The KKK is using the Republican presidential frontrunner as an outreach tool, Rachel Pendergraft, the national membership coordinator for the Knights Party, told The Washington Post. Trump’s candidacy, which has been characterized by often divisive nativist rhetoric, has “electrified” some members, the newspaper reported Monday.
“They like the overall momentum of his rallies and his campaign,” Pendergraft said. “They like that he’s not willing to back down. He says what he believes and he stands on that.”
The KKK organizer said the group uses the headlines Trump makes to start conversations with separatists about issues that are important to the white supremacist movement. “One of the things that our organization really stresses with our membership is we want them to educate themselves on issues, but we also want them to be able to learn how to open up a conversation with other people,” Pendergraft said.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has defended his controversial comments proposing a ban on all Muslims from entering the US as there are places in London where police officers “are scared for their lives” because of radicalisation.
The billionaire tycoon has been criticised from both sides of the presidential election campaign as well 10 Downing Street for his comments calling for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the US, including tourists and US citizens returning to their own country, in the wake of the Paris terror attacks and San Bernardino shootings in California.
Trump repeated the comments at a rally in South Carolina to a rousing applause, adding: “We have no choice.” Despite being condemned by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, David Cameron and rival Republican candidates Jeb Bush and Ben Carson, the 69-year-old refused to back down from his proposal if he was elected president.
Speaking to MSNBC, Trump said that people attacking his comments were “afraid of the other side, not my side”. “Look at what happened in Paris and the horrible carnage,” he said. “If you look at Paris [it’s] no longer the same city it was They have sections in Paris which are radicalised where they police refuse to go there because they’re petrified. We have places in London and other places that are so radicalised the police are afraid for their own lives. We have to be very smart and very vigilant.”
This is, by far, one of the most bigoted statements Trump, or any other politician, has made in my lifetime. The lies used to push a nationalistic agenda places him in history among the likes of France’s National Front.
And about those no-go zones Fox News reported on:
Hell, even Fox News apologized for their lie about the no-go zones in Paris.
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump says he doesn’t care about critics of his new proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from coming into the country until the country’s representatives can “figure out what is going on.”
“I wrote something today that was very salient, very important,” the candidate said, adding that it was “probably not politically correct”. Then, as the crowd hung on his every word, he lowered his voice to an intimate whisper, leant into the microphone, and said: “But. I. Don’t. Care.”
“We are out of control,” he went on. “We have no idea who’s coming into this country. We have no idea if they love us or hate us. We have no idea if they want to bomb us.
“By the way, I have friends who are Muslims. They are great people. But they know we have a problem because something is going on, and we can’t put up with it, folks, we can’t put up with it.”
Reality
The “I’m not racist because I have black friends” fallacy is the fastest way to know someone is a racist. The same applies to claiming to not be homophobic because you have gay friends, and not surprisingly, the friend argument also applies to Trump’s claim.
On December 7th, 2015, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump released a statement calling for the ban on an entire religion from entering the United States of America.
Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on. According to Pew Research, among others, there is great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population. Most recently, a poll from the Center for Security Policy released data showing “25% of those polled agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad” and 51% of those polled, “agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah.” Shariah authorizes such atrocities as murder against non-believers who won’t convert, beheadings and more unthinkable acts that pose great harm to Americans, especially women.
Mr. Trump stated, “Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life. If I win the election for President, we are going to Make America Great Again.” – Donald J. Trump
Reality
This is, by far, one of the most bigoted statements Trump, or any other politician, has made in my lifetime. The lies used to push a nationalistic agenda places him in history among the likes of France’s National Front.
Does a President have this authority?
Trump has asserted that U.S. immigration law would grant him the authority to institute
the ban. Although he has not cited any particular provision, it appears he is invoking 8 US Code § 1182(f) the authority vested in the president to suspend entry of “any class of aliens.”
But Congress cannot grant, and a president cannot exercise, authority that would violate the Constitution. In light of the constitutional flaws in Trump’s proposed ban, § 1182(f ) either must be read narrowly not to authorize such unconstitutional conduct, or it should be struck down as unconstitutional insofar as it authorizes such a ban.
Is Trump’s proposal constitutional?
A ban on Muslim U.S. citizens from entering the United States would be a blatant violation of due process and equal protection under the Fifth Amendment and the basic principle that the government may not banish its citizens or deny them entry to the United States.
In addition, any religion-based bar on the readmission of lawful permanent residents — who have a lawful right to readmission (particularly after a brief trip abroad) unless and until the government can prove they should lose that right — should fail under the Due Process Clause.
What about Trump’s evidence he used for justification of a ban?
While the study Trump cited does exist, it’s not at all clear that it supports his argument that “there is great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population.” There are several important problems with the survey that call into question whether the results are representative of the entire U.S. Muslim population. It was an online, opt-in survey, which tend to produce less reliable samples because respondents choose to participate. In traditional polling methods, everyone in a population has a chance of being selected for the survey, meaning the results generally reflect the country’s demographics.
First off, people don’t speak “Mexican”, they speak Spanish.
Second, the purely racist trope “you’re in America speak English” has been so overplayed by Republicans. Forget the fact that the United States has no official language, there is no requirement outside of lawyers to speak English. The reason why it is racist is because it makes an assumption that one language and culture is superior to another.
Finally, most of you can’t speak English yourselves so how can you push it on someone else?
“Donald Trump was right,” the two men said, according to police, as they beat the man with a metal pipe and then urinated on him. “All these illegals need to be deported.”
When asked at a press conference earlier this week, Trump said that while he hadn’t heard about the Boston incident, it would “be a shame.” But he didn’t stop there, as he quickly went to applaud those who echo his views.
“I will say, the people that are following me are very passionate,” Trump said. “They love this country, they want this country to be great again.”
Trump later tweeted that the incident was “terrible” and in subsequent interviews claimed he “would never condone violence.”
Boston incident is terrible. We need energy and passion, but we must treat each other with respect. I would never condone violence.
While Trump has bashed the H-1B visa program in multiple debates and makes lowering the number of H-1B visas a top policy decision for his immigration reform.
Increase prevailing wage for H-1Bs. We graduate two times more Americans with STEM degrees each year than find STEM jobs, yet as much as two-thirds of entry-level hiring for IT jobs is accomplished through the H-1B program. More than half of H-1B visas are issued for the program’s lowest allowable wage level, and more than eighty percent for its bottom two. Raising the prevailing wage paid to H-1Bs will force companies to give these coveted entry-level jobs to the existing domestic pool of unemployed native and immigrant workers in the U.S., instead of flying in cheaper workers from overseas. This will improve the number of black, Hispanic and female workers in Silicon Valley who have been passed over in favor of the H-1B program. Mark Zuckerberg’s personal Senator, Marco Rubio, has a bill to triple H-1Bs that would decimate women and minorities.
Requirement to hire American workers first. Too many visas, like the H-1B, have no such requirement. In the year 2015, with 92 million Americans outside the workforce and incomes collapsing, we need companies to hire from the domestic pool of unemployed. Petitions for workers should be mailed to the unemployment office, not USCIS.
Ut-Oh!
Not only was Donald Trump extensively using the H-1B visa program for his own companies, he tried to import at least 1,100 foreign workers, and he has been accused of fraud and treating models at his model agency “like a slave.”
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.
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.
