Category: Intolerance

A White Supremacist Trump Delegate Tweets Racial Slur While at RNC

An elected Trump delegate from Chicago known for months to be a white supremacist has had her credentials stripped by the Illinois Republican party after posting a racial slur to Facebook and making “threats of violence” against black people.

Lori Gayne, a Chicago-area mortgage banker, was attending the Republican National Convention and posted a photo on Sunday night of police officers standing on the roof of Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where an opening party was taking place. She wrote the following caption, indicating that cops were prepared to shoot black protesters:

“Our brave snipers just waiting for some “n—- to try something. Love them.”

The Chicago Sun Times reported that she had used an abbreviation for the racial slur.

Gayne admitted to party officials and reporters that she authored the abhorrent post and later apologized in a statement.

“I strongly regret the offensive statements I recently made on social media. While I in no way intended to make racist or threatening statements, I now realize that they could be interpreted that way,” she said.

Illinois GOP Chairman Tim Schneider revoked Gayne’s credentials as a RNC delegate and told the Sun-Times that the party “has zero tolerance for racism of any kind and threats of violence against anyone.”

Gayne was elected in March’s Illinois Republican Primary as a Trump delegate for the 5th Congressional District and was identified as early as May for her white-power loving social media posts under the Twitter handle “whitepride.”

In an interview with Chicago Tribune in May, Gayne said the following:

“With all the racism going on today, I’m very proud to be white. Just like black people are proud to be black and now, as white people, whenever we say something critical we’re punished as if we’re racists. I’m tired of it. I’m very proud,” Gayne said.

“I’m so angry I don’t even feel like I live in America. You can call me a racist. Black Lives Matter? Those people are out of control,” she said.

She used other social media accounts under different names to attack Muslims, the Tribune reported.

Gayne is not even the first Trump delegate to tout white supremacy.

Los Angeles doctor William Johnson resigned in May after Mother Jones revealed that he was the leader of the white nationalist American Freedom Party.

A day later, anti-Muslim pastor and fellow California delegate Guy St.-Onge resigned after racist social media posts surfaced, including “Barack Hussein Obama and his tranny wife Michelle hate the USA!”

The AFP claims that there are even more of its members who are delegates but have declined to identify them, Mother Jones reported.

Trump has also garnered the support of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and former Louisiana lawmaker David Duke, who said in February that it would be treason to white voters’ heritage to not cast a vote for the real estate magnate.

(h/t New York Daily News)

 

Trump Shifts on Muslim Ban, Calls for ‘Extreme Vetting’

Donald Trump is once again shifting the parameters of his proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, calling Sunday for “extreme vetting” of persons from “territories” with a history of terror — though not explicitly abandoning his previous across-the-board ban.

In an interview with “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday, Trump zeroed in on people from suspicious “territories” as those who will receive deep scrutiny when trying to enter the United States. He did not directly repudiate his previous call for an outright ban.

“Call it whatever you want,” Trump told CBS when asked if he was changing his previously released policy.

“Change territories, but there are territories and terror states and terror nations that we’re not going to allow the people to come into our country,” he said.

Trump continued: “We’re going to have a thing called ‘extreme vetting.’ And if people want to come in, there’s going to be extreme vetting. We’re going to have extreme vetting. They’re going to come in and we’re going to know where they came from and who they are.”

Syrian refugees, however, appear to still be on Trump’s list of those people not allowed into the country. The presumptive Republican nominee, who heads to the convention this week for his official coronation, remained consistent on his calls to “not let people in from Syria that nobody knows who they are.” This ban appears more country-based than religious-based.

Trump’s initial proposal for a ban came in December of 2015. He called for a temporary yet “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” The 2015 policy proposed a blanket ban on Muslims based on what Trump called “hatred” of the West he said was innate in Islam.

The language around the ban later shifted when Trump traveled to Scotland, spurring questions when he told a reporter it wouldn’t “bother” him to allow a Scottish or British Muslim to come into the United States in light of his proposed ban. When asked moments later by The Daily Mail to further clarify those remarks, Trump responded: “I don’t want people coming in — I don’t want people coming in from certain countries. I don’t want people coming in from the terror countries. You have terror countries! I don’t want them, unless they’re very, very strongly vetted.”

Asked at the time which countries constitute the “terror countries,” Trump said, “they’re pretty well decided. All you have to do is look!”

He echoed this sentiment in a phone call with NBC News one day later. When asked by NBC’s Hallie Jackson which “terror nations” Trump would focus on, he did not give much by way of criteria for designating these countries. “Terror nations,” Trump repeated. “Look it up. They have a list of terror nations.”

This is the first time Trump himself has articulated the pivot and specification of the ban that many advisors have attempted to spin for him. Still, the businessman has not disavowed his prior plan for a blanket ban or stated that it’s being abandoned in the wake of a new policy that focuses on specific territories.

