President Trump is a racist and associates with racists

[Skynet]

While I am aware that there is an all-purpose Trump thread in PROC, it moves quite fast and it's clear that an information source is needed for people to quickly link to in the future. Although it does not happen on a regular basis, every so often I see conservative and self-defined "centrist" posters on Elliquiy express doubt or argue against the notion that the President of the United States has a bigoted bone in his body. Usually it's in regards to race, and while Trump has said and done actions harmful to other groups this is by far the most common kind of prejudice discussed and thus the subject of this thread.

Nearly three years ago I wrote a post on how there are different definitions of racism used in the English-speaking world, and as it turns out Trump fits pretty much all of them. And for conservative posters reading this, keep in mind that just because someone is not out and out admitting that they're racist or believe in a Master Race does not necessarily mean that they cannot be prejudiced or privately believe those things. In fact, ever since World War 2 there's been a concerted effort by hate groups and segregationists to juxtapose their own behavior against a 'worse' past: "at least we're not committing genocide," "at least we're not explicitly writing it into law," "at least we're not making skin color the end-all be-all," etc. Finally, people can still knowingly contribute to a hostile atmosphere for personal power: George Wallace was the most well-known segregationist during the Civil Rights Movement, but he privately did not believe that black people were genetically predisposed to stupid and violent behavior. The man did not care, he wanted the governor's seat, and exploiting hatred could help him get it.

I will note that this thread is locked. This is not to stifle debate, far from it. Rather it's an all-in-one post which collects various statements, actions, legislation, etc that outlays racist thinking and behavior, no matter the definition used, and thus will be linked in other PROC threads by myself and anyone who finds it a useful resource when the ol' "Is Trump racist?" question gets trotted out again.

So, let's go down the list, shall we?

Discriminatory Policies as a Business Owner

Before he became President, Trump had stakes in multiple businesses, including housing. During the 1970s he was the subject of a lawsuit by the federal government alleging that his apartment was refusing to rent to prospective African-American tenants, which was in violation of the Fair Housing Act. And during the 1980s he had ties with organized crime syndicates who frequented his casinos; there was an agreement between them and Trump that all black people would be ordered out of the establishment whenever the gangsters shown up. He also to this day refuses to believe that the Central Park Five, a group of four black and one Hispanic males, were innocent of sexually assaulting a woman in a widely-publicized case at the time. This was even after DNA evidence shown their innocence and the actual rapist confessed to authorities.

This Vox article contains many, many other incidents with sources and links, but I focused on some of the more well-known ones above.

Association with and Promotion of White Supremacists

Although a common defense of Trump's campaign is that no racial animus was a factor in his fanbase or who he promotes, multiple incidents say otherwise.

During the infamous Charlottesville Rally where Neo-Nazis marched openly, he claimed that both sides had some very fine people.

A VICE documentary meets with several of the rally's organizers, who are invariably dyed-in-the-wool white supremacists. The people who attended the Unite the Right rally had no trouble associating with them.

Here's a Wikipedia article on Jason Kessler.

I will also not that the fake university Prager U has been passing around a video trying to exonerate Trump from this recently. There's a YouTuber by the name of Shaun who goes over their inaccuracies, showing that the President did indeed refer to Neo-Nazis as very fine people:

In 2015 Trump retweeted a twitter accounted named WhiteGenocideTM, a phrase popular by neo-nazis and white supremacists who believe that public acceptance of interracial marriage is part of a plot to dilute "white genes."

He also retweeted Fake News from an anti-Muslim hate group in the UK.

Trump also retweeted a bogus statistic claiming that 81% of white homicide victims are killed by black people. Said fake statistic is used also by white supremacist groups alleging that there's a hidden race war in the West against white people that the media's covering up.

Trump retweeted a woman who said that we need to create a "Final Solution" for Muslims. She also claimed that Jews who got killed by a terrorist in the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue had nobody but themselves to blame because they were 'pro-immigration.'

