Tag: Trump white supremacy

The brand label that stokes Trump’s fury: ‘Racist, racist, racist.’

Washington Post logoPresident Trump considers himself a branding wizard, but he is vexed by a branding crisis of his own: how to shed the label of “racist.”

As the campaign takes shape about 15 months before voters render a verdict on his presidency, Trump’s Democratic challengers are marking him a racist, and a few have gone so far as to designate him a white supremacist.

Throughout his career as a real estate magnate, a celebrity provocateur and a politician, Trump has recoiled from being called the r-word, even though some of his actions and words have been plainly racist.

View the complete August 11 article by Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker on The Washington Post website here.

Exclusive: White House rebuffed attempts by DHS to make combating domestic terrorism a higher priority

WASHINGTON — White House officials rebuffed efforts by their colleagues at the Department of Homeland Security for more than a year to make combating domestic terror threats, such as those from white supremacists, a greater priority as specifically spelled out in the National Counterterrorism Strategy, current and former senior administration officials as well as other sources close to the Trump administration tell CNN.

“Homeland Security officials battled the White House for more than a year to get them to focus more on domestic terrorism,” one senior source close to the Trump administration tells CNN. “The White House wanted to focus only on the jihadist threat which, while serious, ignored the reality that racial supremacist violence was rising fast here at home. They had major ideological blinders on.”
The National Counterterrorism Strategy, issued last fall, states that “Radical Islamist terrorists remain the primary transnational terrorist threat to the United States and its vital national interests,” which few experts dispute. What seems glaring to these officials is the minimizing of the threat of domestic terrorism, which they say was on their radar as a growing problem.

View the complete August 7 article by Jake Tapper on the CNN website here.

Conservative writer George Will says Trump’s incitement of violence shows he’s weak and a ‘national embarrassment’

AlterNet logoIn a new column this week, conservative writer George Will said clearly what many of his ideological brethren have been unwilling to say.

“It is not implausible to believe that Trump’s years of sulfurous rhetoric — never mind his Monday-morning reading, seemingly for the first time, of words the teleprompter told him to recite — can provoke behaviors from susceptible individuals, such as the alleged El Paso shooter,” Will wrote. “If so, those who marked ballots for Trump — we have had quite enough exculpatory sociology about the material deprivations and status anxieties of the white working class — should have second or perhaps first thoughts. His Republican groupies, meanwhile, are complicit.”

Will, who left the GOP after Trump’s takeover of the party, connected the attack in El Paso directly to Trump’s own rhetoric. Specifically, he opened the piece by describing Trump’s May 8 rally in Florida when the president cheerfully took up the suggestion from a fan who said we should “shoot” immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

View the complete August 7 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

Trump says white supremacy and sinister ideologies ‘must be defeated.’ Will he lead the way?

Washington Post logoOn Monday, President Trump spoke. He decried the weekend slaughters in El Paso and Dayton that left 31 people dead and dozens more wounded. He warned against a culture of hate. He even spoke about the rising threat of white nationalism. His words were scripted for a president. But did he believe what he said?

With the nation in shock and so many Americans feeling a sense of despair and helplessness, the president’s language was prepared to fit the moment. He has been given appropriate words at other times in his presidency, which he has read from a teleprompter, often with only minimal emotion. It is what presidents are expected to do. What this president does before and after those moments is the real issue.

Absent from the president’s remarks Monday was any note of self-reflection. He did not acknowledge even in the slightest that presidential language and presidential leadership help to set a tone, for good or ill. In decrying white supremacy, he did not suggest that, in any way, he has given aid and comfort to those who preach hatred or even violence against immigrants or people of color.

View the complete August 5 article by Dan Balz on The Washington Post website here.

Obama calls on Americans to reject leaders who feed ‘climate of fear and hatred’

The Hill logoFormer President Obama on Monday called for action in response to back-to-back mass shootings over the weekend and urged Americans to “soundly reject” leaders who feed “a climate of fear and hatred.”

The former president issued a lengthy statement after more than 30 people were killed in mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. He did not name any specific leaders, but his comments amounted to an implicit rebuke of President Trump.

“We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred and normalizes racist sentiments; leaders who demonize those who don’t look like us, or suggest that other people, including immigrants, threaten our way of life, or refer to other people as sub-human, or imply that America belongs to just one certain type of people,” Obama said in the statement.

View the complete August 5 article by Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

‘Hamstrung’: Ex-FBI counterterrorism expert says bureau fears pursuing white nationalist extremists will be viewed as harassing Trump’s base

AlterNet logoThe ridiculous notion that Islamist extremists like al-Qaeda, ISIS (Islamic State, Iraq and Syria) and Boko Haram have the market cornered on terrorism and mass shootings was was revealed as a farce on Saturday, when a white nationalist in El Paso, Texas carried out a vicious attack that, as of Monday, had claimed 22 lives. This was only the latest in a series of white nationalist attacks, inspiring pleas for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to ramp up its investigations of white nationalist and white supremacist groups. But according to former FBI counterterrorism expert Dave Gomez, the FBI is worried about being seen as targeting President Donald Trump’s base.

Gomez told the Washington Post, “There’s some reluctance among agents to bring forth an investigation that targets what the president perceives as his base. It’s a no-win situation for the FBI agent or supervisor.”

The former FBI agent told the Post that although he believes FBI Director Christopher Wray “is an honorable man,” the FBI is in many ways “hamstrung in trying to investigate the white supremacist movement like the old FBI would.”

View the complete August 5 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Trump on El Paso shooting: We must condemn white supremacy

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Monday called on the nation to condemn white supremacy following last weekend’s back-to-back mass shootings and threw his support behind new measures focused on mental illness, rather than stricter gun laws.

“In one voice, our nation must condemn bigotry, hatred and white supremacy,” Trump said in a nationally televised address from the Diplomatic Room of the White House. “These sinister ideologies must be defeated.”

Trump was delivering his first in-depth remarks on the pair of shootings that left 30 dead and dozens more wounded in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio. He denounced the shootings as “barbaric slaughters” and condemned the El Paso shooter as “consumed with racist hate.”

View the complete August 5 article by Jordan Fabian and Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

Republican state lawmaker in Nebraska says his party is ‘enabling white supremacy’

Washington Post logoA Republican state lawmaker in Nebraska is calling out President Trump and his party for “enabling white supremacy” in the United States.

In a series of tweets written Sunday night in the wake of mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, that left 29 people dead, state Rep. John McCollister said it pained him to share that conclusion as a lifelong member of the Republican Party.

“I of course am not suggesting that all Republicans are white supremacists nor am I saying that the average Republican is even racist,” wrote McCollister, who represents an Omaha-area district. “What I am saying though is that the Republican Party is COMPLICIT to obvious racist and immoral activity inside our party.”

View the complete August 5 article by John Wagner on The Washington Post website here.

Why Trump’s stoking of white racial resentment is effective – but makes all working-class Americans worse off

Many white men say they feel threatened by the increasing presence and success of minorities in the workplace.

As social scientists, we wondered if there is any evidence to support this perceived economic threat, a perception that can provide fertile ground for current rounds of racist and xenophobic political messaging.

Our work at the Center for Employment Equity at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, involves using Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data to explore workplace discrimination and diversity in states and cities across the U.S. Our aim is to discover and promote more equitable workplaces.

View the complete July 29 article by Donald T. Tomaskovic-Devey, Professor of Sociology, Director, Center for Employment Equity, University of Massachusetts Amherst and Eric Hoyt, Research Director of the Center for Employment Equity, University of Massachusetts Amherst on the Conversation website here.