(h/t NBC News)

Trump Jumps To Conclusions Minutes After Nice Attack

In back-to-back interviews with Fox News hosts Greta Van Susteren and Bill O’Reilly, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump condemned Muslims and immigrants for a horrific truck attack in the French resort town of Nice, France that occurred late Thursday.

No terror group or organization has yet claimed responsibility after 77 people were killed and about 100 injured when a truck plowed through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day fireworks. When Van Susteren asked Trump to contrast what Obama would say about the attack with what he would say, Trump immediately cited “radical Islamic terrorism” as a potential cause, then said “I don’t think the people come out of Sweden, okay? It’s probably, possibly but if it is indeed, radical Islamic terrorism, it’s about time that [Obama] would say so, okay?”

“I mean, it just happened now,” Trump admitted, before speculating that the attack could have been carried out by a Muslim as in “Orlando, like in San Bernardino, like in Paris, like in the World Trade Center, like many other places, if it’s radical Islamic terrorism.”

Even if the attacks are ultimately linked to Muslim or immigrants, Trump was speaking as a presidential nominee just minutes after the attack, when none of this information was known.

During his interview with O’Reilly, Trump appeared to backtrack a bit on his earlier comments, telling the host that we should “wait a little while, and let’s see what happens. Who knows? Maybe you will be surprised and maybe we will all be surprised” in the truck attack.

But in the same breath, Trump bashed the refugee process into the United States, claiming that the country will admit at least 10,000 unscreened Syrian refugees by the end of the fiscal year.

“They may be ISIS,” Trump said, alluding to the terror group Islamic State. “This could be the great Trojan horse of all time. I mean, this could be the ultimate Trojan horse.”

Syrian refugees actually undergo one of the most stringent processes to come to the United States, which can take anywhere between 18 and 24 months. The process requires at least 21 steps in which biographic information, biometrics, and documentation are shown and put under scrutiny.

Trump has long claimed that Muslims and immigrants could bring criminal activities to the United States. In fact, he launched his campaign by deriding Mexican immigrants as rapists, criminals, and drug dealers. Soon after Paris was under siege from a terror attack, Trump called for a ban on Muslims immigrating into the United States, later adding that Muslims should be put into a database so that they can be tracked. He has also condemned resettling Syrian refugees in the country, using a similar argument that they lack documentation.

On the basis of this speculation, Trump said he agreed that this was now a “world war scenario” and, as president, he would seek a formal declaration of world war from Congress.

“I would. I would,” Trump told O’Reilly. “If you look at it, this is war, coming from all different parts. And frankly, it’s war and we’re dealing with people without uniforms. You know, in the old days, you would have uniforms. You knew who you were fighting.”

Trump then pivoted to his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s U.S. immigration policies that would potentially allow undocumented immigrants to stay in the country.

“These people — we are allowing people into our country, who we have no idea where they are, where they are from, who they are, they have no paperwork, they have no documentation in many cases and Hillary Clinton wants to allow 550 percent more in than even Obama,” he added.

Prior to the interviews, Trump tweeted that he would postpone the announcement of his vice presidential candidate, originally set for Friday.

(h/t Think Progress)

Reality

7/14 at 5:44 PM ET, Fox News reported a large truck had been driven through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France, killing dozens.

7/14 at 7:20 PM ET, Donald Trump phoned into live coverage of the attack on Fox News.

7/16 at 4:00 AM ET, two days later, ISIS released a statement claiming the attack as an outright act of ISIS, but noting that the attacker was responding to calls to act.

7/16 at 8:00 AM ET, French investigators found a possible, but yet unconfirmed connection to Jabhat al Nusra, an al Qaeda’s branch in Syria.

While this has the hallmarks of a terrorist attack, and may possibly be the case, there are potentially thousands of other possibilities to consider before actual facts from a formal investigation are even established. Have we learned nothing from the invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the basis of weapons of mass destruction? At the time, Republican President George W. Bush ignored timelines from UN weapons inspectors to perform their jobs, fabricated evidence, and rushed to judgement which left us with an inter-generational quagmire.

We should expect our leaders to have cool heads and sound judgement in the face of adversity, which was not on display here from Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Media

On the Record with Greta Van Sustern Interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g09jgCY1PDM

Bill O’Reilly Interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUe9FX_K84k

Trump Surrogate Newt Gingrich Wants “Religious Test” For American Muslims

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and current Trump advisor and surrogate has suggested testing all US Muslims to see if they believe in Sharia, and deporting those who do.

