Category: Intolerance

Trump attacks NASCAR and Bubba Wallace over Confederate flag banning, noose incident

President Donald Trump on Monday took aim at NASCAR’s Darrell “Bubba” Wallace, a prominent Black driver, falsely claiming on Twitter that the sport’s recent anti-racist stance had lowered its television ratings.

“Has @BubbaWallace apologized to all of those great NASCAR drivers & officials who came to his aid, stood by his side, & were willing to sacrifice everything for him, only to find out that the whole thing was just another HOAX?” Trump tweeted. “That & Flag decision has caused lowest ratings EVER!”

Utilizing his Twitter account on Monday to criticize NASCAR for banning the Confederate flag and separately two sports teams considering changing their names, Trump demonstrated his eagerness to make his views on race a central part of his re-election campaign amid the growing national conversation after George Floyd’s death on May 25 in police custody.

In a statement posted on his Twitter page, Wallace framed his response as advice to young people, saying, “All the haters are doing is elevating your voice and platform to much greater heights!”

“Last thing, always deal with hate being thrown at you with LOVE!” he said. “Love over hate every day. Love should come naturally as people are TAUGHT to hate. Even when it’s HATE from the POTUS.. Love wins.”

NASCAR drivers have rallied to support Wallace. NASCAR Cup Series driver Tyler Reddick tweeted in response to Trump, “We don’t need an apology.”

“We did what was right and we will do just fine without your support,” he continued. The tweet was later deleted.

NASCAR released a statement saying the organization “continues to stand tall with Bubba.”

“We are proud to have Bubba Wallace in the NASCAR family and we commend his courage and leadership,” the statement said.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Fox News said Trump’s tweet was part of a “broader point” about the “rush to judgment.”

“The president is merely pointing out that we have to let facts come out before we rush to judgment,” she said.

Reporters grilled McEnany over the tweet during Monday’s press briefing, questioning her about Trump’s claim that banning the Confederate flag was bad for ratings.

McEnany said Trump was not taking a stance on the Confederate flag nor whether it was a good or bad decision for NASCAR to ban it. Instead, McEnany argued that that “NASCAR men and women” are “being called racist” and that Trump was defending them.

“He stands against the demonization of Americans and he stands firmly on the side of preserving our history,” she said.

Asked whether a Confederate flag would be permitted at a Trump rally, McEnany said the campaign does not allow flags other than official Trump campaign gear into rallies. Trump campaign national deputy press secretary Courtney Parella confirmed the policy to NBC News, saying, “We do not permit rally attendees to bring their own signage or displays of any kind and only allow approved rally signs inside our events.”

Speaking with Fox News Radio, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. and a prominent Trump ally, said he didn’t think Wallace “has anything to apologize for.”

“You saw the best in NASCAR,” he said. “When there was a chance that it was a threat against Bubba Wallace, they all rallied to Bubba’s side. So I would be looking to celebrate that kind of attitude more than being worried about it being a hoax.”

Since NASCAR announced a ban on the Confederate flag last month, the sport has seen a boost in television ratings. Overnight ratings following the sport’s June race at Martinsville, Virginia, which immediately followed the banning announcement, were up 104 percent over a comparable 2019 race.

The Talladega race in Alabama later in June, where the noose incident Trump referred to happened, rated as the most-watched Monday contest in years. NASCAR has also benefited from being one of the few live events on TV, as most other sports remain idled in the U.S. due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Before Talladega, a door-pull rope shaped like a noose was found in Wallace’s assigned garage, raising questions about whether it had been placed there intentionally in response to his outspokenness in support of banning the Confederate flag at NASCAR events. Fellow NASCAR drivers marched alongside his car in a show of unity afterward. The FBI investigated the incident and ruled out a hate crime, citing video evidence showing the rope was in the stall months before it was assigned to Wallace. NASCAR released a photo of the rope to dispel the idea it was a hoax.

“I was relieved just like many others to know that it wasn’t targeted towards me,” Wallace told Craig Melvin on NBC’s “TODAY” last month. “But it’s still frustrating to know that people are always going to test you and always just going to try and debunk you, and that’s what I’m trying to wrap my head around now.”

As a politician, Trump’s history with NASCAR dates to early in his presidential campaign when he won the endorsement of the sport’s top leadership. At this year’s Daytona 500, Trump took the presidential limo on the track as a pace car before the race began. And at this weekend’s Brickyard 400 in Indianapolis, one driver began racing in a fully decked-out pro-Trump branded car. He crashed a few laps into the race.

