Was Trump's Administration Defined by Racism & Violence?
Trump Reportedly Committed a Violent Act at an Early Age & Appears to have Embraced Racism & Incited Violence Numerous Times Since ...
January 19, 2021 / US Politics / NYC Neighborhoods / News Analysis & Opinion / Gotham Buzz NYC.
Trump Condemns Violence - The Empty Words of a Spiteful Man?
A full week after there was a riot at the Capitol - that Donald Trump helped promote, spoke at along with his small coterie of family and friends, and then departed to watch on TV - he made the following statement, as he was being impeached for the second time by Congress.
“I unequivocally condemn the violence that we saw last week ... Mob violence goes against everything I believe in and everything our movement stands for. No true supporter of mine could ever endorse political violence.”
One thing we know for certain is that Donald Trump is one of the world's most prolific liars, and so it was that on January 13th, 2021 - just a week before his presidency was to end - he told one of his most unbelieveable lies - that he's against violence. The hollow ring in his words was heard round the world.
It's a well known adage that it's best to measure a man by his deeds - not his words. And with Donald Trump that advice is especially relevant. Donald Trump's life is a scatter book of a bit of violence he committed himself, but mostly which he appears to have incited others to do.
- CLICK here to read the rest of our report questioning whether or how the character of Donald Trump was shaped by racism and violence.
Was Trump's Administration Defined by Racism & Violence?
Trump Reportedly Committed a Violent Act at an Early Age & Appears to have Embraced Racism & Incited Violence Numerous Times Since ...
January 19, 2021 / US Politics / NYC Neighborhoods / News Analysis & Opinion / Gotham Buzz NYC. Continued.
Fred & Donald Trump's History Appears Racist
According to Trump's Art of the Deal, he punched out his second grade music teacher. I reckon that was an early sign of an unstable, disrespectful and / or violent personality. He also mentions in that book that he stole his younger brother's building blocks, which Trump credits as an early sign of his real estate development skills, but which I think was an early sign of his cheating of others, by bullying [note it was his younger brother].
Some of Trump's violent tendencies appear to be racially motivated. Donald's father, Fred Trump, was arrested at the age of 21 in Jamaica Queens in 1927 in connection with a KKK rally that erupted into a brawl with the police. While no account I saw definitively linked Trump as an active member of the KKK, none absolved him of participation either.
But if we fast forward to the 1960's and 1970's we find a 1973 lawsuit charging the Trumps with discriminating against Blacks and Puerto Ricans. In various reports it's alleged that when Blacks or Puerto Ricans came looking for an apartment, that they were to be told the rents were twice what they actually were and / or that there weren't any vacancies. In 1975 the lawsuit was settled with no admission of wrongdoing by the Trumps, but a third party was required to act as intermediary to vet prospective tenants going forward - not the Trumps. The non-admission of guilt was a way for the government to settle such suits, remedy the complaint, and move on.
Trump Racism & Violence - Starts with Dog Whistles - Coded Messaging to Racists Not Heard / Detected by Others
It appears the Donald has periodically used proxies or substitutes to express his racism. These are oftentimes referred to as dog whistles. Wikipedia defines a dog whistle as,
"... the use of coded or suggestive language in political messaging to garner support from a particular group without provoking opposition. The concept is named for ultrasonic dog whistles used in shepherding ..."
Trump appears to have been using dog whistles for decades, oftentimes in tandem with Australian born billionaire Rupert Murdoch's Fox News and NY Post. One of the first instances was in 1989 when Trump took out a full page ad in the four largest NYC newspapers urging the death penalty. The June 2019 Atlantic Monthly tells us,
" ... The so-called Central Park Five were a group of black and Latino teens who were accused--wrongly--of raping a white woman in Central Park on April 19, 1989. Donald Trump took out full-page ads in all four major New York newspapers to argue that perpetrators of crimes such as this one “should be forced to suffer” and “be executed.”
A little more than a decade later Trump championed the birther claims against then president Barack Obama. The June 2019 Atlantic Monthly story tells us that Trump attacked Obama at a February 2011 CPAC Conference saying,
"... Our current president came out of nowhere, came out of nowhere ... The people who went to school with him--they never saw him; they don’t know who he is...”
The Atlantic story tells us that,
“Birtherism” had been festering for several years before Trump embraced it--supplanting other proponents and becoming its most prominent advocate. In March, on The View [ABC], Trump called on Obama to show his birth certificate. In April, he said that he had dispatched a team of investigators to Hawaii to search for Obama’s birth records ...
"Anti-Muslim sentiment animated Trump’s birtherism campaign. He said of Obama on The Laura Ingraham Show [on Fox News] in March 2011: “He doesn’t have a birth certificate, or if he does, there’s something on that certificate that is very bad for him. Now, somebody told me--and I have no idea whether this is bad for him or not, but perhaps it would be--that where it says ‘religion,’ it might have ‘Muslim.’ ”
Trump Escalates Attacking Immigrants, Like InfoWars Conspiracy Theorist Alex Jones Escalated his Conspiracies from 911 to Sandy Hook to Pizzagate
As an entertainer, Donald Trump made a number of inappropriate comments that would be summarily dismissed. But as a candidate for president, and eventually as president, what Trump said was heard around the nation ... and around the world. Trump, like Alex Jones and others like them, seems to embolden the worst elements in our society and summon the worst elements of their human nature, by telling false or distorted narratives, to mobilize the mindless masses around phony patriotism or religious fanaticism to victimize a minority [minorities] and to threaten those who would stand up against him / them.
His campaign started on June 16, 2015 with the following phrase,
"... When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you ... They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people ..."
And then what began seemed to me to look like cause and effect. A January 9, 2021 report by Vox provided the following,
" ... August 19, 2015: Two Boston brothers invoked Trump when they were arrested for urinating on a homeless man and beating him with a metal pipe. While in custody, one of the brothers told the police, “Trump was right. All of these illegals need to be deported.” The 58-year-old Mexican American they assaulted was a permanent US resident..."
The Vox story provides many instances of what appears Trump's incitement of violence from 2015 to the Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021. There were two more instances in the Fall of 2015 where protesters at Trump rallies get roughed up. The examples included Trump screeching, “Get him the hell out of here! Get him out of here! Throw him out!” at Black Lives Matter activist Mercutio Southall Jr. at a November 21, 2015 rally in Birmingham, Alabama. And Trump was quoted as saying, “be a little more violent” as pro-immigration protesters were thrown out of a Miami, Florida rally on October 23rd.
The Racist & Violent Candidacy of Donald J. Trump 2016?
So skirmishes frequently accompanied Trump rallies. Peaceful protesters would bravely appear at Trump rallies to have their voices heard. And they would be roughed up as they were escorted out. In March 2016 this culminated in three protesters filing a lawsuit against Trump for inciting a riot following a March 1, 2016 rally in Louisville, Kentucky. According to Vox, in April 2017 a federal judge ruled that their claims were valid since there was sufficent evidence to prove that their injuries were the direct and proximate result of Trump's comments. In September of 2018 the suit was dismissed based on the First Amendment protection given to candidates. In December of 2016 Megyn Kelly a Fox News commentator that didn't cotton to Trump, said she was receiving death threats from Trump supporters, which she believed was incited by Trump social media facilitator, Dan Scavino.
The Racist & Violent Presidency of Donald J. Trump & Fox News
Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017 and within a week had signed an Executive Order banning travel into the U.S. by nationals of numerous Muslim nations.
This was just the beginning of what seemed to be four years of the Donald's efforts to divide the nation through racism and sexism during his presidency.
More coming over the next couple of weeks ...
