Whoo boy.
This is why we lose. I know what the guy is TRYING to say, but he’s not articulate enough to say it.
Here’s what he REALLY means.
He means you all are calling people “White Nationalists” who aren’t, in fact, White Nationalists. They may be white. They may be nationalists. So you CAN correctly grammatically put those two words together and you haven’t broken the grammatical rules of the language, but they’re not “White Nationalists” … which has another meaning couched in there that the vast majority of Americans, white or not, reject. And this is why that tactic works. Racism is so strongly *REJECTED* in this country that nobody wants anywhere near that label. It’s worse than being called a murderer.
Like they’ve done with an ever growing list of words and phrases, Democrats have taken the term “White Nationalist” and applied it to things to which it does not apply. They want the power of the connotation of what the original meaning of the term was to be attached to something it’s not — typically someone who has political ideas that oppose theirs. It’s meant to put people back on their heels in a personally defensive position so they can’t advance the ideas they ACTUALLY have, and they end up bumbling like this guy. Trump, unfortunately, is another. It is also used to render them toxic for anyone to listen, to, quote, or vote for.
There are very few politicians on the GOP side out there who are good enough at verbal jujitsu to sidestep this dishonest tactic and even throw it back at them. This is a huge fail.
Look at the smug, proud “gotcha” look on her face. Even so, she said she gave him a chance to clarify, and his bumbling response made it worse. He clarified nothing.