Race issues highlight former Wichitan’s latest documentary on Trump | Opinion
Why Trump?
That may be the question of our time, and documentary filmmaker Brian Schodorf set out across the country to try to answer it.
Schodorf lives in Chicago now. But he grew up in Wichita, the son of Jean Schodorf, a former Kansas state senator pushed out of office in then-Gov. Sam Brownback’s 2012 purge of moderate Republicans — which, looking back, was kind of the genesis of the current domination of state politics by the MAGA movement.
I attended the Wichita premiere of the second installment of Schodorf’s four-part docuseries on Sunday, at the Historic Dunbar Theater.
Titled “Why Trump? Two Americas,” the film examines the role that race played in the rise of Trump and MAGA.
Schodorf draws historical parallels to the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, when an enraged mob of white citizens invaded the city’s segregated Black neighborhoods, killing many (the actual number is disputed) and torching the thriving business district that was then known as “The Black Wall Street.”
He juxtaposes that with 99 years later, when white Oklahomans camped out in line for days, Confederate flags flying in the background, to ensure they got a seat at a Trump rally in Tulsa on June 19, 2020 — Juneteenth, a national holiday when Black Tulsans hold an annual celebration of the end of slavery in America.
The story continues through Barack Obama’s campaigns and presidency — and the aftermath, as white Republicans stung by his success and popularity forted up to try to block anything he proposed, even if it was originally their own idea (see “Obamacare” for reference).
Roland Martin, an African American radio and television commentator in Chicago and former CNN contributor, tied it together succinctly with this comment: “In American history, black success has always been followed by a white backlash.”
Another thing I found fascinating was seeing clips of Trump circa 2012, when he spoke in coherent sentences and while brash and brazen, wasn’t the addled, angry, embittered, vindictive troll we see today.
Call it a guilty pleasure, but my favorite part of the film was an R-rated interview with Anthony Scaramucci, a financier who served for 10 days as Trump’s communications director in 2017 before he was fired for publicly and profanely criticizing other administration officials.
“There’s a Black and white divide,” Scaramucci said. “There’s a fear that white people have of Blacks and Blacks have of whites. Society has become this beautiful, colorful mosaic known as the American people, but the Republican Party is primarily an aging white party. The Republican Party is a group of old white people that are buying catheters and walkers from Fox News commercial interruptions.”
“Now that the demography is shifting, out with the democracy,” Scaramucci said. “Does that not make sense? What the f--- are we doing? And I think the people have had enough. We’re gonna speak out about this and we’re gonna create this (opposition) movement.”
Report from ICE Chicago invasion
Schodorf established himself as an award-winning filmmaker with raw documentaries examining political, racial and economic divides in Chicago.
In an interview with Wichita City Council member Maggie Ballard after Sunday’s screening, he shared his observations on “Operation Midway Blitz,” a brutal immigration crackdown targeting Chicago with a surge of federal agents and military troops.
“Chicago is a very tense place right now,” he said. “There are armed militias as well, or troops, roaming the streets. Many business corridors are suffering because, you know, people are scared. A lot of American citizens have been detained. A lot of people have been denied access to attorneys. There’s a lot of people who are missing completely.”
He refutes Trump administration claims that the blitz is targeting dangerous criminal immigrants.
“What they do is ICE kind of just comes, pull up in an unmarked car, jump out, grab somebody and leave,” Schodorf said. “And oftentimes there’s no notice, or no information to their family of where they’re going, where they’ve been. They may pull a guy off a ladder working on a house, and just take him away. They have tear gassed neighborhoods on multiple occasions when people come out and protest.”
He said one thing that might save Chicago from further abuse is its notoriously brutal winter: “It’s getting cold, and they may be leaving Chicago and going to warmer climates.”
As if on cue, the Trump administration has just shifted the epicenter of its mass immigration operation to North Carolina, calling it “Operation Charlotte’s Web.”
Part 1 of “Why Trump?” looked at how the rise of Trump got an assist from the decline of small town America.
Part 3, scheduled for release in spring of next year, will examine issues including the pro-life/pro-choice debate and its importance in motivating Trump’s evangelical Christian-right base. Schodorf interviewed me about that, on the night Kansas rejected the “Value them Both” amendment that would have allowed the state Legislature to ban abortions.
Both parts 1 and 2 are available on Amazon Prime Video, if you subscribe to that, and on the free streaming service Tubi.
They’re definitely worth watching.
