Tag: racist quote

Trump Stands By Racist Claim That Exonerated ‘Central Park 5’ Are Guilty

Donald Trump has stood by his decades-old claim that the group of five men blamed for a 1989 rape and beating in Central Park before being exonerated were actually guilty.

In a statement to CNN as part of a retrospective on the case, the Republican presidential nominee maintained, despite DNA and other evidence to the contrary, that the men were guilty of raping and beating an investment banker who had been jogging in Central Park at night.

“They admitted they were guilty,” Trump said. “The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous. And the woman, so badly injured, will never be the same.”

The five men, who became known as the Central Park Five, were exonerated in 2002 when an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney found DNA evidence linking the vicious crime to a previously convicted rapist. That man admitted to acting alone in the crime.

New York City settled with the five men in 2014, agreeing to pay them a collective $40 million for time spent wrongfully convicted and imprisoned. The hasty conviction of the men, who were ages 14 to 16 at the time, was widely viewed as a symptom of racial biases and the pressure prosecutors and law enforcement felt to find culprits amid fear of crime in the city amid a spiraling crime rate.

Trump, then as now a prominent Manhattan real-estate figure, took out a full-page ad in The New York Times shortly after the jogger was attacked calling for New York to revive the death penalty.

“I want to hate these muggers and murderers,” Trump wrote. “They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.”

Trump also previously complained in an op-ed article in the New York Daily News that the settlement between the five men and New York was a “disgrace,” saying the “recipients must be laughing out loud at the stupidity of the city” to settle for an amount as high as $40 million.

Trump’s campaign has previously defended his demonization of the wrongfully convicted men.

Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, an adviser to Trump’s campaign, touted the ad earlier this year during an interview with an Alabama radio station, saying that it showed Trump was committed to law and order.

“Trump has always been this way,” Sessions said. “People say he wasn’t a conservative, but he bought an ad 20 years ago in The New York Times calling for the death penalty. How many people in New York, that liberal bastion, were willing to do something like that?”

(h/t Business Insider)

Reality

Donald Trump called for, and still today is calling for, the execution of five men for a crime they didn’t commit. How is that for “law and order?”

The case was notable for its racial politics: Four of the Central Park Five were black and one was Latino while the victim was a white banker.

Trump, Under Oath, Claimed Mexicans Are Rapists

Video footage from a legal deposition of Donald Trump released Friday suggests the Republican presidential candidate planned to call Mexicans “rapists” when he first announced his candidacy.

The offensive remarks were premeditated, Trump suggested under oath in a sworn video deposition taken June 16.

The deposition was part of a lawsuit Trump launched against a restaurateur who pulled out of a deal to open a restaurant in the billionaire businessman’s new Washington, D.C. hotel in response to his racism.

The deal fell apart after Trump made his offensive comments on the campaign trail.

It is one of two lawsuits Trump leveled against restaurants who said his nasty remarks were reason enough to end their business relationship.

“They thought I made statements that were inflammatory in some form,” Trump said, complaining of the response he’d received for his incendiary remarks.

Asked if he had planned “in advance” what he was going to say in that now-famous speech launching his campaign, he said “yes.”

“I mean, I’ve tapped into something. I’ve tapped into illegal immigration,” he said a minute later, bragging about his big primary win.

Trump’s team fought the video becoming public, but a judge ruled Friday that the candidate’s argument that it could be used in attack ads against him wasn’t enough reason to keep it sealed.

The GOP candidate said that he did “virtually nothing” to prepare for the sworn deposition, similar today his approach heading into the first presidential debate.

(h/t New York Daily News)

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Trump Says Black Communities Worst Off Ever, Forgets Slavery

Donald Trump has faced criticism after declaring that African Americans are in the worst shape “ever, ever, ever”, in a town named after a slaveholder.

The Republican nominee’s latest outreach to black voters, at a North Carolina rally, drew a swift backlash.

Many on social media questioned whether Mr Trump had considered the US history of slavery and segregation.

It follows a report that his charity used funds to settle lawsuits for which he was personally liable.

At Tuesday’s campaign event in Kenansville, the White House hopeful said: “We’re going to rebuild our inner cities because our African-American communities are absolutely in the worst shape they’ve ever been in before.

