Even for those actively avoiding news out of the Republican National Convention, which wraps up today in Cleveland, it’s no secret that the event has been — how to put this delicately? — a hot mess.
Between delegates trying (and failing) to oust Donald Trump as the GOP's official anti-LGBT standard-bearer, booing (and threatening the spouses of) right-wing elected officials, all the while blaming people of color for the violence visited upon their communities, the four-day event has been a nonstop parade of overt and implicitly discriminatory noise.
Luckily, progressive (or just generally compassionate) voices on social media have responded with all the shade, reads, and clapbacks one could ever wish for. Read on for a much-needed Republican reality check, compliments of some of our favorite out and allied celebrities and activists.
Yes this pretty much sums up the #RNC2016 @chescaleigh pic.twitter.com/PWpLrUF6Ix
— Angelica Ross (@angelicaross) July 19, 2016
Let's start with the controversy kicked off on the very first day of the convention, when Iowa Rep. Steve King told MSNBC that he would like those who criticize the GOP as a party of old white people to “go back through history and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you’re talking about? Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?”
Oh yes, he went there. So naturally, Twitter came for him with the facts.
.@SteveKingIA here's a concept I think will be useful for you: #solipsism. pic.twitter.com/ezSnAf9Ae2
— bilal (@ahmdBilly) July 20, 2016
Does Steve King know that Black enslaved women FED white infants from their bodies? So if we're gonna talk about who BUILT this country...
— Reagan Gomez (@ReaganGomez) July 19, 2016
But the Grand Old Party was just getting started. Speakers taking the podium on that first day included Antonio Sabato Jr., who is still clinging to the idea that President Obama is a secret Muslim. (Of course, even if Obama were Muslim, it shouldn't matter — except for the GOP’s horribly anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim platform.)
Nevertheless, Twitter had a few words of advice for the actor and former soap opera star.
.@antoniosabatojr, we don't care what you think of @POTUS and his faith. You are even stupid to say Obama isn't a Christian sounding name.
— rolandsmartin (@rolandsmartin) July 19, 2016
Antonio Sabato Jr., Kimberlin Brown... if the #RNC sent out a call to every washed-up soap actor I look forward to Titans' Yasmine Bleeth
— Ira Madison III (@ira) July 20, 2016
Fellow former TV star Scott Baio also sparked controversy Monday, but not just over his speech. Those prepared remarks included Trump's campaign slogan commanding voters to “Make America Great Again" but added a postscript: "Let’s make America, America again,” he said. It's not hard to see how many heard that as a thinly veiled knock on multiculturalism — particularly the growing racial diversity of the American populace. He also echoed Sabato's claims about Obama's secret jihad against the American way of life.
Even louder than Baio's racist dog-whistle rhetoric was the sound of a thousand adolescent crushes crashing to the ground, leaving shrapnel across the Twitterverse:
My foray into womanhood involved a white hot burning passion for #scottbaio. I'm realizing now it may have just been indigestion all along.
— The Sassiest Semite (@LittleMissLizz) July 19, 2016
There are a lot of 50 year old women that are glad their teenage dream to marry #ScottBaio never came true. #RNCinCLE
— Hugh Morris (@HughMorris) July 19, 2016
But anyone who is familiar with Baio — maybe from from his sitcoms last millennium, his Nickelodeon show, or his forays into reality television — is also likely to know that he isn't very nice to women on Twitter. Nowhere was the has-been's misogyny better flayed than by MSNBC anchor Tamron Hall, who took Baio to task in the most epic of television takedowns. Watch it below:
This all went down before Melania Trump, the wife of the all-but-confirmed Republican nominee for president, took the stage during prime time Monday night. The latest Mrs. Trump caught the full wrath of the social media universe for her speech that outright plagiarized portions of the speech Michelle Obama delivered at the Democratic National Convention in 2008. Trump's campaign speech writer has fallen on the sword for her, but many still say the plagiarism itself reeks of racism.
It's not just plagiarism. It's plagiarism of a black woman in an election where surrogates say that nonwhite people have added nothing.
— Courtney Milan (@courtneymilan) July 19, 2016
But the award for read of the week — at least so far — goes to none other than the presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton (or at least the staffer running the former Secretary of State's Twitter account) in response to House Speaker Paul Ryan.
In America, everyone has a place. No one is written off. Straight from the Declaration of Independence, that is the Republican ideal.
— Paul Ryan (@PRyan) July 20, 2016
Not according to your anti-woman, anti-LGBT, anti-immigrant @GOP platform. #RNCinCLE https://t.co/I2W1cvyrrQ
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) July 20, 2016
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