"On Saturday morning, a gunman at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, shot and killed
at least 20 people before surrendering to the police.
By all
accounts,
Patrick Crusius, the 21-year-old alleged shooter, is a
fan of President Donald Trump and his policies. According to the
Southern Poverty Law Center, a “Twitter account bearing the suspect’s name contains liked tweets that include a ‘BuildTheWall’ hashtag, a photo using guns to spell out ‘Trump,'” and more.
Incredibly, the nation woke up to more grim news on Sunday, with reports that a man suited up in body armor and bearing a rifle with high-capacity magazines had carried out a rampage in Dayton, Ohio, killing at least nine people and injuring 26.
Little is known yet about the Dayton shooter, but a
four-page manifesto authorities believe was written by Crusius and posted shortly before the El Paso attack is full of the kind of hateful rhetoric and ideas that have flourished under Trump.
The manifesto declares the imminent attack “a response to the Hispanic invasion,” accuses Democrats of “pandering to the Hispanic voting bloc,” rails against “traitors,” and condemns “race mixing” and “interracial unions.” “Yet another reason to send them back,” it says.
Sound familiar? The president of the United States — who
condemned the El Paso attack on Twitter — has repeatedly referred to an
“invasion” at the southern border; condemned Mexican immigrants as “
rapists” and Syrian refugees as “
snakes”; accused his critics of treason on
at least two dozen occasions; and
told four elected women of color to “go back” to the “crime infested places from which they came.” (It is worth noting that Crusius, in his alleged manifesto, claims his views “predate” and are unrelated to Trump but then goes on to attack “fake news.”)
That there could be a link between the attacker and the president should come as no surprise. But it might. Over the past four years, both mainstream media organizations and leading Democrats have failed to draw a clear line between Trump’s racist rhetoric and the
steadily multiplying acts of domestic terror across the United States. Some of us tried to
sound the
alarm — but to no avail.
“Cesar Sayoc was not the first Trump supporter who allegedly tried to kill and maim those on the receiving end of Trump’s demonizing rhetoric,” I wrote last October, in the concluding lines of my
column on the arrest of the so-called #MAGAbomber. “And, sadly, he won’t be the last.”
How I wish I could have been proven wrong. Yet since the publication of that piece almost a year ago, which listed the names of more than a dozen Trump supporters accused of horrific violence, from the
neo-Nazi murderer of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville to the
Quebec City mosque shooter, there have been more and more MAGA-inspired attacks. In January, four men were
arrested for a plot to attack a small Muslim community in upstate New York — one of them,
according to the Daily Beast, “was an avid Trump supporter online, frequently calling for ‘Crooked Hillary’ Clinton to be arrested and urging his followers to watch out for Democratic voter fraud schemes when they cast their ballots for Trump in 2016.”
In March, a far right gunman murdered
51 Muslims in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand — and left behind a document describing Muslim immigrants as “
invaders” and Trump as “
a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.”
And now, this latest massacre in El Paso. Let’s be clear: In an age of rising domestic terrorism cases — the majority of which are motivated by “
white supremacist violence,” according to FBI Director Christopher Wray — Trump is nothing less than a threat to our collective security.
More and
more commentators now refer, for example, to the phenomenon of “stochastic terrorism” —
originally defined by an anonymous blogger back in 2011 as “the use of mass communications to incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are
statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.”
Sounds pretty Trumpian, right? As I
wrote in October: “The president may not be pulling the trigger or planting the bomb, but he is enabling much of the hatred behind those acts. He is giving aid and comfort to angry white men by offering them clear targets — and then failing to fully denounce their violence.”
And as I pointed out
on CNN earlier this year, there is a simple way for Trump to distance himself from all this: Give a speech denouncing white nationalism and the violence it has produced. Declare it a threat to national security. Loudly disown those who act in his name. Tone down the incendiary rhetoric on race, immigration, and Islam.
Trump, however, has done the exact opposite. In March, in the wake of the Christchurch massacre, the president said he did not consider white nationalism to be a rising threat, dismissing it as a “
small group of people.” A month earlier, in February, Trump was asked whether he would moderate his language after a white nationalist Coast Guard officer was
arrested over a plot to assassinate leading journalists and Democrats. “I think my language is very nice,” he
replied.
In recent weeks, the president has again launched nakedly
racist and
demagogic attacks on a number of black and brown members of Congress, not to mention the
black-majority city of Baltimore. When his cultish supporters responded to his
attack on Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., with chants of “
send her back,” Trump
stood and watched and later referred to them as “
patriots.”
So we’re supposed to be surprised or shocked that white nationalist violence is
rising on his watch? That hate crimes against almost every minority group have
increased since his election to the White House in 2016?
