WATCH: Award-Winning Journalist Compares Donald Trump, Republicans to Ku Klux Klan

Andrew StilesFebruary 1, 2023

Wesley Lowery states, “This is a literal factual description.”

Donald Trump, the former president of the United States, and his Republican Party are motivated by “the exact same things that drove the [Ku Klux] Klan movement of the 1920s,” According to Wesley LoweryThe former Washington Post The Pulitzer Prize winner is best known as the reporter who was arrested at McDonald’s in Ferguson, Mo. during a riot and sentenced to several minutes in jail.

“We have one political party that traffics in the same talking points as white supremacists, be it on immigration, be it on Muslims, be it on any number of issues, where the mainstream political rhetoric could be written by avowed racists,” Lowery stated Jan. 24 at a National Press Club Panel Information about the journalistic challenges associated with covering extremism.

He argued that journalists need to be bold enough to refer to the Republican Party in a white supremacist way without fear. “not objective” critics who are white supremacists. Lowery is a vocal opponent Journalism is objective. “I’ll be honest, I don’t think very much about the mantle of neutrality,” He said. “It’s either raining outside or it’s not raining outside. I’m not particularly interested in sounding neutral about which it is.”

The Republican Party is a “movement that is a mix of nativism, of anti-urbanism, of anti-cosmopolitanism, a fear of immigrants,” Lowery explained. “It’s the exact same things that drove the Klan movement of the 1920s. But to say that in public—the way that Newsbusters is going to headline the write-up of this panel is going to be that I compared Donald Trump to the Klan. Right? Now this is a literal true factual description. How can we understand our moment if we are not allowed to make any comparison or add any context?”