and lee atwater, ronald reagan's chief strategisist, laid it out beautifully.id, in 1954 you could say the "n" word, it wouldn't hurt you. by '68, it hurt you. it backfires. then you begin to start talking about economic things. cutting taxes, like bussing and all of those economic things, he says, and the point is is that blacks get hurt worse than whites. now in that language there, notice it's not just that blacks get hurt with these policies, but that they get hurt worse than whites. what that does then is it creates both a racial fill leaf to cover the racism that's -- fig leaf to cover the racism that's under that policy because if whites are getting hurt, you can't say that this is a racially discriminatory policy because you've got white folks who are taking the brunt of it, too. now that also begins the churn. it begins that sense of i've worked hard all of my life, and this is what i've got. i can't pay my bills. this is what trump tapped into. he tapped into what the gop has been churning for a long time. >> at least lee atwater, i remember this well

lee atwater -- >> guess who wrote them a letter and told them to stop it. me.nd they stopped it. >> yeah. after a few weeks. >> david, i know -- you know, i admire what you did in your campaign and you were very, very effective, but look, michael dukakis in a debate when he was asked if someone broke into your house, murdered his wife and raped her, if he would then support the death penalty, and he said no. >> in kitty dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an ir revocable death penalty for the killer? >> no, i don't, bernard. i've opposed the death penalty my whole life. >> we didn't have anything to do with that. >> no, listen, i've thrown hard punches in my career. but i'm -- i'm interested in the issue of race. lee atwater, who was a great political tactician, was one of your -- he was manager before you came back. he was really central to that campaign, said, when he was dying some years after that, that he regretted that. and he said he gretd saying we're going to strip the bark off the little bastard and make willie horton his running mate. so

lee atwater and other reagan consultants i suppose on numerous occasions were quoted as saying the. unions were in their crosshairs not because they hated unions and not because they were dancing to the tune of fat cats in the corporations but because the union movement along with trial lawyers which they tried to take down with the tort reform laws that the union movement was the principle funder of the democratic party whereas the republican party was principally being funded by big business. how much of how much of that is real how much of how much of the takedown of the unions was just purely political and partisan as opposed to or i suppose if the republican party is beholden to big corporations it's also part of you know enhanced in their profits really right it's really the same thing in the immediate aftermath of the war in the late forty's we had one of the most amazing strike waves to hit the united states huge strikes involving millions of workers so that was a direct confrontation between business and the union movement that didn't go so well for the business community t

beach california republicans made this deal with the devil a long time ago people like nixon reagan lee atwater decided that they would explicitly use racism even if by dog whistle to win elections what we're seeing now is trump in the wave of hey he's inspired seems to much to me to be the logical conclusion of their embrace of white supremacy back in the back in the one nine hundred sixty s. well i mean obviously white supremacy goes back to the found in this country but but. but the specifically the republican party did republicans want this to happen or do they think that they could just control racism as a little wedge issue and just just for a little detail on this recent study found that the k.k.k. played an essential role in turning in the south solidly from a democratic to republican stronghold according to that study counties in the southern in the in the old dixie states counties with an active klan membership show the most significant increase in republican voting between the years one nine hundred sixty in two thousand of all states in fact recording from the study quote klan count