Self-projection is a common political tool where you accuse your opponents of something of which you yourself are guilty. President Trump claimed that Jewish citizens of the USA actually view Israeli Prime Ministers as their national legitimate authorities. This is a common accusation leveled at Jews throughout history, the claim that they do not have loyalty to their home country or in recent decades to the Israeli government. This has been used as justification for pogroms, ghettoization, show trials, and the banning of Jews from political parties and public spaces unless they demonstrate some kind of "loyalty oath;" and even then that is rarely enough.

Hiring Steve Bannon as the White House Chief of Staff

Steve Bannon, a former White House Chief of Staff, is a closet neo-nazi or at the very least a fellow traveler. Before entering politics he ran an MMO "gold farm" in China, a practice where gamers perform repetitive tasks (quests, monster-hunting, etc) to generate rare items which are then sold to other players for real-world money. During this time the gold-farming practice was becoming widely hated among gamers for going against the supposed spirit of games. A mass of World of WarCraft players expressed their disappointment such that the parent company listened and gave in to their demands. Seeing this inspired Bannon's future political views:

“These guys,” said Bannon, “these rootless, white males, had monster power. It was the pre-Reddit.”

Steve Bannon would later go on to work for Breitbart, a far-right media site which at the time was ironically owned by a Jewish man Andrew Breitbart. After Breitbart tied of a heart attack, Bannon gained greater control over the company, and in 2014 seized upon GamerGate's growing anti-feminist sentiment to introduce them into right-wing politics. This was seen almost immediately, for GamerGate sites such as 8chan and the KotakuInAction subreddit began talking about political issues unrelated to video games such as the Ferguson protests.

Breitbart sadly, was fringe by the standards of US policies, but mainstream in the US conservative movement. In spite of said platform writing such garbage as "Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy," Bannon was vaunted enough in their eyes that President Trump himself courted the man himself. He was later kicked out of his Chief of Staff position unceremoniously, but it was not for any of his racist views but because he spoke ill of Trump's various family members.

Bannon is also a huge fan of the 1973 book Camp of the Saints, which posits a mass invasion of the white Western world by hordes of literal hive-minded people of color. Said people of color are simultaneously too stupid to live (Indians willingly drown themselves in the Ganges to make a corpse-bridge for others to cross and listen to the words of a shit-eating prophet) but also a major threat capable of utilizing military technology and aircraft to take over countries. This is actually common in Nazi mythology, where Jews are simultaneously weak and ineffectual beings who cannot even upkeep their own homes from falling into filth but are capable of manipulating billions of people across the world (as seen in the Nazi propaganda movie The Eternal Jew).

A PDF of the Camp of the Saints book (warning, is hosted on a hate site).

Bannon also had leaked e-mail chats with Milo Yiannopoulos about smuggling white nationalist ideas into mainstream conservatism.

Regardless of how one feels about Buzzfeed, the emails and footage speak for themselves. One of the most well known ones is where Yiannopoulos sung the US National Anthem to a crowd of Neo-Nazis giving Hitler salutes, Richard Spencer being among them.

Positing Latinos as an Existential Threat

One of President Trump's most-touted campaign promises was to build a 2,000+ mile long wall along the US-Mexican border. The later reasoning was that Mexican immigrants were part of an invasion force to take over the United States. In fact, Trump's poll numbers sharply increased in the 2015 race when he made this infamous statement:

They are not our friend, believe me," he said, before disparaging Mexican immigrants: "They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

While running for President, Trump said that two supporters who assaulted an Hispanic homeless man were merely very "passionate" rather than condemning them.

After harrowing stories of sexual assault, abuse, and torture came out of ICE concentration camps (which I discuss in greater detail in this thread), Trump said that his comments about the vast majority of Mexican immigrants being violent criminals was 100% correct.

