Tag: racist quote

Trump Defends Criticism of Judge with Mexican Heritage

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There’s persistent … and then there’s Jake Tapper.

The CNN anchor posed the following question to Donald Trump on Friday:

Let me ask you about comments you made about the judge in the Trump University case. You said that you thought it was a conflict of interest that he was the judge because he is of Mexican heritage, even though he is from Indiana. Hillary Clinton said that that is a racist attack on a federal judge.

Trump deflected to talk about his border wall and Clinton’s emails, among other things. So Tapper tried to steer the conversation back to whether Trump’s complaint about U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel was racist. Trump deflected again. Tapper tried again. And again. In all, Tapper made an astounding 23 follow-up attempts.

Tapper’s relentlessness ultimately paid off. He finally got a straight answer out of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

TAPPER: If you are saying he cannot do his job because of his race, is that not the definition of racism?

 

TRUMP: No, I don’t think so at all.

Tapper refused to drop the subject until Trump offered a yes-or-no answer. It was clearly an exhausting effort. But it showed that even Donald J. Trump can be worn down by a journalist who never gives up.

(h/t Washington Post)

Reality

As House Speaker Paul Ryan explained, Donald Trump’s recent remarks saying a judge presiding over a lawsuit involving his business was biased solely because of his Mexican heritage is “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”

Trump: Mexican American Judge Has an ‘Absolute Conflict’

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Trump University logo

Was Donald Trump’s racist suggestion last week that Judge Gonzalo Curiel, an American of Mexican descent, could not fairly preside over a lawsuit about so-called Trump University simply an off-the-cuff remark? If so, Trump seems to have decided to go with it. The Wall Street Journal reports:

In an interview, Mr. Trump said U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel had “an absolute conflict” in presiding over the litigation given that he was “of Mexican heritage” and a member of a Latino lawyers’ association. Mr. Trump said the background of the judge, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants, was relevant because of his campaign stance against illegal immigration and his pledge to seal the southern U.S. border. “I’m building a wall. It’s an inherent conflict of interest,” Mr. Trump said.

Perhaps one reason Trump lashed out at Curiel once more was the release of documents from the case on Tuesday, which painted Trump University in an unflattering light.

(h/t The Atlantic)

Reality

Donald Trump’s claim that a person can not perform their job for the singular reason because their heritage is a textbook example of a racist quote.

The Republican candidate’s insistence that Gonzalo Curiel cannot preside impartially simply because of his ethnic heritage flies in the face of established precedent. Trump’s claim is irrelevant, as ethnicity plays no apparent role in the Trump University case. His argument also sits in uncomfortable contradiction to his prior claims that “the Latinos love me.”

Trump’s statement is troubling for a variety of reasons. Curiel was born in Indiana to parents who had immigrated from Mexico, and Trump has referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and criminals. But the case at hand involves an allegedly fraudulent series of real-estate seminars Trump set up—in other words, it has nothing to do with ethnicity whatsoever. He has discovered that by grossly insulting a group to which a judge (sort of) belongs, he can then argue that the judge is tainted. As Peter Beinart of The Atlantic, among other observers, has pointed out, Trump’s demand that an unblemished judge step down from the case amounts to an attack on the independence of the American judiciary.

(Editor’s Note: Today is a short day so the ‘reality’ section is from our cited source and not our own.)

Trump Attacks ‘Mexican’ Judge in Trump University Lawsuit

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Trump University logo

Over the course of 12 minutes, Donald Trump used a campaign rally in San Diego on Friday night to lace into the judge overseeing a lawsuit over Trump University, calling him a “hater” and speculating about his ethnicity.

“The trial is going to take place sometime in November. There should be no trial. This should have been dismissed on summary judgment easily,” Trump said. “Everybody says it, but I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He’s a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel.”

“I’ll be seeing you in November, either as president…” Trump said, trailing off. “I think Judge Curiel should be ashamed of himself. I think it’s a disgrace that he’s doing this.” Trump brought up Curiel’s ethnicity: “The judge, who happens to be, we believe, Mexican…I think the Mexicans are going to end up loving Donald Trump.”

Several lawsuits — two in federal court in San Diego and one in state court in New York — allege that Trump’s now-defunct real estate school, Trump University, made false claims about instructors’ experience. Trump has already acknowledged in a deposition that he did not hand-pick the teachers, as marketing materials claimed, though he insists the program was valuable.

“They actually did a very good job, but I’ve won most of the lawsuits,” he said during a GOP debate in February.

Since then, Trump has repeatedly attacked Curiel and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, claiming the former is “Spanish” and the latter is out to get him for electoral gain.

At Friday night’s rally, he got more specific, telling the crowd he believes Curiel — who was born in the United States — is Mexican.