This weekend, Trump delivered a lengthy speech on defending statues from being removed or torn down and has increasingly bashed protesters.

Recent tweets have also gotten the president into hot water, such as when he promoted and then deleted a video showing an apparent Trump supporter shouting “white power.”

The White House said he didn’t hear the comment when he posted.

[NBC News]

Trump Vows to Veto Defense Bill Over Amendment to Rename Military Bases Named After Confederates

President Donald Trump vowed to veto a $740 billion defense spending bill unless Congress drops a proposed amendment to rename U.S. military bases named after Confederate leaders.

As the country faces ongoing social unrest over the death of George Floyd, the public debate continues on whether Confederate figures deserve to be publicly honored with statues or major instillations bearing their names. Amid these calls for racial justice, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has proposed an amendment for the Defense Authorization Bill that would require the names of Confederate leaders to be completely scrubbed from several military bases over the next 3 years.

Trump has repeatedly defended monuments honoring Confederates in recent weeks, and on Tuesday night, he used his racially-charged insult for Warren again while promising to veto the bill if her amendment gets through.

[Mediaite]

Trump Says He May End Housing Desegregation Rule

President Donald Trump said he may get rid of a fair housing rule originally designed to desegretate neighborhoods, which some say in practice simply means building more housing. His administration has been trying to revise an Obama-era regulation on how to enforce the Civil Rights-era law; opponents say it’s an effort to weaken the rules.

Trump in a Twitter post though suggested he may want to go further. “At the request of many great Americans who live in the Suburbs, and others, I am studying the AFFH housing regulation that is having a devastating impact on these once thriving Suburban areas,” Trump said in a tweet. “Not fair to homeowners, I may END!” Trump didn’t offer additional details about his plans.

[Bloomberg]

Trump Tweets Video of St. Louis Couple Aiming Guns at Protesters

President Donald Trump on Monday retweeted a widely scrutinized video of a St. Louis couple aiming guns at a protest march.

The couple, who are White, stood in front of their home, both armed with guns, shouting back and forth with a march that included Black Lives Matter protesters, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. One of the people was aiming a gun directly at demonstrators, who were marching on the home of Mayor Lyda Krewson to demand her resignation after she read aloud names and addresses of protesters who wanted to cut police funding.

Trump retweeted the ABC News video without comment, appearing to endorse the couple’s stance. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Sunday, Trump retweeted a video of his supporters arguing with critics in Florida, including one who shouted “white power.” Trump later deleted his tweet, and the White House said he hadn’t heard the phrase.

The president on Monday also retweeted a series of wanted posters from U.S. park police seeking to identify people suspected of vandalizing statues near the White House.

[Bloomberg]



Trump Tweets, Thanks Florida Supporter Chanting ‘White Power’

Donald Trump tweeted a video of someone in a golf cart shouting the racist slogan, “White Power” and others yelling, “Fuck Trump” on Sunday morning. The video was originally posted by the Twitter handle Fifty Shades of Whey, which noted that the seniors of The Villages in Florida were “protesting against each other.” Trump was seemingly unaware that those protesting against him, who were holding up signs that accused him of racism, were apparently also residents of The Villages. Nevertheless, the president thanked area denizens in his post, writing, “Thank you to the great people of The Villages. The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you soon!!!”

[The Daily Beast]

Update

Trump deleted the tweet and claimed he wasn’t aware. This is problematic for two reasons. First, the “white power” chant occurs in the first few seconds of the video. Second, why is a President sharing content without vetting it?

Trump targets individual anti-racism protesters in post-golf tweetstorm

The leader of the free world went after individual anti-racism protesters on Saturday.

Trump escalated his war on protesters by posting “attempt to identify” wanted posters of protesters who allegedly vandalized a statue of former President Andrew Jackson.

The statue is in Lafayette Square, which was the scene of the gassing of peaceful protesters so Trump could hold a photo-op posing with a Bible.


[Raw Story]

Trump defends officer who shot Rayshard Brooks as police call in sick

Donald Trump has defended the police officer who shot dead Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta, as a number of officers called in sick after their colleague was charged with murder.

Garrett Rolfe, a white officer, shot Brooks, who is black, twice in the back as Brooks pointed a police Taser stun gun in his direction while running away. Rolfe faces 11 charges over the killing.

A significant number of officers did not show up for work on Wednesday night, the city’s police department said. Atlanta’s mayor suggested the city may have to call in officers from other jurisdictions.

