After NASCAR made progress on matters of equality, Corey LaJoie is debuting a “Trump 2020” car.
Just a few weeks ago, NASCAR had become one of the most positive stories of how the Black Lives Matter movement had taken hold within major American sports.
The Confederate flag had been banned from all races and events, the association wasted no time in launching a full-blown investigation when a noose was found in the garage stall of Bubba Wallace (NASCAR’s only Black driver on the major circuit) and racers and team members stood by him in a act of solidarity at the very next race.
Suffice it to say that Corey LaJoie’s “Trump 2020” car spits in the face of all that progress for a sport and fanbase that’s historically been racist.
According to TMZ Sports, LaJoie will debut the new red, white and blue paint job for his No. 32 car at the Brickyard 400 on Saturday. On the Fourth of July, he’ll be driving around that track with “Trump 2020” plastered on the hood and the rear-quarter panels.
“I am honored to be part of the President’s re-election campaign through the Patriots of America PAC,” team owner Archie St. Hilaire said in a statement. “As a Trump 2020 supporter, this team will do everything possible to secure victory on and off the track electing President Donald Trump to a second term.”
This form of freedom of expression is just downright sickening. Politics aside, brazenly supporting a president who is most known for racism and his complete indifference toward the Black Lives Matter movement — at a time when the social injustice in our country has never been more apparent — is a direct slap in the face to Bubba Wallace, BLM and the notion that NASCAR might have finally been making some progress.
As LaJoie noted himself, there are 75 million NASCAR fans, but about 15 million of those are not registered to vote. The driver said that hopefully the “Your Vote Counts” emblems on his car encourage people to race to the polls in November.
Hopefully he’s right, since every single person in this country who recognizes this “Trump 2020” car for what it is — a massively depressing backslide from the sport of NASCAR and an insulting contradiction to Wallace’s BLM car — should feel obligated to race to the polls in November.