Wandrea "Shaye" Moss's abuse at the hands of Donald Trump is terrifying for the same reason serial killers are terrifying: Because the victims feel so randomly selected. Ted Bundy roamed beaches and college campuses looking for any long-haired white girl he could torture and kill. Moss did not speculate, during her short but powerful testimony before the January 6 committee on Tuesday, on why Trump and his odious sidekick Rudy Giuliani picked her and her mother, Ruby Freeman, for a vicious smear campaign falsely accusing them of injecting fake ballots into counting machines. She didn't need to speculate, because it was painfully obvious. Trump and Giuliani wanted their victims to be Black women because their conspiracy theories about a "stolen" election are all about tickling the lizard brain racism of the GOP base.
Moss and Freeman were singled out for the same reason that Fox News runs endlessly ridiculous segments villainizing Vice President Kamala Harris for every sneeze or smile. She was targeted for the same reason Republicans turned the confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson into a circus of white resentment. Trump zeroed in on these two women for the same reason he spent years hyping the ridiculous conspiracy that President Barack Obama was not a natural born citizen of the United States. It's all a head nod in the direction of the unspeakable but clearly animating belief of MAGA nation: People of color are not legitimate American citizens.
