Most of us are aware of first-year Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who seems to upset a lot of Republicans partly because of things she says and partly — it seems to me — because they're being said by someone who is female and Puerto Rican. She certainly enraged a lot of them when she recently referred to the detention facilities for immigrants as "concentration camps" — and maybe, since we associate that term with Nazis, it's too inflammatory. Okay. I might agree with that.
But then, as Jonathan Chait points out, the folks criticizing Ocasio-Cortez seem able to ignore or dismiss any inflammatory thing Donald Trump says. Doesn't matter how nasty or inaccurate it is, that's just Donald. That's the way he is. Don't take that stuff he says seriously. As Chait writes…
What is interesting is the way conservatives have used the largely rhetorical nature of Trump's fascistic politics as a defense. Trump can call the media "enemies of the people" all day long, and we should shrug because it's just words. Fascist rhetoric is meaningless, but anti-fascist rhetoric is an outrageous slander. What reasonable case is there to hold the president of the United States to the lowest standard of any public official?