“Ever, ever, ever.”

He continued: “You take a look at the inner cities, you get no education, you get no jobs, you get shot walking down the street.

“They’re worse, I mean honestly, places like Afghanistan are safer than some of our inner cities.

“And I say to the African-American communities, and I think it’s resonating, because you see what’s happening with my poll numbers with African Americans. They’re going, like, high.”

The businessman-turned-politician is continuing his outreach to African-American voters by meeting a group of pastors Wednesday in Cleveland, Ohio.

The BBC’s Anthony Zurcher says Mr Trump’s recent overtures to the black community may be aimed primarily at assuring moderate white voters of his racial sensitivity.

According to recent polls, he still faces an uphill climb in winning over even a modest level of black support.

Aside from a blip in one unconventional tracking poll, Mr Trump’s black support continues to be mired in low single digits.

This is roughly equal to the levels earned by the Republicans who ran against Barack Obama, the first black US president.

Last month, Mr Trump also raised eyebrows when he asked black voters: “What do you have to lose?”

He told a nearly all-white audience in Michigan that African Americans “are living in poverty” and their “schools are no good”.

Mr Trump said his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, “would rather provide a job to a refugee” than to unemployed black youths.

(h/t BBC)

Reality

One need not be a scholar to be familiar with generations of slavery, discrimination, state-sanctioned bigotry, red-lining, lynchings, segregation, and Jim Crow laws.

But as NPR points out, the data shows Trump is wrong. For example:

  • The black unemployment rate is more than 8 percent – that’s more than three points higher than the national average. But it’s halved from the recent post-recession high of 16.6 percent.
  • Plus, black employment rates have always been higher than the national average.
  • Eighty-six percent of African Americans are high school completers.
  • African Americans with a bachelor’s degree or more has more than tripled (from 6.6 percent to 22.2 percent 40 years ago) and roughly one-third of 18-24-year-olds are enrolled in college.
  • Because of the Obamacare that Trump is vowing to begin repealing on his first day in office, the number of uninsured African-Americans dropped by nearly 10 points over the last three years.
  • While there was a slight uptick in some cities since last year, crime is at an all-time low.

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Donald Trump Jr. Casually Makes A Holocaust Joke

Donald Trump’s son, a primary surrogate for his presidential candidacy, alluded on Thursday to the mass killing of Jewish people in Nazi Germany while laying out what he sees as a media double standard in campaign coverage.

In an interview with Chris Stigall on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT, Donald Trump Jr. made the argument that Republicans would be punished if they lied or schemed in fashions similar to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign. And then he decided to talk about gas chambers.

“The media has been her number one surrogate in this. Without the media, this wouldn’t even be a contest, but the media has built her up,” Trump Jr said. “They’ve let her slide on every indiscrepancy (sic), on every lie, on every DNC game trying to get Bernie Sanders out of this thing. If Republicans were doing that, they’d be warming up the gas chamber right now.”

A reference to gas chambers is the type of remark that under typical campaign conventions would be met with profound rebuke and alarm. But while criticism came in quickly on Twitter, a senior member of the Republican National Committee still blasted out the interview.

Trump Jr. has gone down similar paths before. As the group RightWingWatch noted, he has “posted an image to Instagram that included “Pepe the frog,” which, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is a meme “constantly used by white supremacists” and “appeared on a radio show with James Edwards, host of the white supremacist radio show Political Cesspool.”

The Trump campaign has also been accused in the past of pushing anti-Semitic memes. Donald Trump himself got into trouble over the summer for tweeting an image of Clinton pasted over money with a Jewish star badge next to her.

(h/t Huffington Post)

Update

Trump Jr. told NBC News that he was referring to corporal punishment, not the Holocaust. The reaction from some anti-Semitic Trump supporters on Twitter, however, suggests that they comfortably took it as a Holocaust reference.

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Trump Faces New Backlash Over Pitch to Black Voters

On the heels of another staff shakeup, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was facing a new backlash – this time for his attempt to get black voters to vote for him in the November election.

