“not all Trump supporters are racist, but all of them decided that
racism isn’t a deal-breaker”)
Mehdi Hasan reports the news. Donald Trump leads a nation.
Does that help, Richard?
What Mehdi Hasan writes down is what he believes he has heard. We
have the choice of believing him or not. Donald Trump was elected as
President of the USA, based upon his many promises to the working men
and women. Mehdi Hasan has never run for the job, nor made wild
promises of returning the nation back to its "Greatness".
Mehdi Hasan has gone about seriously researching the news of the day,
and reporting it, along with his views. Donald Trump declares war on
the Media...meaning those reporters who challenge him. Mehdi Hasan is
no threat to the USA, or to any government. Donald Trump has
threatened North Korea with destruction like never before on Earth.
He has threatened Iran with the same. He has begun shutting down
relations between the USA and Cuba. He has threatened to drop bombs
on Venezuela. He has even gone so far as to advise American Police
Officers to not be too gentle when arresting people(guilty until
proven guilty). And of course we see how much he appears to admire
president Rodrigo Duterte, of the Philippines. The Russian waters are
so muddy that we're never sure if Donald Trump is "working them", or
being worked. And of course there is his great example of crotch
grabbing. Just one of those, Boys will be Boys, moments.
Other than that, skipping past his opening the nation's coffers to his
Privateers, Donald Trump appears to have the nation's best interest at
heart...and all the Capital, that goes along with the interest.
Carl Jarvis
Mehdi Hasan, Born
Mehdi Raza Hasan
1979 (age 37–38)
On 8/20/17, Bob Hachey <bhachey@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Dick,
Please explain.
Bob
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of R. E. Driscoll
Sr
Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2017 7:14 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Donald Trump Has Been a
Racist All His Life — And He Isn’t Going to Change After Charlottesville
My goodness it appears to me Mr Hasan is as dangerous Mr. Trump!
Richard
Sent from my iPhone
On Aug 19, 2017, at 5:03 PM, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
© First Look Media. All rights reservedTerms of use Mehdi _Hasan White
nationalist demonstrators walk into the entrance of Lee Park
surrounded by counter demonstrators in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday,
Aug. 12, 2017. Gov. Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency and
police dressed in riot gear ordered people to disperse after chaotic
violent clashes between white nationalists and counter protestors. (AP
Photo/Steve Helber)
Photo: Steve Helber/AP
Donald Trump Has Been a Racist All His Life — And He Isn’t Going to
Change After Charlottesville
Mehdi Hasan
August 15 2017, 12:37 p.m.
Leia em português ⟶
“Racism is evil,” declared Donald Trump on Monday, “and those who cause
violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK,
neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to
everything we hold dear as Americans.”
OK, “declared” may be too strong a word for what we heard from the
president. “Stated” is perhaps a better descriptor. “Read out” might be
the most accurate of all. Trump made these “additional remarks” with great
reluctance and only after two days of intense criticism from both the
media and senior Republicans over his original remarks blaming “many
sides” for the neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. The words
were not his own: they were scripted by aides and delivered with the
assistance of a teleprompter. The president reserved his personal,
off-the-cuff ire on Monday for the black CEO of Merck, not for the white
fascists of Virginia.
Much of the frenzied media coverage of what CNN dubbed “48 hours of
turmoil for the Trump White House” has overlooked one rather crucial
point: Trump doesn’t like being forced to denounce racism for the very
simple reason that he himself is, and always has been, a racist.
Consider the first time the president’s name appeared on the front page of
the New York Times, more than 40 years ago. “Major Landlord Accused of
Antiblack Bias in City,” read the headline of the A1 piece on Oct. 16,
1973, which pointed out how Richard Nixon’s Department of Justice had sued
the Trump family’s real estate company in federal court over alleged
violations of the Fair Housing Act.
“The government contended that Trump Management had refused to rent or
negotiate rentals ‘because of race and color,’” the Times revealed.
“It also charged that the company had required different rental terms
and conditions because of race and that it had misrepresented to
blacks that apartments were not available.” (Trump later settled with
the government without accepting responsibility.)
