Eddie Glaude Strikes Again: Trump and Vance Are 'The Devil Who Has Us by the Throat'

Princeton professor Eddie Glaude is at it again.

Last week on MS NOW, he smeared America as a "white republic" built on "greed and selfishness and grift and hatred." 

On Sunday's edition of The Weekend, Glaude described JD Vance and Donald Trump as "the devil who has us by the throat" and "white nationalists, for sure."

The segment opened with MS NOW contributor and former NPR host Michele Norris offering a false choice. America, she declared, must decide whether it wants to "hold on to our superpower status" or become a "supremacist nation." 

Why? Because "we don't produce enough college-educated white men to drive our GDP." Norris asked who is serving patients in doctors' offices and hospitals and "holding up" the economy "with their hands and their shoulders and their intellect and their hard work."

The implication is clear: without mass immigration, America falls behind.

JD Vance had offered a very different message for the nation’s 250th birthday. He urged Americans to reject the "two dimensional view" of their country that obsesses over imperfections and portrays it as merely another place "where the weak struggle against the strong."

Glaude called Vance’s appeal an ideological effort to shut down "more perfect union talk" that acknowledges failings on slavery, women, workers, and the like. Such talk, he said, opens up a "multicultural imagining" and "multiracial imagining" of America that conservatives want to suppress.

"JD Vance wants us to simply shut up those of us who look like me," Glaude declared. "They want us to shut up and be grateful."

Glaude calling Trump and Vance "the devil who has us by the throat" and labeling them "white nationalists, for sure" is classic demonization—turning patriotic appeals to national greatness and culture into supposed supremacism. 

Glaude's rejection of an American "culture" (dismissing it as "blood and soil") ignores the broad consensus around the American Dream, self-reliance, hard work, and "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" — with emphasis on the pursuit, not government delivery of happiness through welfare and DEI mandates.

Norris’s framing sets up an equally false choice: maintain superpower status via mass low-skilled immigration or become "supremacist" and second-rate due to insufficient "college-educated white men." 

Most Americans are fine with highly-educated immigrants who can become doctors and contribute. That is a far cry from open-border policies that import the unskilled, who are more likely to become burdens on society -- through government welfare programs or defrauding the government.

And identity politics only compounds the problem. As seen at a California university like UC-Davis, DEI has led to discrimination against white and Asian medical school applicants in favor of black and Latino candidates with far lower MCAT scores — compromising merit and quality in a critical field.

Liberal politicians and pundits routinely accuse Donald Trump of "inciting violence" with his rhetoric. 

What does Eddie Glaude think he’s inciting? If someone is a devil that has you by the throat, what form of "resistance" might that justify?

Here's the transcript.

MS NOW 
The Weekend
7/5/26
7:09 am EDT

MICHELE NORRIS: America has to then decide: do we want to hold on to our superpower status? Do we want to be prominent in the world, or do we want to be a supremacist nation? 

Because, you know, if we don't, we do not produce enough college-educated white men to drive our GDP. You know, when you go to the doctor, who's, who is serving you? When you go to the hospital, who is serving you? When you look at our economy, who is holding it up with their hands and their shoulders and their intellect and their hard work? 

That is the America that keep moving us forward, and the people who are fighting for this supremacist idea, these supremacist ideas, are willing to sacrifice all of that for the sake of, of their own power structure, and this need to feel like they are above someone else. They are willing to put America in a lower position globally in order to continue to elevate themselves.

. . . 

EUGENE DANIELS: Vice President JD Vance spoke yesterday, about people who criticize America and what that means, and I want you guys to listen to this.

JD VANCE: You will hear a couple of small but loud voices today speak obsessively not of our national greatness, but of our national imperfections. They will speak of the powerless and the dispossessed. They will tell you that America is just another country where the weak struggle against the strong. 

So what I'd ask you to do, my fellow Americans, on our 250th birthday is to reject the two dimensional view of your fellow citizens, and reject the two dimensional view of your country.

. . . 

EDDIE GLAUDE: I want you to understand, Eugene, that this is an ideological position. They reject more perfect union talk altogether. Because for them, America's perfection was secured in its founding. And it's all we need to do, is to remember and restore. 

To talk about more perfect union is to talk about all of the failings, right? The failures with regards to slavery, with regards to women, with regards to child labor, with regards to workers and the like, right? 

So for them, that kind of conversation, right, exposes the country, and opens up this kind of multicultural imagining of America, this multiracial imagining of America. They wanna shut that down. 

JD Vance wants us to simply shut up, those of us who look like me, right? They want us to shut up and be grateful. That's what they want us to do. 

And I think it's really important for us to understand the way in which they're mobilizing the founding for their white supremacist ends. And JD Vance tries to put it in kind of flowery language or makes it sound reasonable.

But at the end of the day, what he's arguing, right, is that America's more than an idea. America is rooted in a culture that is fundamentally about blood and soil. Donald Trump Trump said that in front of Mount Rushmore. He said, what? He said, "American identity, American freedom. There's no American freedom without American culture." That's a quote. 

And so I think we need to understand these folk for who they are and name the devil that has us by the throat. These are white nationalists, for sure.