Donald Trump Goes To Old Man Ford's Nazee Joint To Jaw About 'Good Bloodlines'

So, the mask is off, then?

Donld Trump took a trip to Ypsilanti, Michigan, Thursday so he could tour a Ford components plant that's building ventilators and personal protective equipment for hospitals. While he was there, the Great Man refused to wear a mask in public, which violated both Michigan's emergency health law and Ford's company policy. In addition, Trump took time to insist he definitely wants to punish the state for its completely legal absentee voting policy, suggested he'll oppose further stay at home orders if COVID-19 resurges, and took a moment to praise the "bloodlines" of notorious anti-Semite Henry Ford. 

Which is to say, pretty much a normal Thursday in the Worst Timeline.

Here's Trump departing from his text, in which he was supposed to be praising the great legacy of Ford the company, which during WWII built thousands of bombers, Jeeps, and other military equipment as part of the "arsenal of democracy." Instead, Trump decided to talk up Ford the man, and his excellent genetic material:

In our lifetimes, the company founded by a man named Henry Ford ― good bloodlines, good bloodlines ― if you believe in that stuff — You got good blood.

Some on Twitter speculated that Trump literally believes everyone working at Ford is a descendant of Henry Ford, possibly because that's how Ford would operate were it a Trump company. The Huffington Post, perhaps too generously, suggested the "bloodlines" comment was aimed more specifically at Ford executive chair William Clay Ford, who's the great-grandson of Henry Ford.

And most of us just looked at it and said, sweet fancy Crom, he's talking about Henry Jew-hater Ford and "bloodlines"? What next, something about the soil, the very best soil, such good soil, believe me.

The company had no immediate statement on Trump's insane reminder of its now-scandalous founder.

For some silly reason, people found Trump's praise of Ford the person's bloodlines problematic, because of some tiny details. Small things like Ford's having published hundreds of articles in his Dearborn Independent newspaper about how Jews ran everything and were plotting against the USA, which he later collected into four volumes titled The International Jew — which Ford distributed to all his car dealerships in the early 1920s. Ford also published an American edition of the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Russian anti-semitic propaganda text claiming to expose a shadowy Jewish plot to manipulate all of world history.

We should also note that Henry Ford believed the Jews were behind other evils like short skirts and Negro jazz, which is why Ford sponsored square dancing instruction in public schools, to save White America.

In 1927, following a bunch of libel lawsuits, Ford closed the Dearborn Independent and "apologized" for publishing all the anti-Semitic stuff, for the very little that might be worth. The apology certainly didn't mean anything to Adolf Hitler, who considered Ford an "inspiration" and published German translations of Ford's writing. Ford has the dubious honor of being the only American mentioned by name in Mein Kampf, and the New York Times in 1922 reported that Hitler had a portrait of Ford in his Munich office. After Hitler rose to power in the 1930s, the Nazi Party awarded Ford the "Grand Cross of the German Eagle" to honor him.

Historian Hasia Diner noted in a 2012 interview with PBS's "American Experience" that the Nazi admiration for Ford even extended to industrial enterprises. The Volkswagen, a simple, cheap, mass-produced "people's car," was at least partly inspired by Ford's production of the Model T as a car for the masses.

Let us now give thanks that Donald Trump never tried building cars, although there's certainly more than a whiff of Archie Bunker-on-a-barstool nostalgia in Trump's rolling back fuel mileage standards. Trump is absolutely certain that if you just took all the anti-pollution crap off modern cars, they'd be cheaper and get better mileage, and for that matter they'd be safer because old cars were built like tanks. In fact, it was a tweet complaining about Ford's agreement to stick to California's stricter gas mileage standards that inspired Trump to praise the Great Henry Ford last August.

That idiocy, you may recall, set off a similar round of reminders that Ford was a Nazi icon.

As for the "bloodlines" crap, that too is both classic Nazi eugenics ideology (partially imported from early 20th Century America, hooray!) and very much a Trump thing, as HuffPo notes :

It's not the first time Trump has made comments touting superior genetics. In 2018, during a dinner with top world business leaders, he reportedly made comments praising the "good bloodlines" and "amazing DNA" in the room. He's praised his own " good genes " on several occasions and has been known to agree with eugenics.

Look, his uncle was a great scientist at MIT, he just naturally has an instinct for science, which is very big on trusting your unexamined hunches. Some of Trump's most ardent supporters seem intent on arguing that the COVID-19 outbreak may be good for Racial Science, since it's killing off the weak and thinning the herd. As great rightwing thought leader Bill O'Reilly put it, "Many people who are dying, both here and around the world, were on their last legs anyway," so why is everyone making such a fuss?

At least maybe Grandma, who has lived long enough, can maybe look forward to her last ride being in a nice new Ford Truck.

[ HuffPo / Haaretz / WaPo / American Experience / Quartz ]

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