Gingrich said in an interview on “Hannity” on Fox News:

Let me be as blunt and direct as I can be. Western civilization is in a war. We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background, and if they believe in Shari‘a, they should be deported. Shari‘a is incompatible with Western civilization. Modern Muslims who have given up Shari‘a, glad to have them as citizens. Perfectly happy to have them next door.

The former Republican presidential contender’s comments were in response to the attack in Nice, France that left at least 84 people dead.

Gingrich later tried to backtrack those comments saying:

“This is not about targeting a particular religion or targeting people who practice in a particular way,” he added. “This is about looking at particular characteristics that we have learned painfully, time after time, involve killing people, involve attacks on our civilization.”

*cough *cough bullshit *cough *cough

(h/t BBC)

Reality

The idea to target a single religion for a litmus test to see how “patriotic” their members run counter to every idea that the founding fathers envisioned for this country. It is without a doubt the most un-American suggestion one can have. So it comes to no surprise that Fox News is definitely on board.

The very first amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America explains in its Establishment Clause that there will be freedom from governmental interference of worship.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Many in the West believe Shari‘a to be a brutal system of retributive justice, but really it is a broad term for the set of ethical principles inscribed in the Quran that means different things to different adherents. As TIME reported in the wake of Orlando, “Demonizing every Muslim by equating Shari‘a and terrorism is akin to describing every Christian as a radical fundamentalist; the Bible can also be interpreted as requiring brutal punishments for archaic offenses.”

Fun Fact: In 1997, Newt Gingrich was the first Speaker of the House to ever be disciplined for an ethics violation and was forced to resign as Speaker in 1998 because of his failed leadership.

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:

Donald Trump Claims He’s Seen People Calling for Moments of Silence for the Dallas Shooter

During two separate discussions of Black Lives Matters protests on Tuesday, Donald Trump claimed that people have called for moments of silence for Micah Johnson, the gunman who killed five police officers in Dallas and injured nine others, without specifying who or where.

On an O’Reilly Factor segment filmed earlier in the day, Trump expressed disgust with the actions of the officers who shot Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and said it “could be” that police treat African-Americans differently, but criticized the Black Lives Matter movement as “dividing America.” Trump then said:

“I saw what they’ve said about police at various marches and rallies. I’ve seen moments of silence called for for this horrible human being who shot the policemen.”

Asked by the Fox News host if there was a divide between blacks and whites in America, Trump used this as an example of how “there would seem to be.” Then Trump went on to say:

“It’s getting more and more obvious and it’s very sad, very sad. When somebody called for a moment of silence to this maniac that shot the five police, you just see what’s going on. It’s a very, very sad situation.”

Trump repeated the claim Tuesday night, saying at a rally in Indiana:

“The other night you had 11 cities potentially in a blow-up stage. Marches all over the United States—and tough marches. Anger. Hatred. Hatred! Started by a maniac! And some people ask for a moment of silence for him. For the killer!”

(h\t Gawker)

Reality

No news reports appear to corroborate his claim and on social media, news agencies have reached out to the Trump campaign for comment and have not yet heard back.

  • Gawker could only find two posts asking for a moment of silence for Johnson. No video.
  • Talking Points Memo found searches on social media for people making such calls came up short, with no evidence of video.
  • ABC News has been able to find one person who posted on two of his social media accounts calling for a moment of silence, but no evidence of video.
  • Trump advisor Sam Clovis was forced to admit he had not witnessed what Trump said he has witnessed on CNN.

This is not the first time Donald Trump has made false claims of ethnic groups praising a tragedy.

In November 2015, Trump repeatedly defended his debunked claim that thousands of Muslims were celebrating in the streets of New Jersey after 9/11. Of course this also turned out to not be true.

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YlVyC4N87o

Full speech, 7/12/16

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewMhP-V1ed8

Trump Used a Frozen Meme From a White Supremacist to Defend His Other Star of David Meme

Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump on Wednesday tweeted an image of a Disney book featuring a six-pointed star in an attempt to draw comparisons to an anti-Hillary Clinton image he tweeted this past weekend.

“Where is the outrage for this Disney book? Is this the ‘Star of David’ also? Dishonest media!” he tweeted, with an image of a book from Disney’s “Frozen.”

The book features a six-pointed star with the words “With 50 stickers!” written on it.

(h/t The Hill, Vox)

Reality

As we explained in detail before, the star Trump used in his original tweet is not a sheriff’s badge. And original meme Trump shared wasn’t controversial just because it used a 6-pointed star, like this Frozen sticker book cover does, but specifically because the meme was created by a white supremacist, implied antisemitic stereotypes with the Star of David on a bed of money,  and originally posted on a neo-Nazi message board.

What is further concerning is the the Frozen meme Donald Trump used to defend was taken from a Twitter user who is part of the white supremacist alt-right movement.