Over the next four decades, Trump burnished his reputation as a bigot: he
was accused of ordering “all the black [employees] off the floor” of his
Atlantic City casinos during his visits; claimed “laziness is a trait in
blacks” and “not anything they can control”; requested Jews “in yarmulkes”
replace his black accountants; told Bryan Gumbel that “a well-educated
black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of
the job market”; demanded the death penalty for a group of black and
Latino teenagers accused of raping a jogger in Central Park (and, despite
their later exoneration with the use of DNA evidence, has continued to
insist they are guilty); suggested a Native American tribe “don’t look
like Indians to me”; mocked Chinese and Japanese trade negotiators by
doing an impression of them in broken English; described undocumented
Mexican immigrants as “rapists”; compared Syrian refugees to “snakes”;
defended two supporters who assaulted a homeless Latino man as “very
passionate” people “who love this country”; pledged to ban a quarter of
humanity from entering the United States; proposed a database to track
American Muslims that he himself refused to distinguish from the Nazi
registration of German Jews; implied Jewish donors “want to control”
politicians and are all sly negotiators; heaped praise on the “amazing
reputation” of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has blamed America’s
problems on a “Jewish mafia”; referred to a black supporter at a campaign
rally as “my African-American”; suggested the grieving Muslim mother of a
slain U.S. army officer “maybe … wasn’t allowed” to speak in public about
her son; accused an American-born Hispanic judge of being “a Mexican”;
retweeted anti-Semitic and anti-black memes, white supremacists, and even
a quote from Benito Mussolini; kept a book of Hitler’s collected speeches
next to his bed; declined to condemn both David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan;
and spent five years leading a “birther” movement that was bent on
smearing and delegitimizing the first black president of the United
States, who Trump also accused of being the founder of ISIS.
Oh and remember: we knew all of this before he was elected president of
the United States of America. He was elected in spite of all this (yet
another reminder that “not all Trump supporters are racist, but all of
them decided that racism isn’t a deal-breaker”).
RICHMOND, VA - JUNE 10: A man wears a shirt with a confederate flag on
it as Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally
at the Richmond Coliseum in Richmond, VA on Friday June 10, 2016. (Photo
by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images) A supporter wears
a shirt with a confederate flag as Republican presidential candidate
Donald Trump speaks during a rally at the Richmond Coliseum in Richmond,
Va., June 10, 2016.
Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty Images
Some had hoped that Trump would be moderated by office; there was much
talk of a presidential pivot. It was all utter nonsense and wishful
thinking from lazy commentators who have found it difficult to cover, and
call out, a president who regularly traffics in racially charged rhetoric
while surrounding himself with an array of race-baiting advisers. Since
entering the Oval Office, Trump has appointed Steve Bannon — former
executive chairman of Breitbart News, which has stories tagged ‘Black
Crime’ — as his White House chief strategist, and Jeff Sessions — who was
once accused of calling a black official in Alabama a “nigger” — as his
attorney general; he has claimed, without a shred of evidence, that
millions of immigrants “voted illegally” for Hillary Clinton; and, perhaps
most shocking of all, he has publicly and repeatedly belittled
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has claimed Native American
heritage, as “Pocahontas.”
This is Racism 101 from a sitting U.S. president. And it is the stark and
undeniable truth, and key context, that is missing from much of the
coverage of the political fallout from Charlottesville. Journalists,
opinion formers, members of Congress, and members of the public continue
to treat Trump as they would any previous president — they expect their
head of government to come out and condemn racism with passion, vigor,
speed, and sincerity. But what do you do if the president is himself a
long-standing purveyor of racism and xenophobia? What then? Do you still
demand he condemn and castigate what is essentially his base? Do you
continue to feign shock and outrage over his lack of shock and outrage?
Yes, the U.S. has had plenty of presidents in recent decades who have
dog-whistled to racists and bigots, and even incited hate against
minorities — think Nixon’s Southern Strategy, Reagan and his “welfare
queens,” George H.W. Bush and the Willie Horton ad, and the Clintons and
their “super-predators” — but there has never been a modern president so
personally steeped in racist prejudices, so unashamed to make bigoted
remarks in public and with such a long and well-documented record of
racial discrimination.
So can we stop playing this game where journalists demand Trump condemns
people he agrees with and Trump then pretends to condemn them in the
mildest of terms? I hate to say this, but it is worth paying attention to
the leader of the Virginia KKK, who told a reporter in August 2016: “The
reason a lot of Klan members like Donald Trump is because a lot of what he
believes, we believe in.”
So can we stop pretending that Trump isn’t Trump? That the presidency has
changed him, or will change him? It hasn’t and it won’t. There will be no
reset; no reboot; no pivot. This president may now be going through the
motions of (belatedly) denouncing racism, with his scripted statements and
vacuous tweets. But here’s the thing: why would you expect a lifelong
racist to want to condemn or crack down on other racists? Why assume a
person whose entire life and career has been defined by racially motivated
prejudice and racial discrimination, by hostility toward immigrants,
foreigners, and minorities, would suddenly be concerned by the rise of
prejudice and discrimination on his watch? It is pure fantasy for
politicians and pundits to suppose that Trump will ever think or behave as
anything other than the bigot he has always been — and, in more recent
years, as an apologist for other bigots, too.
We would do well to heed the words of those who have spent decades
studying this bizarre president. “Donald is a 70-year-old man,” Trump
biographer David Cay Johnston reminded me in the run-up to his
inauguration in January. “I’m 67. I’m not going to change and neither is
Donald.”
Top photo: White nationalist demonstrators walk into the entrance of
Lee Park surrounded by counter
