How Badly Did They Want to Say the N-Word? RNC, Day 1

Your nightly guide to racism at the Republican National Convention.

Tonight was the “I’m not racist, and my Black friend says so” portion of the RNC, featuring speeches from Tim Scott and Herschel Walker, among others, and a lot of predictable talk about “opportunity zones” and the Democratic “plantation.” For the hard stuff, we turn to the undercard. Here’s Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis “gun couple” who famously mounted an armed defense of their topiary from Black Lives Matters protesters:

Check out Patricia, sounding a dogwhistle immediately discernible to suburban right-wingers (many of them Democrats in California!):

They are not satisfied with spreading the chaos and violence into our communities. They want to abolish the suburbs all together by ending single-family home zoning. This forced rezoning would bring crime, lawlessness, and low-quality apartments into now-thriving suburban neighborhoods. President Trump smartly ended this government overreach, but Joe Biden wants to bring it back.

And here’s Mark, pronouncing “Marxist” with a hard “r” at the end.

The Marxist, liberal activist leading the mob to our neighborhood stood outside our home with a bullhorn screaming, “You can’t stop the revolution.” Just weeks later, that same Marxist activist won the Democrat nomination to hold a seat in the US House of Representatives….That Marxist revolutionary is now going to be the congresswoman from the first district of Missouri.

(He’s talking about Cori Bush, by the way.)

Tonight’s RNC message: We love Black people so long as they’re nowhere near our front yard.

How badly did they want to say the n-word? On the strength of the McCloskeys’ appearance, we award Monday’s proceedings 10 out of a possible 10 Atwaters

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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