ICYMI, President Trump used yesterday’s White House event honoring Navajo U.S. veterans to make another racist attack on Elizabeth Warren, referring to her as Pocahontas. This is obviously a problem for multiple reasons — and yet, the POTUS’s son Eric Trump still took to Twitter on Tuesday to try and defend his father.
President Trump’s comment at the ceremony on Monday was one of many instances in which the president has used the racial slur in order to attack Warren, who has previously claimed that she has partial Native American heritage. Many Americans and media outlets were outraged when he used the offensive slur at an event meant to honor the very people the slur was directed at.
Following the controversy, Eric Trump made an attempt at defending his father against the backlash. (Spoiler alert: it did not go well.)
“The irony of an ABC reporter (whose parent company Disney has profited nearly half a billion dollars on the movie ‘Pocahontas’) inferring that the name is ‘offensive’ is truly staggering to me,” Trump wrote.
The irony of an ABC reporter (whose parent company Disney has profited nearly half a billion dollars on the movie “Pocahontas”) inferring that the name is “offensive” is truly staggering to me.
— Eric Trump (@EricTrump) November 28, 2017
Context is everything here. Using Pocahontas’s name as a derogatory insult, versus creating a dramatization about the life of a historical figure are two very different things. Not to mention the fact that by analyzing the president’s remarks, the reporter was really only doing his job.
Eric’s tweet really only proves one thing: that he probably doesn’t understand the meaning of the word “ironic” — which the Internet took notice of. Let’s just say they didn’t hesitate to immediately roast Trump for his tweet.
That’s not irony. It’s a non-sequitor.
The movie was a dramatization about an actual historical figure.
Your bigoted father uses the term as a racist slur against a sitting Senator whenever he thinks about or talks to Native Americans.
— Pé Resists (@4everNeverTrump) November 28, 2017
Things Eric Trump doesn’t understand:
-Irony
-Journalism
-Racism
-The movie ‘Pocahontas’ https://t.co/YRh4iypqDl— Kristy Puchko (@KristyPuchko) November 28, 2017
I feel confident that Eric Trump does not know that Pocahontas was a real person https://t.co/CUwfTuG6w4
— Michael Cohen (@speechboy71) November 28, 2017
Trump’s lack of understanding of how irony works aside, is it really that difficult to understand why it’s not okay to refer to a Native American as “Pocahontas” in front of AN ENTIRE GROUP OF NATIVE AMERICANS? It shouldn’t be.