Sunday Roundup (POLITICS)
This week the nation watched as the #NeverTrump movement folded faster than one of the presumptive nominee's beachfront developments. As many tried to explain away Trump's reckless, racist extremism, a few put principle over party. The wife of former Republican Senator Bob Bennett, who died on May 4, revealed that her husband spent his dying hours reaching out to Muslims. "He would go to people with the hijab [on] and tell them he was glad they were in America," she told the Daily Beast. "He wanted to apologize on behalf of the Republican Party." In the U.K., Prime Minister David Cameron called Trump's proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., "divisive, stupid and wrong." Trump's reply was that he didn't think he and Cameron would "have a very good relationship." The press is also doing its part to whitewash extremism. The New York Times called Trump's racism "a reductive approach to ethnicity," and said Trump's attitude toward women is "complex" and "defies simple categorization," as if sexism is suddenly as complicated as string theory. Not everybody's going along. Bob Garfield, co-host of "On the Media," warned the press of the danger of normalizing Trump. "Every interview with Donald Trump, every single one should hold him accountable for bigotry, incitement, juvenile conduct and blithe contempt for the Constitution," he said. "The voters will do what the voters will do, but it must not be, cannot be because the press did not do enough."