Brooks’s death has prompted protests in the city and elsewhere as it emerged that Brooks, 27, was 18ft from Rolfe, and running away, when he pointed the Taser – which prosecutors say Rolfe knew was not functional – before being shot.

The protests over Brooks’s death have added to demonstrations against racism and police brutality across the country following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last month, where the 46-year-old was killed when a white police officer kneeled on his neck.Advertisement

Amid the outrage, Trump appeared on Fox News, where he defended Rolfe and appeared to criticize Brooks.

“You can’t resist a police officer, and if you have a disagreement, you have to take it up after the fact,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “It was out of control – the whole situation was out of control.”

Trump said police had been treated unfairly in the US.

He said: “It’s up to justice right now. It’s going to be up to justice. I hope he [Rolfe] gets a fair shake, because police have not been treated fairly in our country. But again, you can’t resist a police officer like that.”

The Atlanta police department sought to downplay the number of officers who did not report for duty, but admitted there were a significant number of absences.

“Earlier suggestions that multiple officers from each zone had walked off the job were inaccurate,” the department said in a tweet. “The department is experiencing a higher than usual number of call-outs with the incoming shift. We have enough resources to maintain operations & remain able to respond to incidents.”

Atlanta’s mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, told CNN there were enough officers to cover the city, but said the department may have to call in police from other agencies.

She said: “We have other partners … so, we will be fine.”

The most serious charge against Rolfe, felony murder, carries a sentence of life in prison or the death penalty, should prosecutors choose to seek it.

On Thursday, a video interview that Brooks had conducted in 2019, as part of a project about criminal reform, was shared by the company Reconnect.

In it, Brooks described how the criminal justice system treats many people unfairly. He said: “Some people, they get a tap on the wrist [from the authorities]. But some people don’t.”

Brooks discussed how people who had spent time in jail were treated on their release. He said: “You get treated like an animal. Some of the system could look at us as individuals; we do have lives, you know.”

He added: “I’m trying, I’m not the type of person to give up. I’m going to keep going till I make it to where I want to be.”

Brooks’s funeral is due to take place at a church in Atlanta on Tuesday. Actor and director Tyler Perry, who lives in the city, has offered to pay for the funeral.

In an article for People magazine, Perry said he was grappling with how to explain racism in the US to his five-year-old son.

He wrote: “I know that as his father, a black man in America, it is my duty to prepare him for the harsh reality that awaits him outside of the watchful eyes of his loving parents. It will be a hard, heartbreaking conversation, but one that I must have and will have soon.”

[The Guardian]

Trump says he made Juneteenth ‘very famous’

President Trump said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that he made Juneteenth, the annual holiday commemorating the end of slavery, “very famous” by originally scheduling a campaign rally on the date.

“I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous,” Trump told the Journal in an interview Wednesday, referencing the news coverage of the planned rally that was moved to a later date. “It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it.”

Trump was widely criticized for scheduling the rally on June 19 in Tulsa, Okla., the site of one of the bloodiest acts of racial violence in 1921, with many critics charging that it was a racially insensitive decision.

Trump eventually postponed the rally, acknowledging “many” of his African American friends and supporters had reached out asking him to change the date.

Juneteenth has been a day to mark the end of slavery in the United States for more than 150 years and is recognized as a holiday in 47 states and the District of Columbia.

Trump told the Journal that a black Secret Service agent informed him of the meaning of Juneteenth. He also claimed he polled those around him and none had heard of the annual holiday. Trump was surprised to learn from an aide during the interview with the Journal that the White House put out a statement marking the occasion last year.

“Oh, really? We put out a statement? The Trump White House put out a statement?” Trump said. “OK, OK. Good.”

Trump’s Tulsa rally is scheduled to take place on Saturday evening, marking his first campaign rally since March. It is expected to draw a substantial crowd to Tulsa’s BOK Center, raising concerns about the potential for the event to spread the novel coronavirus. The campaign plans to conduct temperature checks and distribute masks and hand sanitizer to attendees.

The Trump campaign’s announcement of the rally coincided with nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man. Trump’s handling of and rhetoric on the demonstrations has also come under sustained scrutiny in recent weeks.

Trump, who signed an executive order Tuesday to incentivize police reform, acknowledged in the Journal interview that there is “some” systemic racism in the United States but asserted that the country had made substantial progress in rooting out racism from its institutions.

“I’d like to think there is not” systemic racism, Trump told the Journal. “But unfortunately, there probably is some. I would also say it’s very substantially less than it used to be.”

