The recent remarks by Mr. Trump about Jemele Hill, the NFL
players and Steph Curry should come as no surprise to those that have been
watching and listening. Simply said,
Trump is a racist, with admiration for white supremacy groups and a desire to
deride anyone that doesn’t look like him.
How much more proof does one need? His and his family’s track record as slum
lords and discrimination against blacks as landlords in New York are well
known. The Justice Department sued his
company twice for not renting to black people, Puerto Ricans or other
minorities. And anyone that thought
that didn’t matter when they voted for this unqualified TV performer were just
kidding themselves…or they share his misogynistic and racist views.
How much more proof does one need? His statement that the torch wielding mob in
Charlottesville chanting against blacks and Jews had some “very fine people”
among them should give you a clue as to his mindset.
How much more proof does one need? His hiring of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions as his
Attorney General should have given you some clue as to his mindset. Sessions was nominated in 1986 to be a Judge
in the US District Court and wasn’t confirmed due to his contentious racist
policies and views.
How
much more proof does one need? Trump’s
retaliation against the Gold Star
parents
of a Muslim US Army officer should have tipped you off about his hateful stance
against anybody that doesn’t look like him.
Trump’s disregard for civil liberties and bigoted rhetoric are obvious.
How
much more proof does one need? Trump
claimed that a judge was biased because “he’s a Mexican.” He implied that a federal judge presiding
over a class-action suit against his sham university could not fairly hear the
case because he was of Mexican heritage.
“He’s a Mexican and we’re building a wall between here and
Mexico….giving us unfair rulings.” When
asked whether he would trust a Muslim judge, Trump suggested that such a judge
might not be fair to him either.
How
much more proof does one need? Workers
at Trump’s casinos in Atlantic City have accused him of racism over many
years. In fact, he was fined by the
Casino Control Commission because managers would remove Black card dealers at
the request of other bigoted gamblers.
Trump disparaged his black casino employees as “lazy” in vividly bigoted
terms according to a former president of Trump Plaza. According to a 1991 book written by John
O’Donnell, the former president of Trump Casinos, Trump said that a black
employee was lazy, “and it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait
in blacks.”
How
much more proof does one need? Trump
refused to condemn the white supremacists who campaigned for him. Three times in a row Trump sidestepped
opportunities to renounce white nationalist and former KKK leader David
Duke. While later on he tepidly
disavowed Duke, he has said nothing about the Daily Stormer, a leading neo-Nazi
news site, or several other white supremacist websites and newspapers. A leader of the Virginia KKK said, “The
reason a lot of Klan members like Donald Trump is because a lot of what he
believes, we believe in.”
How
much more proof does one need? Long
before he called Mexican immigrants “criminals” and “rapists”, Trump was THE
leading proponent of birtherism, the racist conspiracy theory that President
Obama was not born in the US and was thus an illegitimate president.
How
much more proof does one need? In
answering accusations of bigotry, Trump often professes love for the Blacks, the Hispanics or the Muslims,
treating all the members of the group – all the individual human beings- as
essentially the same or interchangeable.
All you have to do in look at his tone deaf infamous Cinco de Mayo taco
bowl tweet to understand his mindset.
How
much more proof does one need? At a
campaign rally, in Alabama, he condoned the beating of a Black Lives Matter
protestor: “Maybe the protestor should
have been roughed up.” He also called
supporters who beat up a homeless Latino man as passionate: He did not even bother to distance himself
from them, suggesting they were well-intentioned and simply got carried away.
How
much more proof does one need? He
stereotyped Jews in an address to a Republican Jewish Coalition and then
tweeted an anti-Semitic Hillary Clinton meme during the campaign. The meme, incidentally, was originally
created by white supremacist and could be found on a neo-Nazi website a week
before Trump re-tweeted it. In his book,
O’Donnel relates the comment Trump made about his casinos: “And isn’t it funny. I’ve
got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my
money! I hate it,” O’Donnell recalled Trump saying. “The only kind of people I
want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
How
much more proof does one need? Trump has
repeatedly blamed Blacks and Hispanics for violent crime across the
country. He makes up statistics to support
whatever lies he tells and ignores the outbreak of violence perpetuated by
those alt-right groups.
How
much more proof does one need? The White
House said that Jemele Hill’s remarks that Trump is a racist is a fireable
offense. And exactly how is this
different than Trump once calling Obama a racist and accusing him of treason? I guess he feels that what he says and does
is not allowed by anyone else…especially if they are black.
So,
how could you possibly be surprised at his inappropriate remarks about Jemele
Hill, NFL players or the Golden State Warriors and Steph Curry? It doesn’t matter that you agree or
disagree with the peaceful protests these athletes are participating in. It DOES matter that their protests are
protected by our Constitution…a document that Trump has never read or, at
the very least, doesn’t understand.
It
is obvious why Trump has attacked the Black athletes. It is all a part of his larger culture
war. Trump wants to divide, confuse,
inflame and divert any attention away from the fact that he has accomplished
exactly zero on the legislative front and has brought us to the brink of
nuclear war with his un-presidential tweets, uneducated bullying, and
ill-informed world view. He is desperate
to distract his base from his myriad failures of policy, from health care to
immigration to world diplomacy and his inability to build a team that is
anything but a reflection of his misguided views.
Our
forefathers tried to protect us from bad people like Donald Trump. But those protections will never be put in to
play because the Republicans in Congress have no desire to “do what’s right.” Their base is his base and they will never
jeopardize their cushy jobs, their pensions or their perks to oust one of their
own. Our only slim hope is that the
American people will finally say “enough!” and flip the House and the Senate in
2018.
And The Journey continues……….
