Tag: racist quote

White House Adviser Says People Should Stop Criticizing White Supremacists So Much

No one is quite sure what Sebastian Gorka, officially a deputy assistant to President Trump, actually does at the White House. This hasn’t stopped him, however, from being a near constant presence in the media.

Wednesday, Gorka appeared on Breitbart News Daily, the radio show of his former employer. Gorka responded to criticism stemming from a previous media appearance on MSNBC where he said “[t]here’s no such thing as a lone wolf” attack. The concept, according to Gorka, was “invented by the last administration to make Americans stupid.”

The idea of a “lone wolf attack,” Gorka says, is a ruse to point blame away from al Qaeda and ISIS when “[t]here has never been a serious attack or a serious plot that was unconnected from ISIS or al Qaeda.” Critics were quick to point to the example of Timothy McVeigh, who was not connected to ISIS or al Qaeda and killed 168 people when he bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

On Wednesday, Gorka lashed out at “at [New York Times reporter] Maggie Haberman and her acolytes in the fake news media, who immediately have a conniption fit” and brought up McVeigh. He added that “white men” and “white supremacists” are not “the problem.”

It’s this constant, “Oh, it’s the white man. It’s the white supremacists. That’s the problem.” No, it isn’t, Maggie Haberman. Go to Sinjar. Go to the Middle East, and tell me what the real problem is today. Go to Manchester.

Gorka noted that the Oklahoma City bombing was 22 years ago, which is true. But since 9/11, right-wing extremists — almost always white men and frequently white supremacists — have been far more deadly domestically than Muslim extremists. A study found that in the first 13.5 years after 9/11, Muslim extremists were responsible for 50 deaths in the United States. Meanwhile, “right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, causing a total of 254 fatalities.”

You can listen to the entire interview below. The specific discussion of white supremacists starts at 8:39:

[ThinkProgress]

Donald Trump Goes All In On Slashing Legal Immigration

President Donald Trump threw himself behind a bill on Wednesday that would make it dramatically more difficult for people to come to the U.S. legally, in spite of his past claims that he did not want to cut the number of people allowed into the country.

Trump held an event at the White House with Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) to boost the latest iteration of their bill to slash the ways foreign nationals can move to the United States.

The bill from Cotton and Perdue, known as the RAISE Act, would end the practice of prioritizing green cards for adult children and extended family of people already in the U.S., discontinue an immigration lottery program and limit the number of refugees to be accepted into the U.S. to only 50,000.

The president said the bill would be “the most significant reform to our immigration system in half a century” and would “reduce poverty, increase wages and save taxpayers billions and billions of dollars.”

He also claimed the current green card system provides a “fast-track to citizenship” ― although in truth, having a green card is the standard path to citizenship.

The bill would favor applicants “who can speak English, financially support themselves and their families, and demonstrate skills that will contribute to our economy,” Trump said.

The president said the legislation would require immigrants to be more self-sufficient and prevent them from collecting safety net benefits. “They’re not gonna come in and just immediately collect welfare,” he said.

Current law already bars anyone who might become a “public charge” from receiving a green card, and prevents lawful permanent residents from receiving most safety net benefits for five years. But immigration hawks have long complained of loopholes in those restrictions. For instance, food stamps and Medicaid ― two of the country’s biggest safety net programs ― are exempt from the public charge criteria.

The idea, according to the president and senators, is to move toward a “merit-based” immigration plan, along the lines of the systems in Canada and Australia. But this legislation wouldn’t simply change the makeup of who can come into the country ― it would dramatically reduce the number of immigrants admitted overall, the bill’s proponents say.

“This legislation will not only restore our competitive edge in the 21st century, but it will restore the sacred bonds of trust between America and its citizens,” Trump said. “This legislation demonstrates our compassion for struggling American families who deserve an immigration system that puts their needs first and that puts America first.”

Most economists say that immigration is actually beneficial to the economy and that curtailing legal immigration would slow growth. And Canada and Australia both admit legal immigrants at a far higher rate relative to their total populations than the U.S. does, including on the basis of family ties.

Trump also claimed that the current immigration “has not been fair to our people,” including immigrants and minority workers whose jobs, he said, are taken by “brand new arrivals.”

In fact, the bill could disproportionately affect nonwhite Americans, who are more likely to be recent immigrants and still have relatives living abroad, by making the already difficult process of bringing their families to the U.S. next to impossible.

Cotton previously said the bill would help prevent people from immigrating to the U.S. and then bringing over their “village” or “tribe.”

