The Final Call

Trump keeps rolling along a bigoted path say critics

By Askia Muhammad -Senior Editor- | Last updated: Dec 29, 2015 - 1:50:04 AM

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WASHINGTON—In the minds of many national leaders of the Republican Party, the presidential candidacy of real estate tycoon Donald Trump may have permanently altered the face of the Party of Lincoln—for the worse.

The profane language and hateful pronouncements of the candidate himself, along with rowdy, back-alley behavior from his supporters at rallies—which he frequently encourages—has GOP officials in Ohio, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Illinois especially worried that not only would the potty-mouth candidate have trouble winning the presidential race in those critical states in the General Election, his presence at the top of the ticket would harm Republican down-ballot lawmakers in difficult reelection fights in those states, giving the Senate majority back to the Democrats.

Away from Trump campaign events, the anxiety over terror attacks in this country and personal financial insecurity has fomented violent acts against Muslims that have exploded all over the country, even as Mr. Trump and other GOP candidates have escalated their anti- Islamic rhetoric. Muslims in this country continue to report rising acts of Islamophobia in the aftermath of increased anti-Muslim sentiment on the campaign trail.

A bloody pig’s head was left outside a mosque in Philadelphia. A Muslim store owner in Queens, New York, said he was beaten by an attacker who reportedly said, “I kill Muslims.” Other incidents include racist hate speech directed at two Muslim women in an Austin café, and a group of boys punching a Muslim girl in New York and pulling on her head scarf.

At a rally in Birmingham, Ala., in November, a Black protester was kicked and punched by several White men as Mr. Trump yelled: “Get him the hell outta here!” He told an interviewer later, that maybe the man needed to be “roughed up.”

At a rally in Las Vegas in December, someone screamed, “Light the motherf---er on fire!” as a protester was dragged away, and a man in the crowd yelled the German Nazi-era salute, “Sieg heil!” according to reporters in attendance.

Anti-Muslim racism in the wake of Mr. Trump’s proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S., and rounding up and confining Muslims already here in concentration camps such as those which held Japanese Americans during World War II, could be even worse than after the September 11, 2001 attacks, according to one Islamic leader.

“What I’m doing is no different than what FDR—FDR’s solution for Germans, Italians, Japanese, you know, many years ago,” Mr. Trump told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week. “So you’re for internment camps?” Mr. Stephanopoulos asked. “This is a president who was highly respected by all. He did the same thing. If you look at what he was doing, it was far worse,” Mr. Trump replied.

Mr. Trump once even appeared to mock a New York Times reporter with a disability, feigning spastic movements. He denied he intended to insult the reporter. Each time, such ugly comments by Mr. Trump have drawn fury from some opponents and prompted predictions of his pending downfall. But each time, Mr. Trump has emerged unscathed.

“As these voices speak unchecked, we see a rise in anti-Muslim sentiment that is arguably worse than even the backlash experienced immediately after September 11th. They give rise and justify to those who have in recent weeks have burned down and vandalized mosques all over this country, who have pushed down women wearing headscarves onto train tracks, shot cab drivers, and even in our own city validated for three young men their beating of a sixth grade Muslim girl in Harlem as they punched her, beat her, tried to rip the scarf off of her head and called her ISIS over and over and over. That is not OK. We have to be better than that,” Khalid Latif of the Islamic Center at New York University told CNN at a protest rally.

From the day he launched his candidacy, Mr. Trump’s campaign has been driven by one controversy after the next. There was his claim that that Mexican government was sending its rapists and criminals across the border; his statement that Sen. John Mc- Cain (R-Ariz.) Wasn’t a war hero because he was captured; a feud with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly; a series of factually inaccurate remarks; and the time he even called Iowa voters stupid.

The anti-Islamic hate speech from Mr. Trump and other GOP presidential candidates even prompted a death threat to Rep. André Carson (D-Ind.), one of two Muslims serving in the House of Representatives. The threat came the same day Mr. Trump issued a statement calling for that “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

“People think this is just talking—this is actually dangerous,” Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim elected to Congress told The Root. “I feel like Mr. Trump’s comments were asinine and unbecoming of anyone seeking the highest office of the land,” said Rep. Carson, a former law enforcement officer who is also a member of the House Intelligence Committee. “The commander in chief has to be someone who has a global vision and an understanding that America is a pluralistic society and that we’re made up of different races, different religions and different cultures.”

Mr. Trump also came under fire for comments he made about current Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s loss to Mr. Obama in the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary by referring to a part of the male anatomy in Yiddish. The comment invoked the image of “A Black rapist” David Brock, a Clinton ally told MSNBC. Mr. Trump defended his remarks by saying the term he used means “to get beaten badly” and was not a vulgar term. He has not issued an apology although the Clinton campaign has called on supporters to publicly condemn Trump’s comments. This was not the only dust up in what has become a ‘war of words’ between the GOP and Dem frontrunners.