“The judge, who happens to be, we believe, Mexican, which is great, I think that’s fine,” Trump said, according to the LA Times. “You know what? I think the Mexicans are going to end up loving Donald Trump when I give all these jobs, OK?”

(h/t Politico)

Reality

As we investigated before, Trump University was a massive scam.

Curiel, who was appointed to the U.S. District Court in November 2011 by President Barack Obama, previously served as a Superior Court judge in San Diego and, for 17 years prior to that, as a federal prosecutor. He was born in East Chicago in 1953 and earned his J.D. in 1979 from the Indiana University School of Law. From 1999-2002, Curiel headed the Narcotics Enforcement Division for the Southern District of California, where he prosecuted drug smugglers working across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Earlier this month, Curiel delayed the start of trial proceedings until November.

Media

Trump Once Proposed a Race-Based Season of “The Apprentice”

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The Celebrity Apprentice

Donald Trump once floated the idea of a race-based season of his hit reality television show “The Apprentice,” where teams would be divided based on the color of their skin.

Back in 2005, ahead of filming his fifth season as a host of the “The Apprentice,” Trump said he was considering “an idea that is fairly controversial — creating a team of successful African Americans versus a team of successful whites.”

Trump, currently the Republican party’s presumptive presidential nominee, made the comments on his now-defunct radio show. His proposal was reported by Entertainment Weekly in 2005 and resurfaced by a Buzzfeed News report.

Trump, who said he “wasn’t particularly happy” with the fourth season of “The Apprentice,” later added of the racialized premise: “Whether people like that idea or not, it is somewhat reflective of our very vicious world.”

Trump acknowledged at the time, however, that “not everybody thinks it’s a good idea.”

Trump’s idea came shortly after Omarosa Manigualt, an African American woman, became a popular contestant on the first season of “The Apprentice” in 2004. Manigault, now an avid Trump supporter, later appeared on subsequent iterations of the show, including “The Celebrity Apprentice.”

The idea — which he had also raised on Howard Stern’s show a couple months earlier, according to a 2005 Entertainment Weekly article — drew an avalanche of coverage, commentary, and question-mark headlines at the time.

“Will next Apprentice play race card?” asked UPI.

“Will The Apprentice become a battle of the races?” mused MSNBC.com.

“The Apprentice” never took up Trump’s proposal to cast the show by race.

(h/t CBS News, Buzzfeed)

Reality

Donald Trump has run a campaign based on racism and racist language.

Tara Dowdell, a black communications consultant who appeared on season 3 of The Apprentice had an excellent quote that sums up this entire story:

Best-case scenario, it was huge blind spot. Worst-case scenario, it showed [Trump’s] willingness to exploit race and be divisive — to do anything to promote himself. The presidency can’t be one crazy, ill-advised publicity stunt after another.

 

Trump Blames Immigrants for Rise in LA Crime

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Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump opened his California campaign in Costa Mesa, addressing thousands of supporters in a rambling speech that lasted more than an hour. Trump mostly stuck to this usual stump speech – attacking Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, and the media.

But in the latter part of his address, he made note of a sharp rise in local crime rates. We wanted to check out his claims.

Claim #1: Crime is up. 

“In Los Angeles, homicides are up 10.2 percent,” Trump said. “Rapes are up 8.6 percent. Aggravated assaults are up 26.5 percent,” he told the raucous crowd. “Your crime numbers, they’re going through the roof, and we can’t have it anymore.”

Trump’s statistics are correct. He was citing LAPD statistics. Crime rates did rise significantly last year in Los Angeles and other major cities. However, what he leaves out is that crime levels are far below historic rates.

Last year, the city recorded 280 homicides. That was 26 more than 2014. But in 1990, there were 1,100 murders in Los Angeles.

“When you look at the long-term trends in Los Angeles, the arrows are pointing in the wrong direction for any sort of crime increase,” said Franklin Zimring, director of the criminal justice research program at Boalt Hall’s Earl Warren Legal Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. “Homicides are not just lower, but vastly lower.”

Claim #2: Illegal immigration is to blame for the crime spike

Trump was on much less solid ground when he blamed the crime spike on illegal immigration from Mexico.

To underscore his point, he opened his speech by ceding his podium to Jamiel Shaw Sr., whose son was shot and killed in Los Angeles by an immigrant in 2008. He also invited to the stage other locals whose loved ones were killed by immigrants.

As he has his entire campaign, Trump vowed to crack down on what he describes as a flood of illegal immigrants.

“We are going to build the wall,” Trump added. “Mexico is going to pay for the wall.”

What Trump never mentions is that government statistics show a sharp drop in illegal immigration.