Trump told The Economist in May that he was not looking to reduce the number of legal immigrants. “We want people coming in legally,” he said at the time.

Immigration reform groups and even one Republican senator immediately panned the bill. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who pushed for a broad immigration reform bill in 2013, said in a statement that he supports merit-based immigration but believes cutting legal immigration would hurt the economy.

“I fear this proposal will not only hurt our agriculture, tourism and service economy in South Carolina, it incentivizes more illegal immigration as positions go unfilled,” he said. “After dealing with this issue for more than a decade, I know that when you restrict legal labor to employers it incentivizes cheating.”

[Huffington Post]

Trump: Many Immigrants are ‘Animals’ Who ‘Slice and Dice Young, Beautiful Girls’

Donald Trump marked Tuesday with another campaign-style rally in Ohio, using his platform to grab praise from his supporters and return to the glory of his campaign. There were plenty of pro-Trump folks in attendance, with some anti-Trump protestors tossed into the mix, giving the entire event a nostalgic 2016 feel that’s bolstered by Trump once again taking aim at illegal immigrants.

Trump hasn’t resorted to this type of language in a while, but Tuesday night’s rally touted ICE raids that were “doing it rough” and not “in a politically correct fashion,” while referring to those being deported as violent gang members and “animals.” While data has shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes according to The New York Times and ICE Raids aren’t always targeting the worst of the worst, Trump’s comments would have you believe that they’re going block by block as they “liberate” cities from violent foreigners:

One by one, we are finding the illegal gang members, drug dealers, thieves, robbers, criminals, and killers. And we are sending them the hell back home where they came from. [applause]

And once they are gone, we will never let them back in, believe me. [applause]

The predators and criminal aliens who poison our communities with drugs and prey on innocent young people — these beautiful, beautiful, innocent young people — will find no safe haven anywhere in our country. [applause]

And you’ve seen the stories about some of these animals. They don’t want to use guns, because it’s too fast and it’s not painful enough. So they’ll take a young, beautiful girl, 16, 15, and others, and they slice them and dice them with a knife, because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die. And these are the animals that we’ve been protecting for so long. Well, they’re not being protected any longer, folks.

There’s nobody to question this comments at the rally, sites like Shareblue point out that Trump’s rant was less about actually dealing with violent criminals and more about “building up the anger and suspicion” with his supporters. He’s campaigning six months into his presidency and shows no signs of stopping. He’s even gone back to saying he’s more presidential than any president before — setting aside an exception for Lincoln.

Being presidential clearly includes telling a crowd of Boy Scouts about your friend’s sex yacht. This is Trump’s America now.

[Uproxx]

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiuiPDqvkh8

Betsy DeVos Would Not Agree to Bar Discrimination by Private Schools That Get Federal Money

President Trump’s budget proposal includes deep cuts to education but funds a new push for school choice.

When pressed by representatives at a House appropriations subcommittee hearing on the budget, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos declined to say if, when or how the federal government would step in to make sure that private schools receiving public dollars would not discriminate against students.

She repeatedly said that decisions would be left to school districts and parents.

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) stressed that Milwaukee’s school voucher program has resulted in years of failure. When he pressed DeVos on whether the federal government would hold recipients of public money accountable, DeVos punted.

“Wisconsin and all of the states in the country are putting their ESSA plans together,” said DeVos, referring to the Every Student Succeeds Act, a school accountability law. “They are going to decide what kind of flexibility … they’re allowed.”

“Will you have accountability standards?” Pocan asked.

“There are accountability standards,” DeVos said. “That is part of the ESSA legislation.”

That’s not true. ESSA’s regulations state that the law’s accountability rules do not apply to private schools.

Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) asked DeVos about a Christian school in Indiana that gets state dollars through a voucher program but explicitly states that gay students may be denied admission.  “If Indiana applies for funding, will you stand up and say that this school is open to all students?” Clark asked.

DeVos said states make the rules.

“That’s a no,” Clark said. Then she asked what if a school doesn’t accept black students.

“Our [civil rights] and Title IX protections are broadly protective, but when our parents make choices,” DeVos started.

“This isn’t about parents making choices,” Clark interrupted. “This is about the use of federal dollars.”

After a few more rounds like this, DeVos said that her “bottom line” is that “we believe that parents are best equipped to make decisions for their schooling.”

Clark said she was shocked by this response.

DeVos’ staff later came to her defense, saying that the line of questioning in the hearing concerned a “theoretical voucher program” and indicated a “misunderstanding” about the federal government’s role in education.