Donald Trump Jr. Likes Tweet From White Supremacist

Today, Buzzfeed’s Rosie Gray noticed that Donald Trump Jr., who has been taking a large role in his father’s campaign, had “liked” a tweet by one of the worst and most active member of the “alt-right” movement on Twitter:

The user, @Ricky_Vaughn99, his Twitter timeline is absolutely full of hateful racist and anti-Semitic tweets; there’s no way Trump Jr. could possibly have missed it. Yet he chose to follow this user.

Some recent tweets from Ricky_Vaugn99, who’s being followed by the son of the Republican Party’s nominee for president of the US, include:

(h/t Buzzfeed, Little Green Footballs)

Reality

Journalists have noticed that Donald Trump Jr. follows and retweets many known white supremacists in the alt-right movement on his Twitter account, including users The Occidental Observer, @Bidenshairplugs and @Ricky_Vaughn99.

Trump: Anti-Semitic Tweet Showed ‘a Sheriff’s Star,’ Not Star of David

Donald Trump brushed off concerns Monday about possible anti-Semitic imagery in a tweet posted from his account.

The tweet, which was posted and deleted Saturday, featured a picture of Hillary Clinton on a backdrop of money next to a six-sided star that read “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” It drew widespread backlash almost immediately for resembling the Star of David, an important Jewish symbol.

After the tweet was deleted, a revised graphic was posted to Trump’s Twitter account, this time with a circle subbed in for the star.

The presumptive Republican nominee tweeted Monday:

Trump campaign adviser Ed Brookover echoed his boss, telling CNN’s “New Day” on Monday morning that there was “never any intention of anti-Semitism,” adding that Trump has denounced it in the past.

“Not every six-sided star is a Star of David,” Brookover said. “We have corrected this tweet and have moved on.”

Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who is now a paid CNN commentator, pushed back against criticism on Saturday, saying the uproar was “political correctness run amok.”

(h/t Politico)

Reality

Donald Trump placed the blame of this controversy entirely at the feet of the media and claimed that what was tweeted out was simply just a sheriff star. However this “sheriff’s star” defense does not address the ethical and logical gaps about Trump’s controversial tweet.

First, let’s look at some sheriff stars. This is an actual 6-pointed sheriff’s star. It has rounded points.

This is a graphic clip-art of a 6-pointed sheriff’s star. It again has rounded points and is encased in a circle.

This is the Star of David. It has no circle surrounding it and has sharp points.

star-of-david

Second, there was no explanation for how the image made its way from a neo-Nazi message board to his Twitter followers. Mic.com discovered that Donald Trump’s Twitter account wasn’t the first place the meme appeared. The image was previously featured on /pol/ — an Internet message board for the alt-right, a digital movement of neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and white supremacists newly emboldened by the success of Trump’s rhetoric — as early as June 22, over a week before Trump’s team tweeted it.

The watermark on the lower-left corner of the image leads to a Twitter account that regularly tweets violent, racist memes commenting on the state of geopolitical politics. After being uncovered as the origin of the meme that Twitter user had deleted the account.

That means somebody on the Trump campaign saw the image on a white supremacist message board or Twitter account, copied the image, edited the image, and posted it to Trump’s twitter account.

Finally, as previously reported, someone in the Trump campaign noticed the symbol, voluntarily took the tweet down, and re-posted an edited meme now with a poorly photoshopped circle over the star. So someone in his campaign had to be aware of the imagery and what it could construe.

 

Trump Tweet With Star of David Draws Backlash

Accusing rival Hillary Clinton of corruption, Donald Trump sent a controversial tweet Saturday morning, invoking a six-pointed Star of David — a well-known Jewish symbol — overlaid on piles of money.

(The original tweet has since been deleted.)

The graphic appears to be photoshopped from several different elements, including a Fox News poll that found 58 percent of voters believed Clinton to be “corrupt.” It’s juxtaposed against a photo of Clinton and a riff off her own campaign statement about making history as the first presumptive female nominee of a major party.

Next to Clinton is a red six-pointed Star of David with text reading “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” Hundred-dollar bills are scattered in the photo behind her.

It raised the eyebrows of more than a few Twitter users, several bluntly called the tweet anti-Semitic.

Trump later tweeted an amended version of the graphic, nearly two hours after the Twitter firestorm began. The latest version uses a red circle in place of the Star of David:

 

(h/t CBS News)

Reality

Trump has defended against accusations of anti-semitism and racism before.

When Trump addressed the Republican Jewish Coalition in December 2015, he tried to relate to the crowd by invoking the stereotype of Jews as talented and cunning business-people.

“I’m a negotiator, like you folks”

And when he said:

“You’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money,” he said, adding that, “you want to control your own politician.”

 

 

1 … 64 65 66 67 68 … 80