Such sentiments have caused many among the broader conservative movement to suggest gunning down immigrants crossing the border. Furthermore, militias and the US Border Patrol have sabotaged water supply drops to ensure that immigrants die from heatstroke in the Sonoran Desert. When one such Trump supporter suggested slaughtering immigrants at a rally, the President laughed and tried to downplay the incident with a joke rather than denounce it at the time.

Technically speaking there are Latinos of many different races, Caucasians included. But broader US culture does not view them as white unless they have light skin, have no visible accent, or a Spanish-sounding name. They can still be targeted for racist reasons and be discriminated against by being viewed as a different race.

So given the above, and judging the man by the company he keeps, his policies, and who he publicly endorses, we can conclude that Trump:

1.) Has made judgments on others based on their race.
2.) Even if he has never said as much, has no problem giving legitimacy to those who believe in a hierarchy of races or a Master Race.
3.) has contributed to systemic racism, where one racial group gains special privileges and power where others do not.
4.) In the Prejudice + Power model, Trump is considered by most Americans to be white and not Jewish, Latino, or another group which are commonly defined as "less/not white" in some circles. As such, all of his actions can be said to be racist under this model.

I hope that readers found this a useful resource. I'm doubtlessly missing many other comments given my President's frequent Twitter tirades and scandals, but the above should be a good jumping off point for showing the man's prejudices.

[Skynet]

One of Trump's senior advisors in the White House regularly corresponded with Breitbart. Leaked emails shown him advising the fake news network to cover racist talking points such as the white genocide conspiracy theory, pro-eugenics works, and the Camp of the Saints novel which I highlighted earlier in this topic.

He is not just a figurehead. He was instrumental in helping draft the immigration ban towards predominately Muslim countries along with ICE's family separation policies.

I'm debating whether or not to leave this thread unlocked, notably in regards to the possibility of letting other posters compile sources or not.

[Skynet]

After some decision, I decided to unlock the topic. To avoid conflict with the major Trump thread this subject manner should involve his racist behavior and associations.

[Mathim]

I hope that readers found this a useful resource. I'm doubtlessly missing many other comments given my President's frequent Twitter tirades and scandals, but the above should be a good jumping off point for showing the man's prejudices.

To say nothing of his homophobia/transphobia and misogyny, though the latter is combined with his racism when he told the women of the Squad to go back to their own countries, when all of them were born in the U.S. or its territories except one who legally immigrated here. But then, what is that compared to actually calling the places he thinks they came from 'shithole' countries?

I liked the use of that PragerU debunking video, seeing them fact-checked so thoroughly and how big of jackasses these lying propagandists are when someone of average intelligence on the opposite side is capable of demolishing the vacuous and dishonest bad-faith point they're trying to endorse.

It's a wonder he's downplaying any such rhetoric through this impeachment investigation. He's done everything but blame minorities for it, somehow not moving past the Democrats for someone to point the finger at. Can't tell if that's a good sign or a bad one.

[HannibalBarca]

I appreciate the detailed evidence and outline format of our President's racism.  Normally I'd delve into further explanations as to why Trump is a symptom, not the cause, of this racism, but personal issues and work are taxing my time and patience, so I'll just add this brief exclamation to your thorough information:

Fuck Donald Trump.

[Skynet]

Using anti-Semitic dogwhistles in reinforcing negative stereotypes about Jews, such as portraying them as being the richest of the rich in the US regards to the wealth tax on multimillionaires, and also that Jews who work in real estate are "brutal killers,"

[Skynet]

This was pointed out in the news/trump thread, but another important addition is Trump's campaign team 88 ads on Facebook decrying antifa while using a red triangle. Said symbol has been used as a Nazi concentration camp designation for political dissidents.

The number 88 has connotations in white supremacist circles as code for "Heil Hitler."

[Skynet]

Trump has appointed 2 white supremacists to government roles as of mid-November.

[Skynet]

In furthering the conspiracy theory that the Trump supporters who violently attacked Capitol Hill were antifa members in disguise, Trump's personal lawyer Rudi Guiliania cites a Neo-Nazi by name as his information source.