“When States design programs, and when schools implement them, it is incumbent on them to adhere to Federal law,” DeVos’ press secretary Liz Hill said in an email. “The Department of Education can and will intervene when Federal law is broken.”

[Los Angeles Times]

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Jeff Sessions Was Prepared to Call Illegal Immigrants ‘Filth’

During a speech at the U.S.-Mexico border on Tuesday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions reiterated his and President Donald Trump’s commitment to cracking down on undocumented immigrants. But one thing was missing from his speech as it was delivered: a phrase referring to criminals who cross the border as “filth,” which appeared in his prepared remarks.

In the text that was published on the Department of Justice website, Sessions told a grim tale of immigrant hordes crossing the border and wreaking havoc on U.S. citizens — a myth that has been debunked time and time again.

“We mean criminal organizations that turn cities and suburbs into warzones, that rape and kill innocent citizens and who profit by smuggling poison and other human beings across our borders,” the speech says. “Depravity and violence are their calling cards, including brutal machete attacks and beheadings. It is here, on this sliver of land, where we first take our stand against this filth.”

But according to Catherine Thompson of Talking Points Memo, Sessions dropped “against this filth” while delivering the speech to border agents in Nogales, Arizona.

In the past, Sessions, like Trump, has enthusiastically expressed discontentwith immigrants and vowed to deport thousands of undocumented immigrants who he’s repeatedly painted as hostile and violent.

As an Alabama Senator, Sessions opposed immigration reform by arguing that immigration “takes jobs from Americans and can, in fact, create cultural problems.” He was one of the most vocal Trump supporters during the 2016 presidential campaign, and supported him after he described Mexicans as bad hombres, rapists, and criminals. And during his first speech as the U.S. Attorney General in February, Sessions said, “We need to end this lawlessness that threatens Americans’ safety and pulls down wages of ordinary Americans.”

Based on the glaring omission on Tuesday, it appears as though Sessions thought the term “filth” would’ve been a step too far.

(h/t ThinkProgress)

Trump Asked a Black Reporter If the Congressional Black Caucus Are “Friends of Yours”

President Trump’s press conference Thursday had many unbelievable moments. But one of the most shocking was an exchange in which Trump asked a black reporter to set up a meeting for him with the Congressional Black Caucus, and asked if the caucus members were “friends” of hers.

April Ryan, the White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks in Baltimore, asked Trump whether he would include the Congressional Black Caucus in conversations about his “urban agenda” for the “inner city.”

But Ryan used the abbreviation “CBC” for the Congressional Black Caucus at first — and Trump didn’t appear to know what she was referring to.

“Am I going to include who?” he asked.

Ryan clarified: “Are you going to include the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus — ”

“Well, I would,” Trump interrupted. “I tell you what, do you want to set up the meeting? Do you want to set up the meeting?”

“No, no, no, I’m just a reporter,” Ryan said.

“Are they friends of yours?” Trump asked.

Ryan replied, before Trump cut her off again, “I know some of them, but I’m sure they’re watching right now — ”

“I would love to meet with the Black Caucus,” Trump said. “I think it’s great, the Congressional Black Caucus, I think it’s great.”

As it turns out, the CBC asked Trump for a meeting weeks ago and never heard back:

Trump seems to have assumed that just because Ryan was black and asked a question about the CBC, she would know the caucus members personally and be able to set up a meeting with them. Trump’s question also reveals a basic ignorance of how reporters do their job.

As my colleague Jenée Desmond-Harris has explained, Trump has a big problem with racially stereotyping black people. He seems almost incapable of mentioning black Americans without also mentioning the “inner city,” which he strictly describes as a blighted, crime-ridden hellscape. But that association is not only racist stereotyping — it also doesn’t reflect how black Americans really live.

(h/t Vox)

 

Trump Calls Black Supporter ‘Thug,’ Throws Him Out Of Rally

Donald Trump ejected a black man waving a note at him at a North Carolina rally, after accusing him of being a “thug” hired by Democrats to disrupt the event.

But C.J. Cary, the man who was thrown out, claims he is a Trump supporter and was merely trying to deliver a message to the candidate to mend ties with some key demographic groups the GOP presidential nominee has offended.

At the Wednesday campaign rally in the town of Kinston, Cary stood a few dozen feet from the stage trying to get Trump’s attention by waving a note and yelling “Donald,” the Raleigh News & Observer reported.

