Trump slams foreign threats but enables the enemies within
ONCE again, a piece of America was turned into a war zone. And once again, the victims were innocent people going about their everyday lives, this time mostly elderly people practising their religion.
The murder of 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue marked a week of extraordinary violence in the United States.
For the most part, the country was left on edge as an alleged white supremacist sent 14 pipe bombs to two former Presidents, celebrities and anyone else they felt opposed Donald Trump.
Elsewhere a man killed two black people at a grocery store in Kentucky. The shooter had tried to enter a black church minutes earlier.
The alleged gunman, Gregory Bush, is claimed to have spared one man’s life due to the colour of his skin, telling him “whites don’t kill whites”.
But while Trump and his administration will have you believe any threat to the States will likely come from those abroad, the danger it now faces has nothing to do with the likes of the Central Americans currently walking north.
As Trump rails against foreigners and refugees, it’s important to remember that the pipe bomb suspect, Cesar Sayoc, is not a foreign terrorist.
Nor is mass murder suspect Robert Bowers, who allegedly shouted “all Jews must die” after he burst into the Pittsburgh synagogue, nor is Gregory Bush.
They are not Mexicans, Muslims or refugees – they are Americans who grew to hate anyone who doesn’t think as they do.
No one will know whether these events would have happened without President Trump’s rhetoric over the last two years.
It’s true that political violence is nothing new. There have been anthrax and ricin scares, mass shootings. There have also been violent protests that turned deadly, and assassinations.
You can’t just look at whomever the perpetrator supports and say they are culpable.
The fact is, Trump’s aggression is without equal in American politics, making it reasonable to ask whether he is helping to bring about a level of division that has not been seen in the States since the 1960s.
It is why many Jewish leaders in Pittsburgh said Trump was not welcome in their city when he visited those affected by the massacre on Tuesday.
It seems even in times of terror, the US leader is tone deaf to the hatred he now presides over.
Shortly after Sayoc’s arrest, the President stood in front of a group of young, black conservatives and snickered at the chants “lock him up” about George Soros, the billionaire who was among those sent explosives in the mail.
He then said he has no plans to tone down his rhetoric. “I could really tone it up,” he boasted before noting the alleged bomber “was a person that preferred me over others”.
Then, immediately after the mass murder in Pittsburgh, Trump travelled to Indianapolis to give a speech to the Future Farmers of America, where he said he nearly called off the rally as he was having a “bad hair day”.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, there was a 57% increase in anti-Semitic incidents in 2017.
That same year, President Trump infamously said there were some “fine people” among the white supremacists and neo-nazis marching in Charlottesville, one of whom drove into a crowd, killing a young woman protesting against them.
Nobody wins from such unrestrained vitriol, it serves, as has been shown, only to put lives at risk.
It’s very hard to think of a leader in American history who has been as aggressively divisive as this one.
Trump isn’t making America great again, he’s making it hate again.