Thread: Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist

Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist

By Dana Milbank Opinion writer December 1 at 5:10 PM

Let’s not mince words: Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist.

Some will think this an outrageous label to apply to the frontrunner for a major party’s presidential nomination. Ordinarily, I would agree that name-calling is part of what’s wrong with our politics.

But there is a greater imperative not to be silent in the face of demagoguery. Trump in this campaign has gone after African Americans, immigrants, Latinos, Asians, women, Muslims and now the disabled. His pattern brings to mind the famous words of Martin Neimoller, the pastor and concentration camp survivor (“First they came for the socialists…”) that Ohio Gov. John Kasich adroitly used in a video last week attacking Trump’s hateful broadsides.

It might be possible to explain away any one of Trump’s outrages as a mistake or a misunderstanding. But at some point you’re not merely saying things that could be construed as bigoted: You are a bigot.

It has been more than a quarter century since Trump took out ads in New York newspapers calling for the death penalty for “criminals of every age” after five black and Latino teens were implicated in the Central Park jogger case. The young men, convicted and imprisoned, were later cleared by DNA evidence and the confession of a serial rapist – and Trump called their wrongful-conviction settlement a “disgrace.”

Since then, Trump led the “birther” movement challenging President Obama’s standing as a natural-born American; used various vulgar expressions to refer to women; spoke of Mexico sending rapists and other criminals across the border; called for rounding up and deporting 11 million illegal immigrants; had high-profile spats with prominent Latino journalists and news outlets; mocked Asian accents; let stand a charge made in his presence that Obama is a Muslim and that Muslims are a “problem” in America; embraced the notion of forcing Muslims to register in a database; falsely claimed thousands of Muslims celebrated the 9/11 attacks in New Jersey; tweeted bogus statistics asserting that most killings of whites are done by blacks; approved of the roughing up of a black demonstrator at one of his events; and publicly mocked the movements of New York Times (and former Washington Post) journalist Serge Kovaleski, who has a chronic condition limiting mobility.

He hasn’t gone after Jews recently, but his backers have, and Trump was uncharacteristically silent when prominent booster Ann Coulter, responding to Republican candidates’ support for Israel in a debate, tweeted: “How many f---ing Jews do these people think there are in the United States?”

Though all Trump supporters surely aren’t racists or bigots, even a cursory examination of social media reveals that many are. Those supporting Trump tend to be white, less-educated and middle-aged and older – those who are anxious and angry because they are losing ground as the American economy changes. An analysis of the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll by my colleague Scott Clement found that Trump, who has the support of 14 percent of registered voters overall, does particularly well among white men who aren’t college-educated (24 percent) and white, non-evangelical Protestants (27 percent), but gets only 3 percent of non-whites and 5 percent of those under 30 years old.

This doesn’t mean Republicans or conservatives generally are bigoted. I wouldn’t label any other candidate in the GOP field that way (though Carson’s remarks disqualifying Muslims from the presidency crossed the line) and Trump, though leading in the polls, lacks the support of most. Thirty-two percent of Republicans supported Trump in the latest Post poll, which means 86 percent of the overall American electorate hasn’t embraced him.

Trump’s rivals for the nomination are slowly and haltingly finding the courage to call the man what he is. Chris Christie on Monday criticized Trump’s treatment of Kovaleski. John Kasich, after last week’s Neimoller video, issued an ad Monday showing Trump’s mockery of Kovaleski’s disability and saying Trump isn’t “worthy” of the presidency.

Some Trump defenders claim the candidate isn’t racist but simply “careless and undisciplined,” as John Hinderaker of the conservative website PowerLine put it. When I called in last week to a radio show Hinderaker hosted, he defended the treatment of the black man at Trump’s rally (“he was obviously being disruptive and he was a big burly guy”), Trump’s tweet falsely blaming African Americans for most killings of white people (“he just fell for some bad data”) and Trump’s embrace of a Muslim database (“that was brought up by a reporter”).

I argued that the large number of instances over an extended period add up to a pattern of bigotry.

“We’d be at it a long time if we go back through history,” the host said.

Exactly. Shouldn’t Republicans take that time before they nominate a racist?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...9eb_story.html

Wow. Dana, you are such a fool.