Trump assumed Cary was a disruptive protester.

“Were you paid $1,500 to be a thug?” Trump asked Cary, according to the Observer. The real estate mogul then asked security to remove him.

Waving a note at a rally is certainly an unusual way to get a presidential candidate’s attention. The News & Observer’s Bryan Anderson, who was at the rally on Wednesday and reported on Friday that Cary is a Trump supporter, told The Huffington Post he initially thought the man was a protester as well.

In a tweet from the rally, Anderson simply referred to him as a “protester.”

Shortly after the rally, however, Cary contacted Anderson to tell him his story.

Cary, an ex-Marine and resident of Nash County, not far from where Kinston is located, told the reporter that he plans to vote for Trump. He merely wanted to offer his advice that the candidate should treat certain groups of Americans with more respect. He singled out African-Americans, women, college students and people with disabilities as constituencies that deserved better treatment from the GOP nominee.

“He entirely mistook that and thought that I was a protester,” Cary said.

Trump accused Clinton of paying Democratic activists to disrupt his rallies in the third and final presidential debate on Oct. 19.

In August, Trump’s security ejected Jake Anantha, a young Indian-American supporter from a Charlotte, North Carolina, rally after assuming the local college student was there to disrupt the event. Anantha subsequently said he would no longer be voting for Trump.

During the Republican primary, when protests at Trump rallies were more common, Trump drew criticism for encouraging his supporters to hurt protesters ― something they proved all too happy to oblige. The demonstrators on the receiving end of the worst violence appear to be disproportionately people of color.

There is something especially ironic, however, in Trump immediately dismissing as a “thug” a black supporter, who was specifically trying to get Trump to be more sensitive to African-Americans. “Thug” is a particularly racially fraught term that many observers, including Seattle Seahawks star Richard Sherman, argue has become a socially acceptable way to call black men the N-word.

Trump has historically low support among African-American voters, after months of inciting ― and benefitting from ― bigotry and racism.

Although Latino immigrants and Muslims have been the biggest targets of his campaign-trail invective, Trump has a long history of anti-black racism, from his public campaign to execute the Central Park 5 in 1989 to his leading role in the birther movement questioning President Barack Obama’s eligibility for the presidency. (The Central Park 5, young men of color accused of brutally raping a woman in Central Park, have since been exonerated by DNA evidence and received multi-million-dollar settlements from the city, but Trump continues to insist on their guilt.)

Even Trump’s attempts to show he is not racist have been racially insensitive. Trump routinely stereotypes African-Americans and Latinos as impoverished “inner-city” residents, a characterization members of those communities have complained is patronizing.

(h/t Huffington Post)

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EOzrPRNdB4

Trump Calls African-American Neighborhoods ‘Ghettos’ With ‘So Many Horrible Problems’

First they were “inner cities” – now they’re just “ghettos.”

Donald Trump once again appeared to equate an entire ethnicity with a socio-economic segment as he, during a campaign rally in Ohio on Thursday, pledged to “work with the African-American community” to solve the problem of the “ghettos.”

“And we’re going to work on our ghettos, are in so the, you take a look at what’s going on where you have pockets of, areas of land where you have the inner cities and you have so many things, so many problems,” Trump rambled to a mostly white audience in Toledo, appearing to catch himself using the politically tabooed word. “So many horrible, horrible problems. The violence. The death. The lack of education. No jobs.”

“Ghetto” is generally not used by public officials as it’s considered an outdated, insensitive word for struggling urban areas.

Trump has previously been rebuked for associating African-Americans – who comprise roughly 13% of the total population – with the words “inner cities.”

The Republican nominee has recently launched outreach efforts directed at black voters, but appears to have failed severely as polls have shown that less than 1% of African-American voters are going to punch in his name on the ballot.

At another point during the Toledo rally, Trump seemed to question the necessity for democracy.

“What a difference it is. I’m just thinking to myself right now – we should just cancel the election and just give it to Trump, right?” he said in front of the roughly 2,800 rally attendants, comparing his presidential bid with Hillary Clinton’s.

Trump, meanwhile, is doubling down on past remarks about the election being “rigged” – an insinuation that political experts claim could have very real and very violent consequences.

(h/t New York Daily News)

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CNN Go

Trump Claims Global Jewish Bankers are Conspiring Against Him

Trump delivered a vindictive and paranoid speech Thursday in West Palm Beach, Florida where he attacked his sexual assault accusers, his rival Hillary Clinton, and the media who he feels are all coordinating to smear his good name in this election, despite his own previous racist, sexist, and violent speech.

