Month: January 2023

Once again, Donald Trump Jr. is making videos so he can express his outrage over things he clearly doesn’t understand, and the result is that he’s making many people wonder if perhaps he’s completely illiterate.

Brandon Gage of Alternet reports that the object of Junior’s ire is an article that appeared in Time magazine.

Donald Trump Junior threw a video tantrum on his Rumble channel late Monday morning over a Time Magazine story documenting the racist foundations of the modern American fitness industry, which exploded in popularity in the mid-Twentieth Century.

Time‘s interview with author Natalia Mehlman Petrzela that was published in December revealed several startling instances that underscored the point of the éxposé.

As an example, Petrzela noted this about corsets, which led to a matter of white babies vs. babies of color:

They said we should get rid of corsets, corsets are an assault on women’s form, and that women should be lifting weights and gaining strength. At first, you feel like this is so progressive.

Then you keep reading, and they’re saying white women should start building up their strength because we need more white babies. They’re writing during an incredible amount of immigration, soon after enslaved people have been emancipated. This is totally part of a white supremacy project. So that was a real “holy crap” moment as a historian, where deep archival research really reveals the contradictions of this moment.

Petrzela is clearly trying to help show the racism inherent in such things as the call for some (whites) to exercise so there would be more Caucasian babies. Does anyone doubt that this indeed took place in this country as recently as the middle of the last century? In some ways, it still takes place, though not as overtly.

But to hear Don Jr. tell it, Time and Petrzela don’t want white folks to be physically fit. So he began ranting.

“The white supremacist origin of exercise. Exercise is now white supremacy. Okay? Remember, it’s either white supremacy or climate change. Literally everything is one of those things. Good, bad, or indifferent. They will blame it on all of those things. But that’s Time Magazine. They want to get rid of exercise. They don’t want physical fitness. I assume it has to do with probably not wanting people to be self-sufficient or masculine, because there’s the attack on that. But this is in ‘Time Magazine.’ Exercise is now apparently racist. I mean, that’s how insane we’re getting.

“Just stop. You know what seems way more racist to me? Ignoring science and common sense information about, like, physical activity and physical fitness and instead pretending that those things don’t matter, which probably is literally killing people. Letting people go about being obese is literally killing people under the guise of protecting them from racism. Pretending that certain people are somehow immune to the health issues associated with obesity seems sociopathic, but that’s where we are.”

Of course, to actually read the article would have meant that Junior had to put aside some of his alleged controlled substances (sniff, sniff) and sit still for more than five seconds.

It should also be noted that Ms. Petrzela is now getting death threats thanks to Don Jr. and other right-wing morons like him.

Isn’t it time we address the issue of functional illiteracy that’s clearly plaguing Don Jr. (and his father) instead of trying to stir up fake outrage?