Calling students menacing and racist is the threat

President Donald Trump made American “greatness” the foundation for his presidential campaign two years ago, proclaiming that “a new national pride stirs the American soul and inspires the American heart.”

Today, the slogan “Make America Great Again” has become a lightning rod of his presidency to the never-Trumpers and many others on the left.

When Trump applied for a trademark for the phrase in 2012, no one could have imagined how polarizing it would become. But Trump was not the first politician to use it.

Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush used “Let’s Make America Great Again” in their 1980 campaign and at the Republican National Convention that year. And former President Bill Clinton used it in his 1991 presidential announcement speech.

These days, those incensed by the Trump presidency will trash anything and anyone with the phrase. It’s bad enough when adults caught up in identity politics cause divisions, but it stinks even more when children and teens are dragged into the swampish behavior.

A boys high school basketball tournament in Minnesota scheduled for Martin Luther King Jr. Day became politicized when some student fans, held a “Keep America Great” banner promoting Trump’s re-election. The coach of Minneapolis Roosevelt, a predominantly black inner city high school, felt the banner was racist. His players had stirred controversy before by choosing to remain in their locker room during the playing of the national anthem at home and away games.

The mother who owned the Trump flag stated that her son and his classmates were simply “supporting their president” and that “they don’t have a racist bone in their body.”

The most publicized event at a Martin Luther King rally at the Capitol involved a group of high school students from Kentucky who had come to Washington for the March for Life. A long video — not the short edited versions used in sound bites — reveals several members of a religious group called the Black Hebrew Israelites taunting students from the Covington Catholic High School as they waited for their buses near the Lincoln Memorial.

The clip that received the greatest media scrutiny was of Nicholas Sandmann, a 16-year-old Covington student in a “Make America Great Again” baseball cap, staring down Nathan Phillips, a Native American elder who has a history of sparking turmoil. Phillips claims he was trying to defuse the escalating tension between the teens and a group of the Black Hebrew Israelite protesters.

As Phillips beat his drum, Covington students responded by singing their high school’s fight song. Sandmann, who stood in place and smiled at Phillips, and his classmates were soon the targets of a social media smear campaign, and even death threats.

“I am being called every name in the book, including a racist, and I will not stand for this moblike character assassination of my family’s name,” Sandmann wrote after many in the media cast him as the villain and antagonist.

Phillips, meanwhile, was given a pass by the liberal media. This was in evidence with the softball interview by Savannah Guthrie on “The Today Show.” Few reported on Phillips’ attempt to beat his drum and disrupt a Saturday evening Mass at a Washington, D.C., basilica later in the day.

Battle lines are drawn. Liberals and progressives see the MAGA slogan as an alignment to Trump supporters and connect it to a racist/nationalist movement. When an actress or #MeToo activist like Alyssa Milano refers to MAGA hats as “the new white hood,” it just stokes the fire of division.

When a smiling teen wears a MAGA hat or when a group of his fellow classmates exercise their First Amendment rights by cheering or singing their school’s fight songs in a public place are seen as a menace or portrayed as racists, then we’re treading dangerous ground as a free society.

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com