But lost in this speech was a line delivered by Trump that, unless you are member of the white supremacist alt-right movement or studied and are familiar with whackjob conspiracy theories, you wouldn’t have realized that he was also referencing a centuries old debunked conspiracy theory still widely used in anti-Semitic circles, that claims a vast global Jewish conspiracy for world domination.

Trump said:

It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities…
We’ve seen this firsthand in the WikiLeaks documents in which Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of US sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends, and her donors…
This is a struggle for the survival of our nation. Believe me. And this will be our last chance to save it on November 8. Remember that.
This election will determine whether we’re a free nation, or whether we have only an illusion democracy but in are in fact controlled by a small handful of special global interests rigging the system, and our system is rigged.

At this point you may snicker and scoff at the idea of a candidate for the President of the United States from a major political party was echoing anti-Semetic conspiracy theories,  but Trump’s statement was not lost on the Jewish press, the Anti-Defamation League, and his alt-right and other white supremacist supports who are all very keenly aware of his meaning.

This article will explain to you, in very clear language, the story behind Trump’s barely coded words that directly echo one of the most ancient of all anti-Semitic libels.

The Conspiracy Theories

Make no mistake, these are all unsubstantiated ideas and any person who makes any of these claims does so without any evidence and are rooted in a history of hate and ignorance. In this racist perspective, Jews are typically painted as controllers of capital and money, “clannish,” and as having an agenda beyond what is visible. These stereotypes constitute a large part of these conspiracy theories.

The first conspiracy we’ll review is the accusation that Jews have long been controlling the global financial system. This loony conspiracy theory goes back centuries, even before the founding of Christianity, and recently has been attached to the Rothschild family, who during the 1800’s amassed the largest private fortune in modern world history.

Usually, the main accusation made by theorists is that the Rothschilds are playing both sides of every conflict, ever. The Napoleonic Wars, the Franco-Prussian War, World War I, World War II, etc. Theorists claim that all sides of each war were merely puppets of the Rothschilds, who would make exorbitant amounts of cash from repeatedly prodding nations into a cycle of endless warfare. People actually still believe this today. Remember when former actor Mel Gibson once said during a 2006 DUI that “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world“? This is the same conspiracy theory he was referencing.

Jews have also long been accused of controlling the Hollywood and the media. For examples see any comedian in the past 100 years make fun of this.

Another place we see an example of this conspiracy theory is in English literature which depicts Jewish characters as “a monied, cruel, lecherous, avaricious outsider tolerated only because of his golden hoard.” Think Shylock in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” or the hooked-nose Judas in “The Passion of the Christ.”

Modern anti-Semitic conspiracy theories depicting an elaborate secret hierarchy of controlling Jewish influences, such as the idea that “the Jews” command the U.S. Federal Reserve System and in effect control the world’s money, largely take their cue from The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a 1903 tract purporting to be the manual of a Jewish secret society planning world domination. It is still widely circulated and occasionally cited as “evidence” by various clueless anti-Semites despite being exposed as a fraud as early as 1921.

The Conspiracy Pushers

Donald Trump has surrounded himself with people who are true believers in these archaic and long debunked views, and at times quoted them directly in speeches and interviews.

The most famous example would be nutcase right-wing conspiracy theory pusher Alex Jones, an ally of Trump who he once called “amazing” and someone who Trump regularly quotes, who runs the crackpot Infowars.com site and disputes the idea the The Protocols is a fraud while pushing a New World Order fiction that makes Glenn Beck appear comparatively sane.

According to Jones just about every current event can be tied into the New World Order’s nefarious schemes. In short, he’s making money off of really gullible people who will believe anything, no matter the complete lack of evidence.

Jones frequently invokes “globalists” as the villains behind the various conspiracy theories he discusses on his radio show and included in almost every article and documentary on his Infowars.com website has a reference to the Rothschild conspiracy theory, that there is secretive Jewish family controlling all word events for their personal monetary gain. Some examples of these articles include:

There is also the alt-right white supremacist site Breitbart.com, whose Editor in Chief Steve Bannon is currently working as the CEO of the Trump campaign. BuzzFeed reported that Trump’s speech was co-written by Stephen Bannon. Breitbart.com has long had an anti-Semetic history since Bannon took charge, writing articles like:

Reality

These racist sources that push crazy conspiracies are where Trump is getting his information from, he is personally intertwined with its players, he repeatedly quotes it, and it is wildly insane and completely soaked in racism.

