Tag: Trump hate speech

Man charged with assault after punching anti-Trump protester outside Cincinnati rally

Washington Post logoProtesters were waving signs outside President Trump’s rally in downtown Cincinnati on Thursday when a red pickup truck pulled up to the crowd. Someone in the passenger seat started yelling, WCPO reported, and a few protesters shouted back. Suddenly, the door flew open and a man in a green polo hopped out, fists cocked.

As the crowd gasped and screamed, the man, later identified by local media as 29-year-old Dallas Frazier, landed a quick volley of punches to the face of Mike Alter, 61. Within a few seconds, a police officer rushed in to handcuff Frazier.

Another protester captured video of the beating, which quickly went viral.

View the complete August 2 article by Tim Elfrink on The Washington Post website here.

Why My Friend Trump’s Hate Speech Is So Toxic

When I was an undergraduate at Princeton University during the height of the Vietnam War, surrounded by fellow students who condemned it and even some who left the country to avoid fighting in it, the mantra used by its supporters was, “America, love it or leave it.” In my misguided “Bomb Hanoi” youth, I uttered this phrase, which I now detest.

The phrase itself — with its command of the government’s way or the highway — admits of no dissenting opinions, suggests that all is well and proper here and insinuates that moral norms and cultural values cannot be improved. The phrase itself is un-American.

That era also produced such hate-filled catchphrases as: “Hey, hey, LBJ; how many kids did you kill today?” Those post-JFK and pre-Watergate times were harsh and bitter as the nation was deeply divided over a war we now all know was useless and based on deception and fraud.

View the complete July 27 article by Andrew Napolitano on the National Memo website here.

Fox News legal analyst accuses ‘shameless’ Trump of unleashing ‘a torrent of hatred’ not seen since the 1960s

AlterNet logoFox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano this week published a scathing editorial in which he called out President Donald Trump for promoting hatred and division in the United States.

In the editorial, Napolitano recalls the divisions created by the Vietnam War, and he says that the hatred being stoked by Trump rivals the turbulent late 1960s. Napolitano argues that Trump’s decision to tell four Democratic lawmakers to “go back” to their home countries despite being American citizens was a particularly divisive and racist comment.

“‘Go back’ is a rejection of the nation as a melting pot; a condemnation of one of America’s founding values – E Pluribus Unum (Out of many, one),” he writes. “It implicates a racial or nativist superiority: We were here before you; this is our land, not yours; get out. Nativist hatred is an implication of moral or even legal superiority that has no constitutional justification in American government.”

View the complete July 25 article by Brad Reed from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Tracing the roots of Trump’s racist rhetoric

One of the more banal traits of racism is that it’s never original — it’s years and years of repackaged language, as harmful as it is lazy and ineloquent. The idea of “sending back” the people this country’s government hasn’t wanted is a sentiment that has been reiterated repeatedly since the early years of the United States. Whether it has manifested in the form of “the Great Emancipator” Abraham Lincoln wanting to send formerly enslaved black people back to Africa, or white people asking black people some iteration of “why don’t you go back to Africa?”

On Wednesday night, before a crowd of thousands of people in North Carolina, President Trump went on a vitriolic attack against Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. It’s not the first time he’s attacked Omar, but this time, his hateful speech promoted thousands of people to respond, chanting “send her back! send her back!”

Even after a relentless week of racism by the president, the video clip of the moment of the Trump supporters is hard to watch. It feels like he’s reached new levels of abjectly racist behavior. Except, he hasn’t.

View the complete July 19 article by Ophelia Garcia Lawler on the Mic.com website here.

‘Send her back’ chant chills Washington

Some Republicans criticize crowd at Trump rally; McConnell says Trump is ‘onto something’ with attacks on progressive ‘squad’

The words “send her back” briefly drowned out the President Donald Trump’s speech in Greenville, North Carolina, last night, and quickly sent chills through Washington.

Trump carried his screed against Rep. Ilhan Omar from Twitter on to the stage of a campaign stop Wednesday night, prompting supporters to respond that he should “send her back” to the country she emigrated from as a child. The moment stoked fear about both the safety of the congresswoman and about the ramifications of the nation’s most powerful politician inflaming racial and religious hatred.

The president’s Democratic rivals rapidly condemned his diatribe and the crowd’s approving chant as “racist,”“vile”and “disturbing.”

View the complete July 18 article by Emily Kopp on The Roll Call website here.

New Poll: Majority Says Trump’s Racist Attack Is ‘Un-American’

Just hours after Republicans voted almost unanimously in favor of Trump’s racist attack on four Democratic congresswomen, a new poll shows that most Americans consider Trump’s actions to be “un-American.”

On Tuesday, 187 House Republicans refused to vote for a resolution condemning Trump for telling the congresswoman to “go back” to where they came from. All of the women are of color and American citizens.

The measure passed with the support of the entire Democratic caucus. Only four Republicans voted for it, along with newly independent Rep. Justin Amash (MI).

View the complete July 17 by Oliver Willis on the National Memo website here.

Who Hates America?

Nobody expects Donald Trump to speak the truth about himself or his opponents anymore. To support him requires a suspension of disbelief that is impressive in a misbegotten way.

So when the president of the United States tells four duly elected members of Congress to go back to where they came from, an old trope of bigotry that everybody understands, the politicians who support him pretend that he was saying something else. Even his rank-and-file backers know how to play dumb — like the gentleman who told NPR that Trump was merely telling Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley to “go back to their home states.” Sorry, but nobody is really that stupid, although Trump and his minions treat us all as if we are.

Behind Trump’s rhetorical tactics lies what psychologists call projection: Each accusation he lodges against adversaries is emblematic of his own character. Defaming the four women of color, he said, “They hate our country. They hate it, I think, with a passion.” He said they express “a love for enemies like Al Qaeda.” And he was merely inviting them to leave the United States “if they want to leave,” which they must because “they’re doing nothing but criticizing us all the time.”

View the complete July 19 article by Joe Conason on the National Memo website here.

In the United States, right-wing violence is on the rise

As a Republican, Mitchell Adkins complained of feeling like an outcast at Transylvania University in Lexington, Ky. “Hardcore liberals” made fun of him, he wrote, and he faced “discrimination on a daily basis.” He soon dropped out and enrolled in trade school.

But his simmering rage led him back to campus one morning in April 2017, when Adkins pulled out a machete in the campus coffee shop, demanded that patrons state their political affiliation and began slashing at Democrats.

“There was never any ambiguity about why he did it,” said Tristan Reynolds, 22, a witness to the attack, which left two women injured.

View the complete November 25 article by Wesley Lowery, Kimberly Kindy and Andrew Ba Tran on The Washington Post website here.

Trump Will Have Blood on His Hands

The following commentary by Bret Stephens was posted on the New York Times August 3, 2018:

His demonization of the news media won’t fall on deaf ears.

The crowd at a Make America Great Again rally in Pennsylvania, stoked by President Trump’s statements, was particularly hostile to the press. Credit: Al Drago, The New York Times

The voice, if I had to guess, belongs to that of a white American male in late middle age. The accent is faintly Southern, the manner taunting but relaxed. It’s also familiar: I’m pretty sure he’s left a message on my office number before. But the last voice mail left almost no impression. Not this time.

“Hey Bret, what do you think? Do you think the pen is mightier than the sword, or that the AR is mightier than the pen?”

He continues: “I don’t carry an AR but once we start shooting you f—ers you aren’t going to pop off like you do now. You’re worthless, the press is the enemy of the United States people and, you know what, rather than me shoot you, I hope a Mexican and, even better yet, I hope a n— shoots you in the head, dead.”

View the complete post here.