Now Trump discovers there’s hate in America. Photo: Gage Skidmore-Flickr
The hate-and-fear-mongerer-in-Chief is suddenly “outraged” by the bigotry and violence he helped to foment.
In the aftermath of the terrorist acts by White Nationalists –under whose umbrella are the Neo Nazis, KKK and White Supremacist– Mr. Trump, reading an initial statement carefully crafted by his white nationalist advisors in residence at the White House condemned “hatred and bigotry on all sides,” and lest anyone miss the point he emphasized “all sides” twice.
This reaction was too much even for his spineless apologists in the Republican Party who hitherto have gone along with his outrageous racist and xenophobic remarks such as Mexican “rapists and murderers,” ban on Syrian refugees and the Muslim ban. They said nothing when he told his extremist white supporters who were threatening a Black Lives Matter activist, at his rally “He should have been roughed up” or comments like “in the old days he would have been carried out on a stretcher.”
Years of racist “birther” campaign against Barack Obama, questioning his American citizenship, not only went unchallenged by the GOP but they were rushing in a stampede to curry favor with him after he was “selected” to the presidency by the Electoral College.
Trump brought the white extremist flame thrower Steve Bannon with him as his senior advisor. He even had him sit in the national Security Council for a while; again the GOP which controls both houses of Congress went along.
You can’t blame Donald Trump for the sad state of affairs we are in. If anything he has always been transparent and consistent about this. He has never made a secret of his bigotry and xenophobia; be it against Blacks and Hispanics or Muslims and the “horde” of Brown people that may cross our borders. Addressing the Police in Long Island on the recent uptick in criminal activities of the M13 Gang he told them not to be nice, to “rough” them up. This is the country’s president.
The silence of the GOP leaders to this kind of incitement from a president was again deafening. To their credit law enforcement officials throughout the nation urged officers to respect the law and not abuse suspects.
After the Charlottesville terror attack, Trump waited two days to come out today to condemn the violence and killing by the extremist white nationalists. He read the same statement from two days ago this time leaving out only “on all sides.” He was forced to call out the White Supremacists, KKK and Neo Nazis after the clamor from both parties for him to come out clean on this. He has yet to call it an act of domestic terrorism. The KKK’s David Duke warned Trump and reminded him that they put him in the White House.
Today’s Trump statement is out of character for this self-absorbed racist. Could we be so naïve as to think he may have an epiphany? If so, next step for him is to sterilize the White House by getting rid of the White supremacist stench. He must dismiss his self-described White nationalist advisors; or is it the case of the old proverb a “fish stinks from the head down.”
Congress has a historic opportunity to act if the Republic is to remain a functioning democracy.
Columnist Mohammed Nurhussein is a retired medical doctor.