You and I may have not picked up on this racist “dog whistle” at first, but now we know more about the story behind when Donald Trump makes a statement like, “Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of US sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers,” does his anti-Jewish message seem more clear?

Media

Remarks at 5:15 mark.

Trump’s Town Hall Question on Islamophobia Was Shockingly Islamophobic

During the much anticipated presidential debate Sunday evening, Republican nominee Donald Trump was finally asked by a Muslim American how he, as president, would respond to the rise of Islamophobia. It was a unique and powerful opportunity for the businessman to address the shockingly anti-Islam tenor of his campaign, which many hate-group experts say has precipitated an unprecedented spike in Islamophobic violence across the United States.

Instead, Trump responded with an answer that was not only blatantly Islamophobic, but also outright fallacious. In fact, his reply was so filled with anti-Islam sentiment that it’s worth breaking down into individual parts.

The exchange was initiated when Gorbah Hamed, an uncommitted Missouri voter and a Muslim American, asked how Trump would “help people like me deal with the consequences of being labeled as a threat to the country after the election is over.”

“Well, you’re right about Islamophobia—it’s a shame,” he began, seemingly unaware that his own candidacy is often specifically credited by hate-group experts as a driving force behind the recent uptick in anti-Islam sentiment. In fact, at least one such incident involved a report of a woman verbally and physically assaulting a Muslim woman in Washington, D.C. before justifying the attack by citing her support for Donald Trump.

But Trump wasn’t done.

“But…whether we like it or not there is a problem,” he continued. “We have to be sure that Muslims come in and report when they see something going on. When they see hatred going on, they have to report it.”

Trump has made this claim before. In the aftermath of the tragic Orlando massacre earlier this year, Trump said, “For some reason, the Muslim community does not report people like this.”

This accusation, both then and now, is patently false. Muslims in the Untied States do report when they see evidence of extremism, so much so that law enforcement often relies on them for tips. FBI director James Comey even said as much back in June while discussing the Orlando shootings.

[Muslim Americans] do not want people committing violence, either in their community or in the name of their faith, and so some of our most productive relationships are with people who see things and tell us things who happen to be Muslim,” he said. “It’s at the heart of the FBI’s effectiveness to have good relationships with these folks.”

Trump’s inaccurate assertion struck a chord with the Muslim American community, many of whom immediately took to Twitter to mock his statement using the hashtag #MuslimsReportStuff.

Yet Trump had more to say. To drive home his point about Muslims reporting violence, he claimed that “many people” saw weapons in the home of the San Bernardino shooters, implying that Muslims who knew the ISIS-linked terrorists simply did not tell police about their dark plans.

But as Richard Winton, a Pulitzer-prize winning Los Angeles Times journalist who covered the shootings, pointed out, that claim is also completely unsubstantiated.

And just in case you missed his point, Trump closed with an anti-Muslim argument that members of his own party have been using for years now: that president Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton “have to” use the term “radical Islamic terrorism” to ever fully combat terrorism perpetrated by those who claim to be followers of Islam.

“To solve a problem, you have to be able to be able to state what the problem is or at least say the name,” he said. “[Hillary Clinton] won’t say the name, and president Obama won’t say the name. But the name is there: it’s radical Islamic terror, and before you solve it, you have to say the name.”

This argument has been dismissed by security experts for some time, many of whom say that such terms only make fighting terrorism harder. Or, as Michael German, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice and a former undercover FBI agent, said when asked about the term during a congressional hearing in June, that kind of language “puts us on a path to perpetual war.”

“[Such language] only serves to stoke public fear, xenophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry,” he said.

Ultimately, Trump didn’t have to spout explicitly anti-Muslim bigotry to be Islamophobic. Rather, his responses were in and of themselves Islamophobic because they were based on falsehoods that perpetuate a very specific, and unabashed inaccurate, narrative: that Muslims are generally dangerous, and those that aren’t are failing to help their fellow Americans.

Hamed herself was deeply unimpressed with Trump’s response.

“[Trump’s response] wasn’t an answer, actually, it was kind of like an accusation,” she told The Huffington Post.

Trump’s remarks were, in effect, a very honest “answer” to her question: if elected president, Trump, assuming he continues to voice the kinds of arguments he repeated last night, will “deal” with the rise of Islamophobia the same way he has throughout his campaign—by making it worse.

(h/t ThinkProgress)

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https://youtu.be/ih9Bg33aVPg

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