The United States Border Patrol reported 337,117 apprehensions nationwide last fiscal year, compared to 486,651 the year before, a 30 percent decline.  That’s also a nearly 80 percent decline since the peak of apprehensions in fiscal year 2000, when more than 1.6 million apprehensions were made.

A 2015 Pew Research Center study also found that between 2009 and 2014, more Mexican nationals left the U.S. than came. The study found that an estimated 1 million Mexican nationals (including their U.S.-born children) left the U.S. to return to Mexico, but less than 900,000 migrated to the U.S. in the same time period.

Zimring also points out that decades of academic research has shown new immigrants tend to be law abiding.

“First generation immigrations of all kinds have extremely low crime rates,” said Zimring.

(h/t NPR)

Trump Wants Harriet Tubman on $2 Bill

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Trump suggesting Tubman should be put on the $2 bill.

The Treasury Department’s decision to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with abolitionist Harriet Tubman was met with mixed results. Donald Trump has weighed in, saying the move was “pure political correctness.”

“Well, Andrew Jackson had a great history and I think it’s very rough when you take somebody off the bill. Andrew Jackson had a history of tremendous success for the country,” Trump said during a town hall on NBC’s “Today Show.”

While he called Tubman “fantastic,” he suggested she appear on a different bill.

“I would love to leave Andrew Jackson and see if we can maybe come up with another denomination. Maybe we do the $2 bill or we do another bill. I don’t like seeing it. Yes, I think it’s pure political correctness,” he said.

Trump joined with his former GOP presidential rival Ben Carson, who called for Tubman on the $2 bill. The neurosurgeon told Fox Business, “I love what she did, but we can find another way to honor her.”

The $2 bill currently features the image of Thomas Jefferson.

Andrew Jackson, the nation’s seventh president, was revered for being the first “common man” elected as president. But the darker side of his legacy includes slave-owning and expelling thousands of Native Americans from their homes, forcing them on the walk now referred to as “The Trail of Tears.”

And while Jackson owned slaves, Tubman’s life mission was to free them. An abolitionist and Union spy, Tubman was responsible for leading hundreds of slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad, an elaborate network of safe houses.

Tubman will become the first person of color and the first woman to grace a U.S. paper currency.

(h/t ABC News)

Reality

By taking a simple suggestion to avoid language or behavior that any particular group of people might feel is unkind or offensive and twist it to be a label for things that you don’t agree with, Donald Trump is simply evoking a tired old Republican trope known as “conservative correctness“.

Who is this offending? Andrew Jackson’s descendants? But with the statement that Tubman should appear on the $2 he is equally offending Thomas Jefferson’s descendants.

And finally, isn’t it interesting that conservatives would be “okay” with a black woman on a bill, as long as it is the most rare bill that the United States prints?

Media

Bill O’Reilly Makes Racist Comment and Trump Doesn’t React

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Fox News host Bill O’Reilly told Donald Trump on Monday that “many” African-Americans aren’t qualified for the jobs that Trump is campaigning to bring back to the US.

During an interview with the Republican presidential frontrunner, O’Reilly pressed Trump about how he would win over voting groups who strongly oppose his candidacy. The Fox host then zeroed in on African-Americans.

Trump said he would win them over because “they’re going to have the jobs.”

“I’m telling you, it’s an economic message,” Trump said.

O’Reilly questioned how Trump would actually accomplish that aim.

“Many of them are ill-educated and have tattoos on their foreheads, and I hate to be generalized about it, but it’s true,” O’Reilly said. “If you look at all the educational statistics, how are you going to get jobs for people who aren’t qualified for jobs?”

Trump stayed on message, insisting that African-Americans would benefit from manufacturing jobs returning to the country under a President Trump.

“We’re going to bring jobs back,” Trump responded. “We’re going to have Apple computers made in this country.”

O’Reilly pushed back.

“But you have to have skills to make Apple computers,” he said.

“We will get the skills and develop the skills,” Trump said.

O’Reilly continued to push his point that some African-Americans were unqualified for the jobs Trump wanted to bring back.

“It’s more challenging for a poor child in Harlem without parental guidance in a school that’s falling apart than it is for some white kid out in Garden City,” he said. “You say you can bring jobs back, but if the kid isn’t qualified to do the job and can’t do the work — I mean — you’ve got to get into the infrastructure of the African-American community.”

Trump replied: “Well it is true. It’s about education, but it’s also about spirit.”

(h/t Business Insider)

Reality

The problem here is not so much what Trump said but what he didn’t say. It should come to no surprise that Bill O’Reilly would use racist slurs and stereotypes to frame loaded questions. What is surprising is a candidate for the President of the United States of America not reacting at all or even distancing themselves from such statements.

As a leading politician there are better ways to handle racist questions.

