Stephanie Ruhle Shows How White Allies Are Supposed To Act By Live-Dragging Trent Garmon, Roy Moore's Lawyer

Trent Garmon tried to come at Ali Velshi with some dog-whistle bigotry, but the co-host was having none of it.

Stephanie Ruhle

As we discussed earlier today, Roy Moore’s lawyer, Trent Garmon, appears to be bad. He’s bad at “making coherent legal arguments.” He’s bad at “writing in the English language.” And, since he’s been deployed to defend an accused pedophile, it sure seems like he’s bad at “being a good person,” or “having a moral or ethical center.”

But there’s one more thing to add to the list: Trenton Garmon is bad at “dog-whistling racism on TV and getting away with it.”

This afternoon, on the MSNBC show Velshi and Ruhle, Garmon was defending Moore against allegations that he sexually assaulted little girls. One of his defenses has been the ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE defense that Moore supporters somehow think is okay: Moore (allegedly) “asked permission” from the girls’ mothers before (allegedly) dating them.

This defense, besides being horrible, IS DUMB because it gives away the game that Moore was, you know, trying to date underaged women. The MSNBC hosts pushed him on this point. And Garmon, his eyes constantly shifting to look up at the monitor which is a rookie TV mistake, deployed a word salad of foolishness that suggested Ali Velshi’s “cultural background” would make him sympathetic to the point that asking permission to date underaged women was an accepted thing in other parts of the world.

It’s a stupid point to make. Cultural traditions of arranged marriages for underaged women in other parts of the world are:

A) Something the U.N. and other human rights groups are CONSTANTLY trying to stamp out;
B) Not something that in any way informs why an American district attorney was allegedly hitting on 14-year-olds at the mall; and
C) Have NOTHING TO DO with Ali Velshi’s “background.”

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If it sounds bad in print, check out this clip of how the train wreck went down live. To her enduring credit, Stephanie Ruhle has none of this bigotry, at any point, for even a second.

This isn’t the first time Garmon has made weird and possibly racially coded remarks during his time defending Moore on television. Check out the YouTube of his performance on Don Lemon where he called Lemon “Lemon Squeezy” two times for no apparent reason.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqNeTdbl9Qk#t=3m45s

This Garmon character acts like a man who has never even had a conversation with a person of color, much less been questioned by one. It’s not even about his apparent bigotry, it’s that he just looks wholly uncomfortable having to interact with these hosts — it’s like he thinks he’s being questioned by a bloodhound who learned to talk, only he’s the only one who can’t understand it. He seems to be just on the edge of saying, “Come ON people, it’s a talking dog. HAS ANYBODY ELSE NOTICED THIS???”

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But I don’t want to make this all about Garmon because his 15 minutes of fame are already almost up.

The heroes in this story are the dignity of Ali Velshi, and the disgust of Stephanie Ruhle. Ruhle’s reaction is EXACTLY how I want my white “allies” to react when they hear the dog-whistle deployed against me.

Understand, there was little Velshi could do in that moment. He’s conducting an interview, the guest has impugned his culture… sorry, not his culture, but a culture the guest assumes he’s associated with because of the color of his skin. On the street, Velshi could have had any number of reactions, but in the chair he’s a little stuck. If he blows up, “he” becomes the story. If he reacts, he’s blown up the whole interview — which remember, is supposed to be about Roy Moore dating underaged girls, not Trent Garmon assuming all brown people are the same.

If you haven’t been there, it’s hard to explain, but sometimes the bigots have you boxed in. React, and it’s bad. Don’t react, and they get away with it. It freaking sucks.

But Stephanie Ruhle wasn’t in the same box. Her reactions would not be perceived as “self”-defense. She would not be “blamed” for “making everything about race.” As a white person, it was her privilege to care about what Garmon said, or not.

AND BOY, DID SHE CARE. She sat there and she did NOT LET HIM GET AWAY WITH IT. She called him out, immediately, in real time. As soon as she hears it she says, “What does Ali Velshi’s background have to do with dating children?” BOOM. That is the ONLY appropriate response. He opened the door to Velshi’s background, and Ruhle did not let it sit there like a braying elephant that was “distracting” from the issue at hand. Instead, she went right up to the elephant and asked, “Who in the f**k let you in here and why?”

She didn’t stop there. After another “background” comment, Ruhle made the obvious point: “HE’S FROM CANADA!” That’s her meeting the dog-whistle head on. Why would you assume that my co-host knows anything about arranged marriages in some parts of the world. IS IT JUST BECAUSE HE’S BROWN, she said with her tone.

Garmon pivoted to the fact that Ali Velshi has probably “traveled” to these parts of the world. That was not his point, but he was scrambling at that point. “SO HAVE I,” Ruhle retorts. That’s her making the obvious point that Garmon did not reference Ruhle’s background or culture while making his racist point.

Finally, it’s important to point out that Ali Velshi didn’t ask for this. He didn’t ask to be put in this position, nor did he ask for help. Ali Velshi was going to be okay, regardless of whether Ruhle said anything or not. Being an ally isn’t about helping a minority in distress who “needs” it. Being an ally is about being as outraged and non-conciliatory to the bigots hiding in plain sight, so that the pushback they get is not ONLY from minorities but from EVERY decent person they come across in their PATHETIC LIVES. Whatever blowback Garmon thought he was going to get, I promise you that in that moment he was NOT worried about Stephanie Ruhle. I promise you he thought she would keep her mouth shut while he did his little signaling to the racists back home.

Now he knows. Bet that’s a lesson he won’t forget the next time he’s on television.

I don’t know Stephanie Ruhle. But I know a lot of white women. And I know that if all the white women who claim to not be racist reacted to all the bigoted white men like Stephanie Ruhle reacted to Trent Garmon, we’d be in a better place.