At a campaign rally near Lansing, Michigan, on Friday, Trump asked what African-Americans have to lose by voting for him.

CBS News correspondent Errol Barnett reports it was supposed to be a day for a clean slate, but Trump’s latest attempted outreach to a larger voting bloc was called ignorant and heavy-handed by his critics.

“Look how much African-American communities have suffered under Democratic control. You’re living in poverty. Your schools are no good. You have no jobs. To those I say the following: What do you have to lose?”

Speaking from a predominately white suburb in Michigan. Trump tried to increase his support from African-American voters, which according to a recent Pew survey favor Hillary Clinton over the Republican nominee by an 83-point margin.

“You’re living in poverty,” Trump said. “Your schools are no good. You have no jobs – 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?”

Moments after the speech, Clinton responded with a tweet.

(h/t CBS News)

Reality

Trump’s comments seem to be the result of him trying to correct his incredibly low numbers with black voters in recent polls. A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed 91 percent of black voters favoring Clinton in comparison to one percent of black voters favoring Trump. At a rally in June, Trump showed he was in touch with black voters by singling out a black man in the crowd and calling him “my African American.”

Trump has also come under criticism from delivering his message to predominantly white cities while neglecting to entertain meeting with African American organizations like the NAACP.

Trump has a curious habit of reiterating the thoughts of white supremacists on social media, particularly when they are being complimentary toward him. When these presumed supporters are revealed to be racists, Trump has not removed his retweets (in some cases from the same user) or apologized for the presumed oversight.

Also, allegations of racism have dogged Trump’s campaign from the beginning, when he said undocumented Mexican immigrants were “rapists” during his announcement speech last June. And while Trump has offended Asian-Americans, Latino-Americans, Arab-Americans and Native Americans in the past, his transgressions as far as the black community is concerned could be even more costly come November.

For example, Donald Trump said in July he believes the Black Lives Matter movement has in some cases helped instigate the recent killings of police officers, and suggested he might direct his future attorney general to investigate the civil rights activist group. Trump also called the group a “threat” and accused the group of “essentially calling death to the police.”

African American Unemployment at 58%

Donald Trump has claimed several times that 58 percent of African-American youths are unemployed — more than double the government’s monthly breakdown.

According to BLS numbers, last month’s unemployment rate among 16-to-19-year-old black Americans was 25.7 percent, adjusted seasonally.

Media

Trump: I Can ‘Relate’ to African-Americans

Donald Trump said that he can “relate it really very much to myself” when African-Americans say “the system is rigged” against them. He cited his own insurgent primary campaign for the White House.

“When I ran for president, I could see what is going on with the system. And the system is rigged,” Trump explained.

“You can’t truly understand what’s going on unless you’re African-American,” he also cautioned.

The presumptive GOP nominee made the comments in the middle of an interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, who repeatedly asked him about race relations in the U.S. Throughout the interview, Trump struck a balanced, arguably muddled note: He sharply criticized both the Black Lives Matter movement and the police officers who were recently filmed shooting African-American men.

“Sadly, there would seem to be,” Trump said when O’Reilly asked him whether there’s “a problem between blacks and whites in America, generally speaking.”

He blamed President Obama at least partially for the situation.

“It’s getting more and more obvious. And it’s very sad. It’s very sad.” Trump continued. “And hopefully it can be healed. We have a divider as a president. He’s the great divider, and I’ve said it for a long time. And it’s probably not been much worse at any time,” he added.

(h/t Yahoo)

Reality

Trump’s mind-boggling analogy and clumsy attempt to pander to African Americans comes amid his disastrous polling numbers from minority groups and young people who believe he is a racist.

Media

Trump’s new theme song:

Trump Lets ‘Heeby-Jobbies’ Comment Slide

Donald Trump’s trade speech Thursday veered off course when he didn’t stop a woman who, while pointing to her head, objected to the “heeby jobbies” worn by some employees at the Transportation Security Administration.

The comment during a town hall in New Hampshire was an apparent reference to hijabs, or headscarfs, that some Muslim women wear.

When the woman urged him to replace Muslims with U.S. military veterans at TSA, Trump said, “And we are looking at that,” seemingly indicating he was considering a new policy.

