No doubts this time... the US president is a racial bigot
IT was something you’d expect ripped from a white supremacist manifesto and spoken by a grandmaster of the Ku Klux Klan rather than the leader of the free world.
But Donald Trump’s attack on four elected US congresswomen saying they should “go back and fix the totally broken and crimeinfested places from which they came”, was one of the lowest moments of his presidency.
As it happens, three of the four were born in the US, and the fourth is a duly naturalised citizen. All are, however, women of colour.
Although none were named, Trump directed his attack at the “squad” of four outspoken first-term representatives: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib.
The assault was straight out of the Trump playbook – whenever a promise fails to materialise – deflect and distract.
Sunday’s outburst was no different.
It came after his much boasted about mass immigration raids fell embarrassingly flat, growing criticism of migrant children locked up in detention centres and sex-trafficking charges against former close friend Jeffrey Epstein.
But to anyone who has been paying attention, Trump’s offensive comments tweeted before a Sunday round of golf were shocking but not surprising.
Despite him later saying: “Those Tweets were NOT Racist. I don’t have a Racist bone in my body,” the truth is he has traded in bigotry throughout his career in business and politics.
As long ago as 1973, the Justice Department sued him and his father for systematically discriminating against blacks in housing rentals. Trump went on to call for the death penalty for the black youths accused in the infamous 1989 “Central Park Five” rape case, who were later proved innocent.
More recently, he fuelled the ridiculous “birther” movement that falsely disputed the legitimacy of Barack Obama as the first AfricanAmerican president.
In Trump’s mind, it was such a winning formula he built his presidential campaign on resentment against Muslims, Mexicans and migrants.
He has since characterised poorer countries run by blacks as “s*** holes”, and after a deadly neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, said there were “very fine people” on both sides.
The list goes on.
So frequent are Trump’s attacks, it is tempting to ignore them.
He’s a pathetic bully who will attack anyone he thinks is critical of him.
But, until now, the world has given him the benefit of the doubt about being a racist.
No matter how much I’ve come to dislike him, I didn’t want to think that the President of the United States is a racial bigot.
But now he had left no doubt.
His anger and outright racism, roiled in a toxic mix, have given the world a racist US president.
Telling four non-white members of Congress to “go back” to the “countries” they “originally came from” is discriminatory to the core.
It doesn’t matter what these representatives are for or against, it’s beyond the bounds of human decency for anyone, not least a president, to speak of them as he has.
Equally as bad is the deafening silence from his party’s leaders.
Republicans are silent not because they agree with the President but because they fear his wrath.
Trump is not some random, embittered person down the pub he’s the leader of the free world. By virtue of his office, he speaks for America.
And to think we gave him the honour of a State visit.
His anger and outright racism, roiled in a toxic mix, have given the world a racist US president...