For those not in the know, Fuentes is a long-time white supremacist whose YouTube channel was banned for hate speech. He questioned the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust, and says that he avoids using the term "white nationalist" to self-reference purely for "tactical reasons."

Here's a deeper article on the man.

(use "open incognito window" if hit with a paywall).

[Skynet]

A book by a former White House Chief of Starff writes that Trump had some positive views of Adolf Hitler, claiming that the infamous dictator "did a lot of good things." Even when others attempted to correct him on this, Trump was undeterred.

[gaggedLouise]

A new book about Trump during last year and his conduct during and after the election season makes shocking but depressingly likely allegations from a couple of eyewitness sources, It turns out that in May last year, when Trump emerged from the White House Bunker where he had hunkered down during the early BLM protests in DC, he was furious that it had leaked to the press where he was. At conferences with his chief of staff and other close aides, he yelled that he wanted the ones who had leaked to the press identified, caught and..."they should be executed for treason!".

Why am I not surprised that Trump sees it as his personal prerogative, and a quick fix, to have anyone who stands up to him or tells unpleasant things about him to the media, hanged? (I bet he would want it to be in public, too - makes so much better tv!)

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/13/politics/trump-white-house-bunker-leak-executed-treason-book-claims/index.html

[Haibane]

Unless you were to vote in Stalin, Hitler or someone like Idi Amin I really can't think of a more dysfunctional and inappropriate person to run a country than Trump. And I don't mean the most powerful country on the planet; I mean any country. Fuck. Even a small town where he was mayor would become a petty hell. He was just ... completely unfit. I mean completely, in personality, mental ability and experience ... on so many levels to hold such power. The fact that intelligent people in the GOP must have seen this, yet allowed it to proceed is really bothersome.

I often sit and pause to think how it happened. What was the process by which the GOP chose to rally behind him and promote him as a presidential candidate?

Has anyone got a good book recommendation on this period in American politics - the period between where Trump was nothing but an obnoxious TV celeb and the moment he was accelerated towards the Presidency? The idiot-psychology of this interface fascinates me.

[Oniya]

There have been a number of books written about the 2016 election - enough that Wikipedia has a special category for them.  I'm sure that all of them have their biases - although I was somewhat surprised to see one published as early as 2017.

[Lexandria]

I think they thought he was someone they could control. By the time they realized they couldn't they were already all in and couldn't back out.

[Haibane]

I think they thought he was someone they could control. By the time they realized they couldn't they were already all in and couldn't back out.

For the democratic west, isn't that the most tragic fuck up since, well... some asshole shot Lincoln?

[Lexandria]

For the democratic west, isn't that the most tragic fuck up since, well... some asshole shot Lincoln?

Lots of folks in politics are making mistakes lately and refusing to be adults about going "yeah, this was a mistake, I'll own it. Here's what I'm going to do to be better gluing forward". The majority of the GOP (particularly Graham and Cruz, who had really accurate stuff to say about Trump before) are operating in that way. Some democrats in other ways too, but the Trump thing is...real bad.

[TheGlyphstone]

They're also a slave to their base, as well. The vast majority of the GOP voting populace is still incredibly devoted to the man. If they own up and admit their error, the voters will turn on them as traitors like they have every other GOP politician who showed sense.

[legomaster00156]

They're also a slave to their base, as well. The vast majority of the GOP voting populace is still incredibly devoted to the man. If they own up and admit their error, the voters will turn on them as traitors like they have every other GOP politician who showed sense.

It's worth noting that their base has actual radical extremists in its core. For as much as they talk about the radical left, the radical right is much more prominent in American politics: those willing to actually threaten or, God forbids, act upon violence. Remember, on January 6th, there were groups of armed extremists planning to execute Democratic politicians and what they saw as Republican collaborators.

