Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt is worried about liberal contempt? Let’s look at the source | Opinion

Give Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt credit for chutzpah.

On Sunday afternoon, while many of Schmitt’s fellow Republicans were in Madison Square Garden for a Donald Trump rally, the Missouri Republican took to social media to express concern about the ugly tone he’s been hearing from … Democrats.

“The folks at that rally want a better life for their families and here you have Tim Walz calling them Nazis,” Schmitt wrote.

Then he added: “Kamala Harris, Walz, Hillary and the Obamas view half the country with such contempt.”

That sounds pretty bad.

Listen: I have no doubt that any number of Donald Trump supporters — including a lot of folks in Kansas and Missouri — really do support the ex-president because they want a better life for their families. I seriously, strenuously disagree with them.

But if Schmitt has concerns about “contempt,” then maybe it’s good to take a look at what the folks who were at Trump’s rally actually said.

There was the comedian — my colleague Derek Donovan has already written about him — who made off-color jokes about Latinos and referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” That got a lot of attention. His joke about a Black audience member “carving watermelons” didn’t attract so much notice.

There was the businessman, Grant Cardone, who likened Vice President Kamala Harris to a prostitute, saying she “and her pimp handlers will destroy our country.” Hulk Hogan, who also appeared, insinuated “that Harris had slept her way to the top,” Axios noted.

There was Tucker Carlson, the disgraced former Fox News host, who referred to Harris as “a Samoan-Malaysian low-I.Q. former California prosecutor.”

(For what it’s worth, Harris’ dad is Jamaican and her mom was Indian.)

And there was Trump himself, who once again referred to his domestic opponents as “the enemy from within.”

So. A lot of contempt was expressed at Sunday’s rally. It was the dominant mode of expression.

On Monday morning, I emailed Schmitt’s office to see if he had any concerns about that. I didn’t hear back.

Fear about anger, hostility, revenge

Schmitt, at least, is halfway to a decent point: A lot of Americans seem to hate a lot of Americans these days and the contempt certainly appears to be mutual. I am genuinely terrified about how that anger and hostility will express itself over the coming weeks and months as the election — finally — ends and we move into the aftermath.

Also: I don’t think all expressions of contempt are precisely equal.

Yes, a lot of Trump’s critics — what used to be called “the resistance” — can frame their opposition in “orange man bad” terms, or call him silly names like “Drumpf.” But mostly I think that hostility is an expression of fear of a once-and-possibly-former president who has explicitly vowed “revenge” on his enemies in a second term.

They fear his pledges of “mass deportations” and what it might mean for their families, communities and even the economy. They fear that he’ll use the powers of government to crack down on media organizations that have reported critically on him. They fear that his talk of being a “dictator” — just on Day 1, wink wink — and talk about terminating the Constitution is more than idle.

They fear what it means when (potentially) the most powerful man on Earth calls them the “enemy.”

Trump and his friends at Madison Square Garden, meanwhile, expressed hostility not to Harris’ ideas or actions — but to her very identity.

Carlson’s reference to Harris’ supposed “Samoan-Malaysian” heritage isn’t a comment on her agenda. It’s just a racist insult. Same for the “floating island of garbage” joke. And talk of Harris’ “pimp handlers” only proves the speaker wants to make sure the vice president knows her place as a woman of color.

Trump’s critics fear what he has said he’ll do. Harris’ critics — at least, the ones on stage Sunday with Trump — fear who she is. The two are not the same.

Only half the equation, though, is of apparent concern to Sen. Eric Schmitt.

Joel Mathis is a regular Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle Opinion correspondent. Formerly a writer and editor at Kansas newspapers, he served nine years as a syndicated columnist.