Catalog of Trump's Rhetoric Dividing US on Race
Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2020 1:18 am
I'm certain this isn't even half complete, so feel free to add anything that's missing
October 7, 2016 – Donald Trump reiterated his false claim that the young men known as the “Central Park Five” were guilty of sexually assaulting a jogger in 1989, despite DNA evidence that exonerated them.
April 24, 2017 – In the six months since Donald Trump’s election, the Anti-Defamation League reported anti-Semitic attacks had risen 86 percent. These attacks included grave desecrations, bomb threats, and assaults. https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases ... ar-in-2017
June 6, 2017 – In more than 50 cases nationwide, children were heard bullying classmates with calls for deportation, references to Donald Trump’s name, and blatantly racist language. One eight-year-old girl in California said to a black classmate, “Now that Trump won, you’re going to have to go back to Africa, where you belong.” https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertsamaha/k ... .nmJDl57lX
July 28, 2017 - Trump encouraged police to be very rough with detained suspects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nl00N6I5Ak
August 1, 2017 – The Trump campaign chose a noted white nationalist, William Johnson, to serve among California’s delegates for the next presidential election. Johnson leads the American Freedom Party, which operates with the stated mission of upholding “the customs and the heritage of European American People.” Johnson said after his appointment to the delegation, “I can be a white nationalist and be a strong supporter of Donald Trump and be a good example to everybody.” https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... alifornia/
August 12, 2017 – During the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, neo-Nazis and former Ku Klux Klan members carried tiki torches and shouted slogans including “The Jews Will Not Replace Us.” A white nationalist named James Alex Fields Jr. drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others in the process. After the attack and Heyer’s death, Trump he refused to explicitly rebuke the white nationalists. The president placed partial blame for the attack on the counter-protesters, condemning, “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.” https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/12/politics ... index.html
August 17, 2017 – Donald Trump lamented the removal of Confederate monuments, stating that such actions were “so foolish” and “sad.” He called these statues “beautiful” and spoke to the “history and culture of our great country being ripped apart.” He did not mention slavery in any of his tweets on the Confederacy.
August 20, 2017 – The Trump administration ended a $400,000 federal grant for Life After Hate, an organization devoted to eradicating white nationalism and helping young people escape white supremacist gang membership. The grant money was awarded annually by the Countering Violent Extremism task force. Originally founded in 2011 by Barack Obama, the CVE task force sought to combat a wide range of violent ideologies—from white nationalism to Islamic extremism—and presented $10 million in grant money to nonprofits pursuing that mission. Among all the CVE grant recipients, Life After Hate was the only one addressing white supremacy. The Trump administration defunded the group at a particularly pivotal moment: Life After Hate has reported a 20-fold increase in requests to help young white nationalists since Trump’s election. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/life-after ... istration/
August 25, 2017 – Donald Trump pardoned former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. An Arizona judge had convicted Arpaio of criminal contempt-of-court for “flagrant disregard” of a court order to cease and desist his practice of racially profiling Latinos. U.S District Judge G. Murray Snow noted Arpaio made “multiple intentional misstatements of fact under oath,” and also told local news stations he would ignore the injunction and “continue ‘doing what he had always been doing.’”
January 14, 2018 – Data suggests Trump's rhetoric encourages racial violence: "We find compelling evidence to support the Trump Effect hypothesis. Using time series analysis, we show that Donald Trump’s election in November of 2016 was associated with a statistically significant surge in reported hate crimes across the United States, even when controlling for alternative explanations. Further, by using panel regression techniques, we show that counties that voted for President Trump by the widest margins in the presidential election also experienced the largest increases in reported hate crimes." https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=3102652
January 16, 2018 – The Daily Stormer, a virulent white supremacist website, wrote that they found Trump’s policies “encouraging and refreshing,” and “Trump is more or less on the same page as us with regard to race and immigration.”
January 29, 2018 – White Supremacist propaganda on college campuses tripled in 2017, according to research conducted by the Anti-Defamation League. These instances varied from hanging banners adorned with swastikas to a full-fledged private speaking event—held on the campus of UC San Diego—called “A Brighter Future” which distributed pamphlets regarding “The Color of Crime” and “Protecting Our Heritage.”
https://www.adl.org/education/resources ... -on-campus
January 31, 2018 – Donald Trump’s first State of the Union Address received public praise from known white supremacists like David Duke and Richard Spencer. Following the speech, Spencer tweeted, “Trump said that he wants to maintain the “nuclear family” by ending chain migration. Basically, he’s implying the superiority of the Prostestent [sic] “wife and kids” over the South American and African extended family. Interesting rhetoric.”
