Speaking with to Robert Costa of the Washington Post, Donald Trump defends his racist statements made during his candidacy announcement saying it was “okay” for him to have described undocumented immigrants as “rapists.” When asked about the using a word like rapists to describe a population, Trump responded:
It is a very rough word. It’s okay to use.
Also, lots of cursing:
“Look at that guy, look at what he did, killing that beautiful girl. [Expletive] animal.”
Who the [expletive] are you?
If I didn’t make a fortune, who the [expletive] is going to buy “The Art of the Deal”?
Their lives are [expletive] over.
What the [expletive] else do you have? Are you finished yet?
Donald Trump claims that he rallies a new “Silent Majority”. For those not familiar with politics, the Southern Strategy focus on motivating the “Silent Majority” which is a racist code word for “white people.”
“It comes deeply from Richard Nixon’s basic political orientation,” said Rick Perlstein, a historian who has written multiple books on conservatism and the Nixon era, including Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America and The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan.
The language of the silent majority, was a distillation of Nixon’s political philosophy, “the idea that there are two kinds of Americans — the ordinary middle-class folks with the white picket fence who play by the rules and pay their taxes and don’t protest and the other are the people who basically come from the left.”
And over time, the term silent majority was used to exclude more than just anti-war protesters. The “noisy minority,” as Perlstein called it, was fairly large. “It was black civil rights militants,” he said. “It was feminists who were supposedly burning their bras. It was students who were smoking drugs. It was rock ‘n’ roll bands. It was everything that threatened that kind of 1950s Leave It to Beaver vision of what America was like before everything literally and figuratively went to pot.”
After Donald Trump spoke in Vegas today, a man who said he’s from Mexico confronted him during his Q&A and said he’s “incredibly insulted” by what Trump has been saying about illegal immigrants and Mexico.
He told Trump he’s being unfair to paint all illegal immigrants with a broad brush, but Trump piped up, “Did the government of Mexico ask you to come up and say this?”
The man dismissed Trump’s comment and asked him if he would build walls around every U.S. state to keep out all the rapists and criminals who are already in the United States and cross state lines.
Trump continued to stand by everything he’s said thus far on the matter, and right before they moved on, the man shouted, “Did you read the Statue of Liberty?”
Reality
It was completely unfair of Trump to dismiss this voter’s concerns and turn around and ask if the Mexican government sent him. There’s a word for this that escapes me at the moment, but it isn’t a good word.
The man who declared some Mexican immigrants to be criminals and “rapists” three weeks ago has a message for those in the Latino community offended by his remarks: “There’s nothing to apologize for.”
I’ll win the Latino vote because I’ll create jobs, I’ll create jobs and the Latinos will have jobs they didn’t have. I’ll do better on that vote than anybody. I will win that vote.
Trump both defended his relationship with the Latino community, “They love me!” he said, and doubled down on his remarks that Mexico is harming the U.S. at the border.
Don’t try and convince me that there’s no crime, that it’s wonderful. Mexico doesn’t want these people they’re forcing them into our country and we’re taking them and putting them in our jails and our hospitals and it’s a disgrace.
Reality
Saying Latinos will have jobs they haven’t had before is easily one of the most racist statements Trump has made, and he’s made a lot. Here Donald Trump is implying that Latinos can only be regulated to certain jobs and now under Trump he’ll have new jobs, just for Latinos.
Donal Trump tweeted that Jeb Bush likes “Mexican illegals because of his wife.” The tweet has since been deleted.
Thankfully things are never deleted on the internet.
The tweet stayed up for 24 hours before Trump deleted it.
Later at the Republican CNN debate on 9/16/2015, Trump was asked to apologize for the comment, to which he responded:
“No. I said nothing wrong.”
Reality
There is a reason why Trump tried to delete this tweet, it’s racist and intolerant as hell.
During his campaign speech, Donald Trump characterized Mexican immigrants as potential criminals and rapists, which we explained how and why this is racist. So he is starting from a basis of racism for his premise.
“We are disappointed and distressed by recent remarks about immigrants from Mexico. We do not believe the disparaging characterizations portray an accurate picture of the many Mexicans, Mexican Americans and Latinos who have made so many valuable contributions to the success of our nation,” Macy’s statement reads.
“In light of statements made by Donald Trump, which are inconsistent with Macy’s values, we have decided to discontinue our business relationship with Mr. Trump and will phase-out the Trump menswear collection, which has been sold at Macy’s since 2004.”
The GOP presidential hopeful fired back and insisted he’s the one terminating Macy’s.