Ms. Clinton blasted Mr. Trump during a party debate where she said his statements were being used by ISIS as recruiting tools to show that America was waging a war on Islam.

Rather than conceding the error of his ways and retracting or apologizing for any of his negative attacks directed toward members of the Muslim faith, Mr. Trump has “doubled down” on his hate speech just as he did with Mexican immigrants early in his campaign. He demanded that Mrs. Clinton apologize, saying her statement that ISIS was using his words in a recruitment video was a lie and branding the former secretary of state and former first lady a liar.

Bigotry against members of the Muslim faith is not new in U.S. national politics. In 2006, now-former Rep. Virgil Goode (RVa.) Attacked Rep. Ellison’s faith upon his election to the House in a constituent newsletter, asserting that the election of a Muslim to Congress was a threat to the nation’s values.

Mr. Trump has opened the door for open bigotry to go mainstream in the political dialogue in a way not seen since the candidacy of former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke in 1991, when he ran for governor of Louisiana, or the 1968 presidential campaign of former Alabama Gov. George Wallace.

“The silent majority is not silent anymore!” Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who is known for his tough stance against illegal immigration and who has his prisoners wear pink underwear to humiliate them, said as he introduced Mr. Trump the day after the most recent GOP candidates’ debate in early December. “They said to warm you up, but you’re already hot!”

“You know, I’m at 43 and the other guys are at two and three and seven ... .” Mr. Trump said at the rally about his poll numbers, occasionally shifting to his big applause lines about the wall he would build on the Mexican border, or about rejecting Muslims. “We have to take our country back and run it smart,” he said.

In a series of interviews, Mr. Trump also falsely claimed there are areas of London and Paris that have become so “radicalized” that police are afraid for their lives.

Mr. Trump’s declarations follow a steady stream of bigotry by others, including comments made by fellow White House contender Dr. Ben Carson, who said that he wouldn’t support a Muslim running for president, and Jerry Fallwell Jr., who told students at a convocation at his Liberty University on Dec. 4, “If more good people had concealed-carry (gun) permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in and killed” the people murdered at a San Bernardino, Calif. Holiday party by Syed Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik.

While British and French leaders, and even Israel’s hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have condemned Mr. Trump’s rhetoric concerning Muslims entering the U.S., so have some U.S. politicians. Even Dr. Carson, the retired neurosurgeon called Mr. Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering this country unconstitutional; South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham called it “downright dangerous;” New Jersey Governor Chris Christie called it “ridiculous;” and Florida Governor Jeb Bush called Mr. Trump “unhinged.”

Florida Senator Marco Rubio tweeted that Mr. Trump’s “habit of making offensive and outlandish statements will not bring Americans together.” Even Texas Senator Ted Cruz rejected the proposed ban but praised Mr. Trump for “focusing America’s attention on the need to secure our borders.”

“You cannot insult your way to the presidency,” said Mr. Bush. “You can’t disparage women, Hispanics, disabled people. Who is he kidding?”

“Not only are there many Muslims serving in our armed forces, dying for this country; there are Muslims serving right here in the House working every day to uphold and defend the Constitution,” House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) Told reporters. The Pentagon confirmed that there are more than 5,890 Muslims serving in the U.S. armed forces.

“The fact is that what Donald Trump said yesterday disqualifies him from serving as president,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters. “And for Republican candidates for president to stand by their pledge to support Mr. Trump, that in and of itself is disqualifying.”

“It’s really important that progressive people of all nationalities really stand up right now and band together in a united way to say that Trump’s racism, his fascism, won’t be tolerated,” Karina Garcia of the International ANSWER Coalition told The Final Call, explaining a New York rally Dec. 20 in front of the Trump Tower.

In Washington Dec. 20, two dozen Christians Jews and Muslims marched and prayed at the Washington National Cathedral, the Washington Hebrew Congregation and at the National Islamic Center to show solidarity and “do something visible against the hostile rhetoric we’ve been hearing lately,” a marcher said, according to a published report.

“We won’t allow our communities to be scapegoated by a billionaire bigot who is trying to use people’s real anger and real frustrations at the economy, but is really manipulating them and telling them that their enemies are other poor and working class people, when in reality, Trump and his billionaire friends, they’re the ones that are to blame for the economic crisis that so many people are facing.

“Trump is really using people’s sort of justified feelings to manipulate them, to convince them that their neighbors, that the people around them, that immigrants are their enemies and Muslims are their enemies. And nothing could be further from the truth.

“So it’s really important that we put together all these different communities to say that we’re not going to allow our communities to be vilified or dehumanized, and that we’re not going to fall into this game of fear, where the billionaires turn us against each other and make us believe that they are our friends,” Ms. Garcia said.