On Tuesday, just days before this latest act of terror in El Paso, the leaders of the Washington National Cathedral issued a scathing, and startlingly prescient,
rebuke of Trump:
Make no mistake about it, words matter. And, Mr. Trump’s words are dangerous.
These words are more than a “dog-whistle.” When such violent dehumanizing words come from the President of the United States, they are a clarion call, and give cover, to white supremacists who consider people of color a sub-human “infestation” in America. They serve as a call to action from those people to keep America great by ridding it of such infestation. Violent words lead to violent actions.
Thanks to his hate-filled rhetoric, his relentless incitement of violence, and his refusal to acknowledge the surge in white nationalist terrorism, the president poses a clear and present danger to the people, and especially the minorities, of the United States."
~~~~~
UPDATE/EDIT: ~ From CNN: videos on linkWhen We'll Know If Trump Means What He Says About Supremacyby, Frida Ghitis - 08/05/19 "Facing a country raw with pain and seething with anger after two more massacres that left dozens dead, President Donald Trump stood in front of a teleprompter and gave a fairly good speech Monday. It was commendable that the President unequivocally declared, "In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy."
On the surface it was a call for national unity against bigotry. But the implicit — perhaps more important message — was that he, too, condemns it.
Amid a groundswell of accusations that Trump's own rhetoric helped fuel the El Paso massacre, the President was telling Americans that he is not a racist, a bigot, a white supremacist.
It is remarkable that we have to feel relief when the President disavows racism. It is astonishing that his disavowal is so hard to believe.
We have heard Trump read the right words from a teleprompter before, only to watch him turn around and retract them shortly thereafter. We will not know if anything has really changed until we hear what he declares to supporters in a rally, or when he speaks extemporaneously.
Just a few days ago, Trump stood before a roaring crowd of adoring supporters who chanted, "Send her back!" as they embraced his racist call for Democratic congresswomen of color to leave the country. Amid the public uproar that followed, and under pressure, Trump
claimed he was "not happy" with the chant. The next day he told the truth,
defending the crowd and attacking the congresswoman they wanted to deport.
He did the same after neo-Nazi thugs marched in Charlottesville. First, he condemned the KKK and the neo-Nazis, but then he gave us his immortal words, claiming there were "some
very fine people on both sides."
By now, Americans know Trump. And they know his effect on the most radical of his followers. A man who mailed pipe bombs to CNN and other targets of Trump's contempt "found light in Donald J. Trump," according to the man's lawyers. The El Paso killer, now being investigated as perpetrating a terrorist attack, is believed to have posted a manifesto using language reminiscent of Trump's warnings about "
infestations" and "
invasions" of migrants, to explain why he was about to go on a killing rampage, though it said his views predated Trump's presidency.
After national tragedies, it has been one of the jobs of American presidents to comfort, to mourn alongside the people. Trump's 10-minute speech, suffused with many of the right words, sought to officially placed him alongside Americans who are outraged and heartbroken.
But it's not surprising that millions will hear the words with deep skepticism, waiting to see if Trump reverses course when the script is out of reach. We will not know if he really believes what he said until we hear him speaking to another hall filled with devoted followers. We will be watching for the dog whistles in his tweets. Will he issue more racist statements shielded in a thin verbal veneer of plausible deniability?
Trump's speech proposed action to prevent more killings. He suggested imposing the death penalty for hate crimes and talked about the dangers of video games and the Internet. But he didn't offer much in the way of gun control, in contrast with earlier tweets in which he claimed he was prepared to
support vigorous background checks for gun buyers.
America suffered hundreds of mass killings before Trump became president. That is the result of out-of-control access to deadly weapons. We know that because other countries have the internet, video games, mental illness and other factors that the NRA and its supporters frequently cite to explain the killings. But only the US has this arsenal of guns and this many gun deaths. (And a Congress refusing to act, as people die.)
In the past couple of years, something has changed. What used to be random killings have become terrorist attacks, driven by a political ideology.
To stop this wave, the country needs gun control and a determined campaign against the ideology of white supremacy. Trump's speech sounded like an effort to position the President on the right side, against that ideology. But it's too soon to know if we can believe he will not continue to promote it."
~~~~~
Please note Frida, it is not too soon to know if we can believe he will not continue to promote it. He is a con man, a liar...please get real. I mean, look at his eyes in those videos, he is hating every second and angry he has to read what he considers trash from a teleprompter, there is no sincerity, none. Frida, he is a perpetual pathological liar. Love, Maggie P.S. Look what's up in Gilroy these days. end edit.