He even ripped his own products because many are made in China.
“I have decided to terminate my relationship with Macy’s because of the pressure being put on them by outside sources. While selling Trump ties and shirts at Macy’s is a small business in terms of dollar volume, my principles are far more important and therefore much more valuable,” Trump said in a statement released by his campaign.
“I have never been happy about the fact that the ties and shirts are made in China, and should I start a new product line somewhere in the future, I would insist that they are made in America.”
The Donald admitted that using Chinese manufacturers was a good financial move that Americans could match.
Reality
Some people may argue about “political correctness run amok” but Donald Trump’s comments were clearly racist. Companies do business with more than just white people.
Not content with insulting a female reporter’s intelligence and professionalism, Donald Trump apparently mocked a conservative critic for being paralyzed. Trump in an interview with NBC News was asked about columnist Charles Krauthammer, who is paralyzed from the waist down and has called Trump a “rodeo clown.” In response to criticism from Krauthammer and National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg, Trump said the following: “I went out, I made a fortune, a big fortune, a tremendous fortune… bigger than people even understand,” he said before discussing his plan to release financial statements. “Then I get called by a guy that can’t buy a pair of pants, I get called names?”
Donald J. Trump descended “Stair Force One” to announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination for the President of the United States of America and his first overtly racist comment by implying that the country of Mexico is intentionally sending immigrants who are criminals and rapists.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. 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.”
Reality
Donald Trump described people from Mexico as having “lots of problems”, drug users, rapists, and criminals. By painting a large swath of people with a single brush as “dangerous” he is using baseless stereotyping in an attempt to prove that Hispanics are different in their social behavior.
You might try to make the case that immigrants are still committing crimes, even if they are at a lower rate of natural-born citizens, however that does not explain away the fact that Trump is singling out an individual ethnic group as the cause of the problems in America. That is why is statement is racist.
Immigrants generally have a stronger incentive than native-born Americans to stay out of legal trouble — especially undocumented immigrants, who risk deportation. And those who legally are in the United States (or are pursuing legal status) are required to pass a criminal background check.
“Immigrants in general — unauthorized immigrants in particular — are a self-selected group who generally come to the U.S. to work. And once they’re here, most of them want to keep their nose down and do their business, and they’re sensitive to the fact that they’re vulnerable,” said Marc Rosenblum, deputy director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank.
And the data backs up this theory.
Crime Rates
FALSE – According to the Congressional Research Service, incarcerated non-citizens represented 7.2% of the total incarcerated population of 2.4 million, a proportion similar to the noncitizen proportion of the foreign-born population. If illegal immigrants were bringing high crime then their should be a larger number of incarcerated illegal immigrants compared to the national population.
Mexicans Are Rapists
FALSE – Of all of the convictions of illegal immigrants in 2013 (the majority of whom were from Mexico) only 1.6% was sex offenses. Immigration offenses account for the largest portion of federal convictions of immigrants, followed by drugs, then traffic violations.
Crime Category
2013
Immigration
31.3%
Dangerous Drugs
15.4%
Traffic Violations
15.0%
Assault
10.2%
Burglary
2.8%
Weapon Offenses
2.7%
Larceny
2.7%
Fraud
2.6%
Sexual Assault
1.6%
Forgery
1.5%
Other
14.2%
Compare the 1.6% number to the national average of 12.2% of convicted prisoners who committed sexual offenses. So an illegal immigrant is 7.5x less likely to commit a sexual offense.
During his campaign announcement, Trump declared that the five Guantanamo Bay prisoners exchanged with the Taliban for Army Pvt. Bowe Bergdahl “are now back on the battlefield trying to kill us.”
“We get Bergdahl. We get a traitor. We get a no-good traitor, and they get the five people that they wanted for years, and those people are now back on the battlefield trying to kill us. That’s the negotiator we have,” Trump remarked.
Reality
In fact, U.S. officials had announced two weeks prior that Qatar, the country to which the Taliban leaders were sent, had agreed to maintain a year-long travel ban while officials in both countries continued to negotiate the details.
As far as the traitor remark, Bergdahl’s attorney warned Trump in August to cease spreading his “outrageous comments.” Bergdahl is accused of desertion, not of being a “traitor.”
Donald Trump retweeted the following tweet to all of his supporters, before deleting it shortly afterwords.
Donald Trump Tweeting Hillary Joke
Reality
As funny as this may be, locker room humor is not befitting of a candidate for the Republican nomination for the President of the United States of America.