[The Hill]

Trump Defends Confederate Monuments in ‘Police Reform’ Speech: ‘We Must Build on Our Heritage, Not Tear it Down’

At a White House event on police reform, President Donald Trump seemed to reference the recent destruction of Confederate monuments by protesters, but again made clear he favors preserving those memorials to the pro-slavery South.

During remarks on what the White House calls his “Executive Order on Safe Policing for Safe Communities,” Trump concluded a riff on the coronavirus crisis by saying, of a potential vaccine, that “even without it, it goes away.”

“But if we had the vaccine, and we will, if we had therapeutic or cure, one thing is sort of blends into the other, it will be a fantastic day and I think that’s going to happen, and it’s going to happen very soon,” Trump added.

“Americans can achieve anything when we work together as one national family,” he continued. “To go forward we must seek cooperation not confrontation, we must build upon our heritage, not tear it down. And we must cherish the principles of America’s founding as we strive to deliver safe, beautiful, elegant justice. And liberty for all.”

Trump’s remarks in the Rose Garden were for the purpose of announcing an executive order that was prompted by nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd — a strange setting for Trump to renew his longtime defense of the Confederacy and its symbols.

[Mediaite]

Trump erases health care protections for transgender patients during Pride Month

Just two weeks into Pride Month — and on the anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting — the Trump administration announced that it is rolling back Obama-era health care protections for people who are transgender. The rule, announced Friday, will impact transgender patients’ ability to fight against discrimination by doctors, medical facilities and health insurance providers. 

Former president Barack Obama’s administration changed federal health care guidelines in 2016 to expand sex-based protections based to include protections based on gender identity, “which may be male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female.” His administration also pushed for discrimination protections for those who have had abortions. 

But the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a statement on Friday saying the final rule is based on “the plain meaning of the word ‘sex’ as male or female and as determined by biology.”

“All of these are essentially legislative changes that the Department lacked the authority to make,” the administration said of the 2016 changes in the final rule. “They purported to impose additional legal requirements on covered entities that cannot be justified by the text of Title IX, and in fact are in conflict with express exemptions in Title IX.”

In the summary of the final rule, HHS responded to several comments that criticized the lack of protection for people who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth. In one response to the comments, HHS compared gender identity to political affiliation. 

“For example, in the unlikely event that a healthcare provider were to deny services to someone based solely on his or her political affiliation, the Department would not be able to address such denial of care under Section 1557,” HHS said. “Unlike other bases of discrimination, the categories of gender identity and sexual orientation (as well as political affiliation) are not set forth in those statutes.”

The rule summary also argued that health care based on sex assigned at birth, rather than gender identity, is necessary for health care, and insinuated that transgender health care may be confusing for providers.

“The 2016 Rule risked masking clinically relevant, and sometimes vitally important, information by requiring providers and insurers to switch from a scientifically valid and biologically based system of tracking sex to one based on subjective self-identification according to gender identity,” the summary said. “…The 2016 Rule’s mandate cannot answer, for example, how a provider is to determine whether or when a transgender individual is entitled by law to be referred to a women’s mental health support group, a men’s mental health support group, either group, or both at the same time.”

Roger Severino, director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights, maintained in the announcement that “HHS respects the dignity of every human being.”

“…and as we have shown in our response to the pandemic, we vigorously protect and enforce the civil rights of all to the fullest extent permitted by our laws as passed by Congress,” Severino said. “We are unwavering in our commitment to enforcing civil rights in healthcare.”

Transgender individuals have long faced discrimination in health care. A quarter of the 28,000 individuals who took the U.S. Transgender Survey reported that they have experienced an insurance issue because of their gender identity. Even more respondents reported that they have experienced verbal harassment, been refused treatment, or had a health care provider who did not know how to properly treat transgender individuals. 

Thousands of survey participants also reported they were denied routine health and sexual health screenings. Those who are transgender are more likely than the general U.S. population to be uninsured, according to the survey. 

The American Civil Liberties Union quickly responded to the administration’s announcement, writing on Twitter that the rule “will embolden health care discrimination against transgender people, those seeking reproductive health care, and many other individuals who need health care — all while a global pandemic is occurring.”

“Politicians have no business coming between us and our health care,” the organization added.

The announcement also came at the end of a week where two black transgender women were murdered. So far this year, at least 14 transgender or gender non-conforming individuals have been fatally shot or killed by other violent means in the U.S., according to the Human Rights Campaign. 

[CBS News]

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