Reality

Racism isn’t necessarily what we say, it can also be what we don’t say.

Donald Trump let a woman make an incredibly insensitive comment, did not correct her, and even went so far to say yeah maybe we should look into removing Muslims from working at the TSA.

Media

Trump: U.S. Must “Start Thinking About” Racial Profiling

Donald Trump said Sunday that in the wake of the mass shooting in Orlando, it’s time for the United States to start looking at racial profiling as a preventative tactic.

The presumptive GOP nominee said in a phone interview with CBS’ Face the Nation:

Well I think profiling is something that we’re going to have to start thinking about as a country. Other countries do it, you look at Israel and you look at others, they do it and they do it successfully. And I hate the concept of profiling but we have to start using common sense and we have to use our heads.

“It’s not the worst thing to do,” he added.

Trump’s comments come one week after 49 people were shot and killed in a gay nightclub in Orlando, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. Following the massacre, Trump renewed his calls for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S., saying it would have prevented the attack despite the fact that shooter Omar Mateen was born in the U.S.

On Sunday, the GOP politician also said attacks like Orlando would stop if those in the Muslim community would “report” suspicious things.

“When you look at, when you look at people within the Muslim community and where people are living and they don’t report, and a good example of that would be San Bernardino,” he said. “I mean, they had bombs all over their apartment floor and people saw it and nobody reported them, and 14 people were killed, many injured.”

Mateen, Trump added, had definite “red flags” before the attack. “You look at his past, I mean? I’ve never seen a past quite like that,” he said of Mateen. “You look at his record in school, you look at a lot of other things. There were a lot of red flags, this was not a very good young man.”

Trump said he’s working with the National Rifle Association on the details of a policy that would ban people on the no-fly list from purchasing guns.

“We understand there are problems with that because some people are on the terror watch list that shouldn’t be on,” he said. “So I’m working with the NRA, we’re discussing it and again the NRA has the best interests of our country, it just has the absolute best interests of our country.”

Asked about GOP leaders’ criticism of him in recent days, especially over his renewed focus on the Muslim ban, Trump said those Republicans should stop “talking so much” and just “do their job.” The issue is compounded, he added, when the media focuses more on his detractors in the GOP than his supporters.

“I think that honestly they should go about their business and they should do a wonderful job and work on budgets and get the budgets down and get the military the kind of money they need and lots of other things, and they shouldn’t be talking so much,” he said. “They should go out and do their job, let me do my job.”

(h/t CBS News)

Reality

However according to Trump’s suggestion, we should be racially profiling white Christian males because you are more than 7 times as likely to be killed by a right-wing extremist than by Muslim terrorists.

UNC Professor Charles Kurzman and Duke Professor David Schanzer explained last June in the New York Times, Islam-inspired terror attacks “accounted for 50 fatalities over the past 13 and a half years.” Meanwhile, “right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, causing a total of 254 fatalities.”

Media

Trump: ‘It’s Possible’ a Muslim Judge May Not Be Able To Fairly Evaluate a Case Against Me

Donald Trump on Sunday hinted at a broader argument that judges of specific religious and ethnic backgrounds may not be fit to hear cases against him.

Last week, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee suggested that Indiana-born Judge Gonzalo Curiel — whose parents are Mexican — should not preside over fraud lawsuits against Trump University, a for-profit university formerly owned by Trump.

In a Sunday interview on “Face The Nation,” Trump also suggested a Muslim judge would not be able to hear a case against him because of Trump’s plan to bar Muslims from entering the US.

“If it were a Muslim judge, do you also feel that they wouldn’t be able to treat you fairly because of that policy of yours?” host John Dickerson asked.

“It’s possible, yes,” Trump replied. “That would be possible, absolutely.”

Dickerson pushed Trump, asking whether the real-estate magnate was unfairly discrediting judges because of their ethnic background.

“Isn’t there sort of a tradition though in America that we don’t judge people by who their parents were and where they came from?” Dickerson asked.

“I’m not talking about tradition — I’m talking about common sense,” Trump said.

Trump’s assertion that Curiel is not qualified to fairly hear Trump’s case because of the judge’s parents’ nationality has ignited a firestorm of criticism from the real-estate mogul’s political opponents.

