A denunciation of Donald Trump
Donald Trump, due to arrive in the UK later today, is a racist, a serial liar, and either a sexual abuser or someone who falsely brags about being one in the apparent belief that this will impress other men.
To take each of these charges in turn, when black American football players protested against police shootings of innocent people of colour by refusing to stand for the national anthem, Trump said the players “maybe ... shouldn’t be in the country”. And when white supremacists, neo-nazis and armed militia groups demonstrated in Virginia over plans to remove a statue of a Confederate general – and a counter-protester was killed and others injured as a car was driven deliberately into them – Mr Trump claimed there were “very fine people” on both sides. Trump persistently pushed the lie that Barack Obama, the first African American president, was not born in the US. He has called for “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”, claimed Mexican immigrants were rapists and criminals, said Nigerians would never go back to “their huts” after seeing the US and described African countries as “s***holes”. Trump also argued that an Indiana-born judge handling a lawsuit against ‘Trump University’ was biased against him and unfit to take the case because he was a “Mexican”.
One of Trump’s favourite pastimes is decrying “fake news”. But, according to one count by The Washington Post, the president lies an average of 6.5 times a day. The New York Times has also tried to make a definitive list of his numerous falsehoods. In May, Rex Tillerson, sacked as US Secretary of State in a Trump tweet, warned: “If our leaders seek to conceal the truth, or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom.”
Before his presidency, Trump was recorded saying he was able to grope women whenever he liked because “when you’re a star they let you do it”. When the tape emerged, Trump said his boast was untrue and just “locker room” talk. And when several women came forward to say he had done this to them, he insisted they were lying.
Our political leaders might hide their distaste in the coming days in an attempt to get a much-needed post-brexit trade deal, but we should not forget what kind of man Trump really is.