Earlier this week, UtahPolicy.com publisher LaVarr Webb wrote an editorial addressing whether President Donald Trump is a racist for telling four congresswomen of color to “go back,” where they came from.
In 1973, in one of the largest cases of its time, Donald Trump and his father Fred Trump were sued by the Department of Justice for racial discrimination at the Trump housing developments.
Donald Trump is a racist.
In the book, Trumped! The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump—His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall, Donald Trump talked about how he didn’t want black people handling his money; he wanted the guys with the yarmulkes.
Donald Trump is a racist.
In 1989 Donald Trump took out a full-page ad in all four major New York newspapers calling for the execution of the Central Park Five. After another man confessed to the crime and DNA evidence exonerated the five men, Trump continued to insist upon their guilt.
Donald Trump is a racist.
Gonzalo Curiel is a judge for the Southern District of California. Judge Curiel was born in Indiana and is of Mexican descent. Trump said Curiel could not be impartial and should recuse himself from cases involving Trump because Curiel was “Mexican.”
Donald Trump is a racist.
In 2017 at “The Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, white supremacists carried tiki-torches while chanting “Jews will not replace us.” They were met by a counter-protest in which 32-year-old Heather Heyer was killed when she was deliberately hit by a car driven by James Fields Jr. President Trump said of the protesters, “There were very fine people, on both sides.”
Donald Trump is a racist.
Donald Trump elevated his current political career by propagating the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was born outside the United States. He reluctantly conceded that it was a lie in 2016.
As President, Donald Trump has employed undocumented workers. The workers claimed they were underpaid or not paid at all while working extra hours at Trump’s properties. The exploitation of migrant labor while railing against illegal immigration is racism.
The question should not be, is Donald Trump a racist? The question should be, why are there no consequences for Donald Trump for his racism in the White House?
In 2007, more than a year before the election of Barack Obama, Imus in the Morning host Don Imus and his producer Bernard McGuirk were fired from CBS and NBC after calling players on the Rutgers women’s basketball team, “nappy-headed hos.”
With the election of Barack Obama, conspiracy theories began that accused the nation’s first black president of being anti-America and a secret plant from the Muslim Brotherhood to destroy America. Before Obama was even inaugurated in 2009, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh famously said, “I hope he fails.” This was said at a time when America was deep in the throes of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
In 2009, Glenn Beck echoed the same sentiments about Obama. He once said, [Obama] “has a deep-seated hatred for white people or white culture,” after President Obama criticized a white police officer for arresting a prominent black Harvard professor for attempting to break into his own home. Limbaugh said Obama’s criticism of the officer amounted to, “a black president trying to destroy a white policeman.” Many of those who shared these views flocked to right-wing media. Imus in the Morning found a home with AM radio, RFD-TV and later Fox News Business.
Beck and Limbaugh did not lose their jobs. White America felt aggrieved by the nation’s first black president. The rhetoric spoke to their fears about a changing America that could elect a black president with an unusual name. This created an opening for Donald Trump.
Wednesday night, at his campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina, President Trump continued his attack on Freshman Congresswoman Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somalian-American who immigrated to the United States as a refugee when she was a little girl. The crowd chanted, “SEND HER BACK!”
It does not matter if you or I believe Donald Trump is racist. The racists believe Donald Trump is racist and in him, they have an ally in the White House.
