A lot has been said around about what President Trump is or isn’t, and Blacks, immigrants and women especially have had strong opinions about his agenda toward anyone who isn’t a rich, white male. But a Quinnipiac University study released numbers to back it up.
Trump’s history prior to taking the nation’s (and the world’s) most powerful seat, and none of what he’s doing now seems farfetched. But, the hard numbers include that 55 percent of Americans believe Trump has emboldened people who hold racist beliefs to go public. Even 22 percent of Republican voters agreed.
And 49 percent believe he is racist, despite his “I’m the least racist person you’ll ever meet” comment.
His racism is evidenced by his lack of denouncing any white supremacists, like David Duke, who campaigned for him, or Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler’s deadly Charlottesville rally last year — and approved reboot later this summer. Trump stated there was blame on “many sides“ but supremacist demonstrators were “very fine people.”
During his campaign, he infamously told reporters about a Black Lives Matter protester who had been thrown out that “maybe he should’ve been roughed up.” And he called supporters who beat up a Latino man in Boston “very passionate.”
More recently, Trump basically threatened Maxine Waters, in addition to his constant insults of her IQ, by saying she needed to “be careful what she wished for.” Death threats later were revealed against Waters.
He also claimed he didn’t know where former President Barack Obama was born, as he purported the birther movement before and during his campaign. And Trump’s response to Black athletes who kneel because of the disproportionate killings of Black men: his Alabama speech was about NFL coaches that should say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!'”
Trump also refers to groups of minorities as monoliths — the Blacks, the Hispanics, the Muslims — separating them from their humanity, or in one case attributing them to being his property: At a campaign rally, Trump boasted that he had a Black supporter in the crowd, saying, “Look at my African American over here.”
Forty-four percent of respondents say that Trump has racist motives behind the immigration policies, and 83 percent of them say he should reunite immigrant families. Quinnipiac stated that 69 percent of Americans believe undocumented immigrants are not any more likely to commit crimes than citizens, which flies in the face of Trump’s notorious comments about “criminals” and “rapists.”
U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s order in 2017 to unseal Trump’s shady business deals was met with Trump’s comments about the Mexican judge being a “hater,” “very hostile” and someone who “railroaded him.”
“We’re building a wall between here and Mexico. The answer is, he is giving us very unfair rulings — rulings that people can’t even believe,” he said.
His hate extends to Muslims with examples of him retweeting of anti-Muslim hate videos last year, and most notably continuing to institute the travel ban against Muslim countries, and the proposed registration of Muslims where he was asked: “Is there a difference between requiring Muslims to register and Jews in Nazi Germany”
Trump responded, “You tell me.”
Hate crimes rose in the first year of his presidency after a 10-year lull.