[Saria]

They're also a slave to their base, as well. The vast majority of the GOP voting populace is still incredibly devoted to the man. If they own up and admit their error, the voters will turn on them as traitors like they have every other GOP politician who showed sense.

No doubt it’s true that a party is somewhat moved by their base… but I think it’s a grave mistake to forget that the base is also moved by the party, too.

A political party is not just a completely neutral entity that is given direction by what its base wants. The party not only selects its base, it also conditions them. The most obvious mechanism is by given them narratives and talking points they can use, but it goes much deeper than that. The party leadership decides what is within their “concern bubble” and what they don’t really give a shit about, what is okay to criticize and what is sacred and must not be questioned, and what is within limits to say and what is not.

They don’t usually communicate these strategies and limits to their base explicitly, but rather send subtle signals and dog whistles. So of course there are people who misread the signals and think the party stands for something it really doesn’t. But this is actually exceptionally rare. Much more common is the case where someone has quite correctly read the signals, and picked up on the subtle hints of support, but then goes and acts indelicately and says the quiet part out loud.

What I’m saying is: It is not some random happenstance that the GOP’s base consists of barely literate racist morons, impotently enraged entitled assholes, and violently stupid fascist bigots. This is the base the GOP wanted. This is the base they cultivated and nurtured, going all the way back to the “southern strategy”, right through the Reagan era, and into the age of progressively dimmer dimwit Republican presidents. Even after each violent, anti-democratic insurrection (and, I hope I don’t have to remind you, there have been several; January 6th was only the most spectacular), you won’t see any effort by Republican leadership to soul-search or to take steps to change anything because this is the way they want it. The Republicans don’t want an investigation into the January 6th insurrection, because they already know what it will turn up, and they don’t want a spotlight shone on their dark underbelly.

And don’t be so naïve as to think they “screwed up” by creating this zeitgeist they’re now entangled in, or that they “regret” creating the toxic base they have. The GOP still has full or partial control over just about every level of government and the courts, and wherever Democrats currently have power, they’re clinging to it by a bare thread. To put it bluntly, sorry America, it’s over. If you think you’re in a fight to stop the bad guys from taking over your country, newsflash: the bad guys already won. As fucked up as the situation may appear to a sensible observer to be for the GOP… it’s all actually going pretty well for them (at least for now; those who look a few decades into the future can see a radically different political landscape… but that doesn’t matter now, and right now the GOP is consciously and meticulously putting in measures to retain control even when the voting demographic shifts against them).

No doubt there are individual Republicans who feel uncomfortable at the monster the Party has birthed and become… but don’t even for a second feel any sympathy for those shitstains either. Remember, no one “trips and falls” into becoming a member of the Republican Party. If someone is a member of the party, they looked what the Republican Party is, and what the Republican Party has been doing for the last half-century, and they said, “yeah, I want to be a part of that”. Take Liz Cheney for example, who right now is being held up as some kind of principled martyr for being kicked out of the party for criticizing Trump. How quickly it has been forgotten that Liz Cheney is a lying sack of shit; a supporter of the Iraq war, even decades every everyone else realized it was a lie; a proponent of torture; a racist who (along with Trump) peddled bullshit about Obama not being truly American; a homophobe, hated even by her own sister… I could go on.

So yes, the Republican Party’s base is a cesspool… but the Republican Party dug it, and set up the pipes that feed the shit into it. They are not “slaves” to their base; they are the masters of their base. They created their base, they nurtured it, and they continue to nurture it… and protect it (for example, but not allowing an investigation into January 6th). And they in turn reap the benefits of having that base.

As comforting as it would be to be able to lay the blame for the current mess on a handful of extremists or just the rotten core of a generally okay base, or even a handful of scumbag politicians at the top, every member of the Republican Party—past or present—and everyone who supports or supported the Party is responsible for the current situation. The Party didn’t just becomes a dumpster fire spontaneously in the last four or five years, the trash has been piling up for decades, and anyone who “failed” to see it was either remarkably ignorant, or (far more likely) wilfully blind.