In a Saturday speech in California, Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton slammed Trump’s “prejudiced, bigoted attack” on Curiel.

“This is not just another outlandish, insulting comment from Donald Trump, and it is not normal politics. This is something much, much more dangerous,” Clinton said.

She continued: “Judge Curiel is as much of an American as I am, and he’s as much of an American as Donald Trump is. But he has Mexican roots. So to Donald Trump, that means he can’t do his job. Well, Donald Trump’s not just wrong about Judge Curiel. He’s wrong about America. He’s wrong about what makes this country great.”

(h/t Business Insider)

Reality

So let’s follow Donald Trump’s “common sense” logic that only people who he has not offended can fairly evaluate a case against him.

  • An American judge with Mexican heritage is unable to preside over any of his cases because of his plan to build a wall with the United States and Mexico.
  • An American judge who is of the Islamic faith is unable to preside over any of his cases because of his plan to ban all Muslims entering into the United States and to have a database of every Muslim person living here.
  • An American female judge is unable to preside over any of his cases because of his repeated sexist and misogynist comments towards women.
  • An American judge with African heritage is unable to preside over any of his cases because of his racist tweets and calling black protesters “not people.”
  • An American judge who has disabilities is unable to preside over any of his cases because of how he mocked a reporter with disabilities.

Then according to Donald Trump, only white Christian male judges can be “unbiased” enough for him? Explain how this is not racist and intolerant.

Media

Trump Calls Out “My African-American Over Here”

Donald Trump called out “my African-American over here” during a rally in Redding, California, pointing to a supporter in the crowd.

Trump was responding to the intense rioting between protestors and his supporters that took place in San Jose last night. In the middle of his nearly endless spiel, Trump began talking enthusiastically about an incident that happened in Tucson in March, in which protestors wearing white KKK hoods were beaten by a black member of the crowd.

While reciting this anecdote, Trump further breaks off to wonder about how that man is doing. In the process of that tangent, he (presumably) points out a different black person in this particular crowd, which produces yet another jaw-dropping moment in the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump:

We had a case where we had an African-American guy who was a fan of mine. Great guy, in fact I want to find out what’s going on with him. You know what I’m — Oh look at my African American over here.

“Look at him,” Trump added, directing the crowd’s attention. “You know what I’m talking about, OK? So we have an African American guy at one of the rallies a month ago. And he’s sitting there behaving. And we had protesters sitting inside the arena.”

“Everybody thought the African American was against me, and it was the opposite,” Trump insisted. “He was like this great guy military guy. We have tremendous African American support. The reason is I’m going to bring jobs back to our country. We’re going to bring jobs back.”

Trump’s spokesperson Hope Hicks told CNN that he didn’t mean anything by it. “He’s just referring to a supporter in the crowd; there’s no ill will intended, obviously,” Hicks stated.

(h/t CNN, Gawker)

Reality

What is something a slave owner says for $300 Alex?

Gregory Cheadle, a Republican California congressional candidate, confirmed to CNN he was the supporter to whom Trump pointed. He told the Record Searchlight, a local newspaper, he was happy to be cited by Trump.

While Mr. Cheadle may not have been personally offended by the remark, that does not absolve Donald Trump for his comment. For those who this may require an explanation, saying things like, “Oh look at my African American over here” sounds like Trump is interacting with black people for the first time. And this isn’t a isolated incident but just the latest in a long line of racially-charged comments from the billionaire.

Donald Trump actually started off his rambling anecdote speaking about how gentle and respectful he treats protesters at his rallies, which he claims is not very often. This is not true. Virtually every single rally is interrupted with protests. Donald Trump just the day prior screamed “Get him outta here!” at a protester at the rally in San Jose. This is also the same Donald Trump who promised to pay legal fees for supporters who attacked protesters who interrupt his rallies.

Finally, when Trump was telling the story about the violent incident at his Tucson rally involving an African-American and a KKK member, he was visibly passionate. While we completely disagree with the stance of the KKK, we also disagree with Trump’s constant approval of violence at his rallies. Violence has no place in our political process.

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