Racism is not saying "maybe he should have been roughed up" for disrupting a political event. It's just wrong. That is not the proper response to a protester. That hadn't been Trump's response to protesters before, maybe he was getting tired of having his rallies that he pays for, that he spends his own money funding and arranging and flying there and spending his energy and time to make nice long speeches with the folks disrupted by protesters. Trump didn't rough up the protester. Trump didn't ask anyone to rough up the protester. Other people did that. All Trump did was ask security to "get him the hell out of here". Trump replied to a question posed by a reporter about the roughing up done by others. Why would a reporter ask such a question? Did the reporter think or believe the protester deserved it? Otherwise why would you ask such a questions to begin with? Sounds to me like Trump was responding to a racist question posed by a racist reporter. Don't misunderstand me, roughing up any protester is wrong, no matter how annoying or bothersome it may get, but it's not racist, it's annoyed. Trump didn't ask anyone to rough them up and Trump didn't rough them up. Other people did that.

The "birther movement" has nothing to do with racism. It's a legitimate inquiry to a question still not satisfactorily answered. Does it matter at this point? No, it doesn't. I'm a birther and I don't have a racist bone in my body. I was a birther on John McCain. I am a birther on Ted Cruz. Not because I'm racist which I'm not, but because there is a difference between a natural born citizen of the United States and a non-natural born citizen of the United States. A natural born citizen of the United States is someone born to two US citizen parents on US soil. It does not include children of foreign nationals. It does not include Americans born outside of the United States. And the reason we have that qualification in the US Constitution is loyalty without conflict from any source related to place of birth or the citizenship of your parents, whether one or both. If the mess our country is in today isn't reason enough for all Americans to get straight with this, then I don't know what will be.

As to the reporter, Serge, we'll never know what was on Donald Trump's mind when he gesticulated in a way that appeared he was making fun of Serge's disability. But whatever it was he was doing had nothing to do with bigotry. Trump was upset with the reporter who wrote the article he was using as some proof that he Trump was telling the truth about Muslims celebrating in New Jersey on 9/11. The proof that he was telling the truth is not only the article but the FBI investigations of the numerous complaints. The fact that the FBI found it "unimportant" which was the actual finding, not that it is untrue, just "unimportant", is irrelevant. The FBI was busy with itself, chasing dead terrorists and concocting a cover story for 9/11. The FBI is the one that dropped the ball on the terrorists to begin with, so why would a conclusion by the FBI that Muslims in New Jersey celebrating 9/11 is "unimportant" surprise anyone? It shouldn't surprise anyone. It also doesn't change the fact that a) Muslims were celebrating the fall of the WTC in New Jersey, and b) everyone who is saying they weren't are the ones lying. Serge has a disability, okay, lots of Americans have disabilities. It wasn't his disability that Trump was mocking, it was Serge's denial of his own article. The very fact that Trump handed it out to Serge in the same manner as he would hand it out to anyone trying to call him a liar is proof itself that Trump is not a bigot. Bigots treat people who are different, differently. Trump is relentless in his same treatment of everyone who tries to say he's a liar. Fiorina got it, Serge got it, Bush got it, Carson got it, and there will be many many more before this race is over.

So my advice to anyone, no matter what disabilities you may have, no matter what your appearance may be, no matter what religion you follow, no matter what political family you're from .... if you try to wrongfully attack Trump .... you'll get it. That's not Trump the bigot, that's Trump the purist. And if you ask me, we need some purity for our country. We need some truth, we need some honesty, we need some loyalty, we need some economy, we need some security and protection, and we need some fight .... which means we need us some Trump.

So Dana, you've proved to the world that read your article, that you don't know the definitions of bigotry and racism, and neither does the newspaper you work for, or they wouldn't have published this rubbish to begin with.

What a shame that is too, because the Washington Post in years gone by, used to be one of the most reliable sources of political news. Now it's just a rag tag vent for disgruntled losers.

Stay True! Stay Trump!

DANA
be for you write any thing about trump go & read what usaf general Chuck yeager & herman Cain said about trump * many other say about trump he is what we all want for the wh
what judy said is 100% right all of the new just go & listen also listen to what Savage station has to say about trump he has the back bone we all want
Good luck trump

Dana Milbank is Skull and Bones.

Dana Timothy Milbank (born April 27, 196 is a columnist for The Washington Post.
Personal life

Milbank was born to a Jewish family,^[1] the son of Ann C. and Mark A. Milbank.^[2] He is a graduate of Yale University, where he was a member of Trumbull College, the Progressive Party of the Yale Political Union and the secret society Skull and Bones.^[3][4] He is a graduate of Sanford H. Calhoun High School in Merrick, New York. In 1993, Milbank married Dona Lynn DePasquale in an interfaith Jewish and Roman Catholic ceremony.<sup>[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Milbank</sup>