Trump & Race on MLK Day. Conservatives rush to defend Trump’s bigoted remarks
January 15, 2018

 
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The first time most Americans had ever heard the name “Donald Trump” was 1989 when a young (white) female jogger running through Central Park was brutally raped, sodomized, beaten and left for dead. Five young men (four black, one Hispanic) were arrested for the crime (and a rash of similar attacks also in Central Park) and dubbed “The Central Park 5” by the media. Donald Trump was the most vocal voice, paying out of pocket to purchase full page ads in all four of New York’s major newspapers calling for the return of the Death Penalty and demanding the execution of “The Central Park 5” PRIOR to their trial, potentially tainting the jury pool. The five men confessed to committing the crime (having much to do with their concern of being able to receive a fair trial thanks to all the publicity bought & paid for by Trump) and the wealthy young real estate mogul was dubbed a champion of decent “law & order” New Yorkers. People rallied behind him also calling for the execution of the five young men even after questions started to emerge about whether their “confessions” were coerced and the men started pleading their innocence.

In 2002, a convicted serial rapist already in prison confessed to the crime and a DNA test proved it to be true. “The Central Park 5” were indeed innocent and immediately released from prison after 22 years. When Donald Trump was asked if he felt he owed the men an apology for his role in helping convict them and continuing to call for their execution even after questions of their innocence started to emerge, Trump offered no apology, dug in his heels and continued to defend his support for Capital Punishment even if it would have led to the death of five innocent young men who had been coerced into confessing to a crime they did not commit.

Trump’s history of bigotry didn’t begin in 1989 though. In the 1970’s, Donald and his father Fred Trump were accused of “Housing Discrimination” against minorities. An investigation by The Washington Post alleged that Trump employees marked minority applicants with codes, such as “No. 9” (ie: “Section 9” housing) or “C” for “colored.” And the doorman of the apartment building Trump owned told reporters that: “if a black person came to 2650 Ocean Parkway and inquired about an apartment for rent, […] I should tell him that the rent was twice as much as it really was.”

Trump’s history of being a proud bigot was well known LONG before he called Mexicans “rapists & drug dealers” in the speech where he declared his candidacy for president in 2015, or started demanding the birth certificate of the very first black presidential candidate to win his party’s nomination in 2008 (despite the fact Obama’s GOP opponent, John McCain, actually WAS born outside of the U.S. on a Panamanian military base two years before Congress passed the law making such children “American citizens.”)

Today, Monday January 15th, the country recognizes/celebrates the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. (on January 20th), made all the more poignant by Trump’s Oval Office comment last week calling Haiti, El Salvador & “some African countries” “shitholes” (Conservative pundit Rich Lowrey says some claim he said “shit houses, not shit holes.“) “Why can’t we have more immigrants from countries like Norway?” (likely thinking of his meeting with Norway’s PM the day before.) Trump naturally denied he ever said such a thing (though I expect him to reverse himself any minute now and claim there would be nothing wrong if he *had* said it because the countries he named are indeed “economic basket cases”… as if the economic state of the country people come from has any bearing on their worthiness to come here. People living in great conditions don’t have a lot of incentive to immigrate to the U.S…. especially now with someone like Trump in charge.)

The reason I half-expect Trump to reverse himself from “denial” to “admitting & defending” his remarks is mostly because of the outrageous number of Republican members of Congress and Conservative pundits who rushed to Trump’s defense yesterday on the Sunday news talk shows. Even the few who dared criticize their Party leader still used muted language. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan called Trump’s comment “very unfortunate” and “unhelpful”… something one ABC News reporter said was “something you say about a parking ticket, not a racist insult towards millions of people.” Ryan’s remarks were still more than Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has yet to muster, who has yet to make ANY public comment regarding Trump’s latest racist remark.

Many Republicans in Congress who criticized candidate Trump are now quick to defend him. Former Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul… a staunch Libertarian who got in trouble himself prior to the campaign for stating he likely would NOT have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act because “the federal government has no business telling private industry what to do” (ie: discriminate against an entire race of people)… vehemently defended Trump on “Meet the Press” yesterday, stating Trump simply stated a preference for people from “economically stable” countries (where the vast majority just happen to be white.)

On ABC’s ThisWeek, Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) was one of the six people present in the Oval Office and all but called Democratic Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL)… also present and stating categorically Trump did indeed call the mostly black nations “shitholes”… a liar, declaring “I haven’t heard any of those six sources other than Senator Durbin talk about what was said.” Stephanopoulos responded by telling Purdue that Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (also in the meeting) appeared to corroborate Durbin’s account of events, telling his co-Senator Tim Scott Trump’s comments were “unfortunate“, to which Purdue only called Durbin’s account, “a gross a gross misrepresentation” (no follow-up as to ask what the ‘correct’ language should have been.)

In addition to Purdue, another Deep South Republican senator, “Traitor Tom” Cotton, vehemently denied on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Trump made the racist remark, stating, “Sen. Durbin has a history of misrepresenting what happens in White House meetings, though. So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by that.” There’s that word again, “misrepresenting“. Neither Cotton nor Puedue flat out call Durbin a liar nor state categorically that Trump never made any derogatory remark about those countries, yet seem to have no qualms slandering a fellow senator to defend Trump.

And how shocked do you think I was (answer: zero) to hear a representative of “The Christian Broadcast Network” go on “ThisWeek” to defend Trump for the same reason: He’s not a racist, he just prefers rich white guys like himself.

The REAL scandal last week wasn’t that a notorious bigot once again said something racist (as he seems to do at least once a month since the day of his announcement in 2015). It’s the number of Republicans… a Party already regarded as the refuge of bigots and unwelcoming of minorities… rushed to Trump’s defense, more than eager to try to convince us that his moronic bigotry was actually justified and/or not bigotry at all, simply “misunderstood”… just as they are.

Doctor King is surely rolling in his grave tonight.
 

Postscript: Also worthy of discussion this week but not mentioned once during the Sunday shows was the release of the “FusionGPS” testimony transcript. I am currently still reading the transcript (some 312 pages) and noticing some interesting details that I hope to report on in the future. From the 100+ pages I’ve read so far, the only reason I can see why Republicans fought so long/hard to suppress the release of the Transcript is that it shows former British MI6 agent Michael Steele’s role… whose “dossier” on Trump documented a plethora of troublesome contacts between Trump and Russia’s shady underground and numerous Russian officials… is hardly a substantial portion of the evidence against Trump. Most of the testimony is really just assessing the legitimacy of “FusionGPS” as a trustworthy research firm… of which by this testimony they clearly are.
 
Also of note: Friday is the latest “deadline” for Congress to pass a budget for 2018 (after agreeing to put it off for a month last month). If no agreement is made, we may once again be facing a “Government Shutdown“ by Friday. Democrats want a DACA agreement for the “Dreamers” to be part of any budget deal. Thanks to Trump’s latest racist remarks regarding black people from Haiti, El Salvador & Africa it seems unlikely Republicans will shutdown the government over a refusal to come to an agreement on the future of non-criminal minority immigrants. Particularly in an election year (where Republican Senator Jeff Flake admitted yesterday, “Republicans are no longer wondering IF they’ll lose the House in November, but by how much.”)

 

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January 15, 2018 · Admin Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Civil Rights, Immigration Reform, Racism, Right-wing Facism, Scandals

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