism in Trump's documented anti-Haitian rhetoric. Conservative justices can see racism only when it touches them personally — for everyone else, the blinders stay on.