[Vekseid]

What I’m saying is: It is not some random happenstance that the GOP’s base consists of barely literate racist morons, impotently enraged entitled assholes, and violently stupid fascist bigots. This is the base the GOP wanted. This is the base they cultivated and nurtured, going all the way back to the “southern strategy”, right through the Reagan era, and into the age of progressively dimmer dimwit Republican presidents. Even after each violent, anti-democratic insurrection (and, I hope I don’t have to remind you, there have been several; January 6th was only the most spectacular), you won’t see any effort by Republican leadership to soul-search or to take steps to change anything because this is the way they want it. The Republicans don’t want an investigation into the January 6th insurrection, because they already know what it will turn up, and they don’t want a spotlight shone on their dark underbelly.

Never do any soul-searching, you say?

They'll reflect when they once again face consequences for their actions.

And don’t be so naïve as to think they “screwed up” by creating this zeitgeist they’re now entangled in, or that they “regret” creating the toxic base they have. The GOP still has full or partial control over just about every level of government and the courts, and wherever Democrats currently have power, they’re clinging to it by a bare thread. To put it bluntly, sorry America, it’s over. If you think you’re in a fight to stop the bad guys from taking over your country, newsflash: the bad guys already won. As fucked up as the situation may appear to a sensible observer to be for the GOP… it’s all actually going pretty well for them (at least for now; those who look a few decades into the future can see a radically different political landscape… but that doesn’t matter now, and right now the GOP is consciously and meticulously putting in measures to retain control even when the voting demographic shifts against them).

Defeatist rhetoric gets us nowhere.

They've alienated two entire generations. They've built up conspiracies around ignoring a pandemic which is killing ten thousand of them a month through primary effects, and is taking out even more through secondary effects. Many of those it doesn't kill, it is ruining.

It isn't remotely a given that things will go their way in 2022, much less 2024. Unless people are convinced to give up, at least.

Meanwhile there are rising progressive and socialist movements in the US. Stopping these is a known science, but ironically it is a political third rail for either Republicans or Democrats to resolve. They are going to become very powerful over the next twenty years.

[Skynet]

Former President Trump made the claim that Israel "literally owned Congress" a decade ago, and "rightfully so," bemoaning how increased criticism of the country has made this not so anymore.

What Trump is doing here is to try and play both sides of anti-Semitism. Appealing to those who claim that Israel (and by extension Jewish people in general) secretly run the government, while also appealing to the "pro-Israel" anti-Semites who demand unquestioning support for that country's settler movement in order to fulfill the Rapture prophecy. He then pivots to complaining about Jewish people not voting for him in spite of all he's supposedly done for Israel, effectively linking support for the Israeli government's most right-wing policies as being an innate part of being Jewish.

"The biggest change I've seen in Congress is Israel literally owned Congress — you understand that — 10 years ago, 15 years ago. And it was so powerful. It was so powerful. And today it's almost the opposite," Trump told the conservative Ari Hoffman Show.

"You have between AOC and [Rep. Ilhan] Omar — and these people that hate Israel, they hate it with a passion — they're controlling Congress, and Israel is not a force in Congress anymore. I mean, it's just amazing. I've never seen such a change," Trump continued.

"And we're not talking about over a very long period of time, but I think you know exactly what I'm saying. They had such power, Israel had such power — and rightfully — over Congress, and now it doesn't. It's incredible, actually.

...

He would later say that he was surprised more Jews did not vote for him in the 2020 presidential election, telling ultra-Orthodox Ami magazine that "I did the [Golan] Heights, I did Jerusalem, and I did Iran — the Iran Deal was a disaster, right? And I also did many other things. Jewish people who live in the United States don't love Israel enough. Does that make sense to you? I'm not talking about Orthodox Jews. I believe we got 25 percent of the Jewish vote, and it doesn't make sense. It just seems strange to me."