Media

Trump Stereotype Jews At Republican Jewish Forum

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When Trump addressed the Republican Jewish Coalition, he tried to relate to the crowd by invoking the stereotype of Jews as talented and cunning business-people.

“I’m a negotiator, like you folks”

Trump said, before referencing his book “The Art of the Deal.”

“Is there anyone who doesn’t renegotiate deals in this room?” Trump said. “Perhaps more than any room I’ve spoken to.”

The presidential candidate then predicted he would not gain the support of Jews in his bid for the White House because he is independently wealthy.

“You’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money,” he said, adding that, “you want to control your own politician.”

Reality

Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told ABC News that such remarks “made a lot of people nervous, first because he made what many viewed as an anti-Semitic joke about how all the Jews were in business … [and] he didn’t seem to know the issues.”

Other Jewish-oriented news agencies were not happy about Trump’s remarks.

The online newspaper Times of Israel called it offensive stereotyping. “Trump on Thursday invoked a series of stereotypes about Jews that are often deemed offensive and even anti-Semitic.”

The Jewish news site Forward.com called his remarks “cringe-worthy.”

However the Anti-Defamation League at the time said: “We do not believe that it was Donald Trump’s intention to evoke anti-Semitic stereotypes.”

Trump later made more missteps with the Jewish community by calling his policy “America First” which has historical significance, and tweeted out images that came from neo-Nazi websites with anti-Semitic imagery.

Ironically, Trump has many close Jewish family members. His daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism in 2009 before marrying the real estate mogul Jared Kushner. Trump and Kushner raise their two children in an observant Jewish home.

Media

Links

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/john-kasich-donald-trump-jewish-coalition_us_56607915e4b08e945fee587c

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/back-donald-trumps-tumultuous-relationship-jewish-voters/story?id=37811413

 

Trump Tweets Wildly Racist and Inaccurate Stats

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Donald Trump, the leading candidate in the Republican presidential primary, tweeted a graphic with fake statistics about murders in the United States.

The statistics are also racist and wildly inaccurate.

https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/668520614697820160?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

The original tweet was removed so the pic no longer shows, but on the internet nothing is forgotten.

image

Reality

The graphic cited the Crime Statistics Bureau in San Francisco as its source — although that does not exist and the statistics are, quite simply, made up.

In reality, the FBI shows that 82 percent of white homicide victims were killed by other white people and 15 percent of white homicide victims were killed by black people, and 91 percent of black homicide victims were killed by other black people.

So where did the image and the bogus statistics come from?

Blogger Charles Johnson, of Little Green Footballs, was unable to determine its source through a Google Image search or tineye.com — but he was able to find the earliest tweet using the graphic.

pic.twitter.com/vGXcO5xCgk

— Non Dildo’d Goyim (@CheesedBrit) November 22, 2015

The account’s avatar is a modified swastika used as the symbol of the neo-Nazi German Faith Movement, and the account profile expresses admiration for Adolf Hitler: “A detester of any kind of sick perverted dildo waving marxism and liberalism,we Should have listened to the Austrian chap with the little moustache.”

The image was posted on the conservative Sexy Patriot account shortly before Trump shared it.

There’s no indication Trump was aware the graphic seems to have originated with a neo-Nazi, but a quick Google search should have revealed the statistics as inaccurate — and its racist suggestions are plainly obvious.

Links

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/11/22/3724965/donald-trump-tweets-fake-racist-and-wildly-inaccurate-murder-statistics/

Trump Interrupts Student Asking for His Nationality

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Trump versus Joseph Choe

Harvard economics major Joseph Choe addressed Donald Trump during a question and answer session, asking the candidate about statements he had made over the summer in which he asserted that South Korea takes advantage of the United States.

Before Choe, an Asian-American, could finish his question, Trump interrupted the man asking, “Are you from South Korea?”

“I’m not. I was born in Texas, raised in Colorado,” Choe responded.

The GOP presidential candidate shrugged as awkward laughter from the audience escalated into full-blown cheering for Choe.

“No matter where I’m from, I like to get my facts straight, and I wanted to tell you that that’s not true. South Korea paid $861 million,” Choe said before Trump cut him off again.

Reality

Trump’s question represents an all too common experience for Asian-Americans, who researchers say are stereotyped as the “perpetual foreigners.”

“[E]thnic minorities, especially Asian Americans and Latino/as, are often asked … questions like, ‘No, where are you really from?’ or ‘I meant, where are you originally from?’” a San Diego State University study explained. The implicit message, the study said, is that “they do not share the American identity or have in-group status.”

Or perhaps in this case, the right to question Donald Trump.

Just for the record, Trump is also wrong about South Korea not paying anything toward the costs of U.S. military support.

Media

 Links

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-south-korea_us_56201e57e4b08d94253e88a9
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