From GOP strategist, Rick Wilson in an open letter to RNC Chair Reince Preibus:
The image below posted was posted yesterday by Donald Trump. You’ve heard about it by now.
But Trump didn’t create it.
Someone from Trump’s team found it on 4chan’s /pol board. I know, you don’t know what that is, but run down to your digital department and ask one of the younger guys. They’ll brief you. It’s an online slum of trolling, racism, Nazi-cosplay and other things that definitely aren’t Wisconsin Nice. Their waifu are not like yours.
Done? All briefed? Good.
The candidate for whom you have sold your political soul posted this sloppy dog-whistle to his personal account. His famous, 8-million follower account. The account you’ve retweeted or favorited dozens of times. Your RTs and favs appear alongside the dog’s breakfast of assorted Trump cultists like “WhiteNationalismTM” and a disproportionate number of people with “1488” in their names or profiles. (Look it up. I’m not going to do all your work for you.)
The Trump people know they did something wrong — they pulled the offending tweet down — but no lesson was learned.
Wilson appears to have received his head’s up from Anthony Smith of .Mic who explains:
Mic discovered Sunday that Donald Trump’s Twitter account wasn’t the first place the meme appeared. The image was previously featured on /pol/ — an Internet message board for the alt-right, a digital movement of neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and white supremacists newly emboldened by the success of Trump’s rhetoric — as early as June 22, over a week before Trump’s team tweeted it.
Though the thread where the meme was featured no longer exists, you can find it by searching the URL in Archive.is, a “time capsule of the internet” that saves unalterable text and graphic of webpages. Doing so allows you to see the thread on /pol/ as it originally existed.
The watermark (@FishBoneHead1) on the lower-left corner of the image leads to a Twitter account that regularly tweets violent, racist memes commenting on the state of geopolitical politics.
Smith’s post includes some of @FishBoneHead1 disgusting work that Scathing Purple Musings won’t, yet it is a thorough overview that’s worth reading.
Preibus’ conduct in the rise of Trump is no profile in courage. Wilson finishes thus:
You’ve spent an awful lot of time and energy lately trying to intimidate and silence Republican delegates who are sickened by Trump’s behavior, terrified of the electoral disaster he may ensure and sickened by how far away he is pulling the party of Lincoln, Reagan and Coolidge from its conservative roots.
A smart chairman would leverage that anger to push Trump to conform to the basic norms of civilization and to run a more disciplined campaign. “Don, I’m doing everything I can to deal with them, but they’re not bending. Help me help you.” Instead, your mute assent empowers his narcissism and self-indulgence.
You know this party is tearing itself apart because of Trump, and your continued public silence on his endless catalog of outrages isn’t some bold political strategy in the battle against Hillary Clinton; it’s smearing the GOP with the reek of his excreta for decades. At this rate, there won’t be an autopsy at the end of this cycle; it’ll be a funeral pyre and a going-out-of-business sale.
Free the delegates to vote their conscience, Reince.