February 21, 2018 – The Southern Poverty Law Center tracked a 4 percent increase in the number of hate groups during 2017. These groups represent a diverse set of ideologies, from anti-Muslim white supremacists to black nationalist organizations with hateful views toward LGBT and Jewish communities. The largest growth during Trump’s first year were in neo-Nazi circles; 22 new neo-Nazi chapters assembled across the nation during 2017.
April 18, 2018 – Donald Trump tweeted, “There is a Revolution going on in California. Soooo many Sanctuary areas want OUT of this ridiculous, crime infested & breeding concept. Jerry Brown is trying to back out of the National Guard at the Border, but the people of the State are not happy. Want Security & Safety NOW!” Though it was unclear what “breeding concept” referred to, the animalistic connotation of breeding, CNN commented, was clear: “Taken literally, the most likely explanation is that he’s talking about sanctuary cities as places where undocumented immigrants breed.”
August 13, 2018 – With the approaching publication of Omarosa Manigault Newman’s Unhinged, an account of working in the White House, Donald Trump went on a sexist, racist rant on Twitter, calling Omarosa “a dog” and “a crazed crying lowlife,” and claimed that she “begged [Trump] for a job, tears in her eyes.” Manigault Newman, a former Apprentice contestant and Trump aide who announced her resignation in December 2017 citing concerns with the administration, suggests in Unhinged that there are recordings of Trump using the N-word.
October 31, 2018 – Donald Trump tweeted a racist political ad depicting an undocumented immigrant who had been convicted of murdering two police officers. The ad featured the tagline, “Democrats let him into our country. Democrats let him stay.” Luis Bracamontes, the convicted man, had a history of crime and was originally released by a sheriff’s department that was headed by Republican Joe Arpaio. He later illegally re-entered the United States during the presidency of George W. Bush.
November 6, 2018 – A class-action lawsuit challenged the government’s detentions of migrants, including children kept in cages. Under Trump, more migrant children have been in government custody than at any time in American history.
November 8, 2018 – Trump introduced new laws denying asylum to migrants who enter the U.S. illegally, despite declining border crossings in recent years. Immigration advocates challenged the ban with a lawsuit, saying the proclamation would deny protection to thousands of vulnerable individuals.
December 6, 2018 – A New York Times story revealed that Trump employed undocumented workers for years at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. Immigrants worked as housekeepers, groundskeepers, waitstaff and stonemasons. Trump has frequently referred to illegal immigration a national crisis which, “hurts American workers; burdens American taxpayers; and undermines public safety; and places enormous strain on local schools, hospitals, and communities.”
December 7, 2018 – A seven-year-old girl from Guatemala died of dehydration and shock in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol. After the death of Jakelin Caal Maquin was made public, a White House spokesman said, “Does the administration take responsibility for a parent taking a child on a trek through Mexico to get to this country? No.”
December 25, 2018 – An eight-year-old from Guatemala died on Christmas Day in custody of Customs and Border Patrol. Felipe Gomez Alonso was the second child to die in a month while in U.S. custody. “So you have drugs, you have human trafficking,” Trump told reporters later in the day. “You have illegal people coming into our country. We can’t do that. We don’t know who they are.”
January 19, 2019 – A government watchdog report revealed that thousands more children were separated from their parents at the southern border than had been reported. The report also said that the Trump administration’s policy of separating children actually began months before it was announced. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... 603282002/
March 23, 2019 – Racial hate crimes skyrocketed 226% in countires where Trump held rallies. https://www.businessinsider.com/Trump-c ... aga-2019-3
May 9, 2019 – At a rally in Florida, Trump said, “How do you stop these people?” when referring to migrants at the border. An audience member yelled, “Shoot them!” The president then smirked and joked, “Only in the Panhandle!”
June 27, 2019 – Customs and Border Protection officers detained eighteen-year-old American Francisco Erwin Galicia for twenty-six days. Under Trump, border officials can now fast-track deportations. Galicia was carrying a Texas ID, a Social Security card, and a copy of his birth certificate.
July 1, 2019 – Roughly 9,500 current and former Border Patrol agents used a secret Facebook group for exchanging derogatory remarks about migrants and lawmakers, ProPublica revealed. Members of the group joked about migrants deaths, referred to Latina lawmakers as “scumbuckets” and “hoes,” and shared vulgar illustrations depicting U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
July 2, 2019 – The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General issued a report calling for immediate action to alleviate “dangerous overcrowding and prolonged detention” of migrants in the Rio Grande Valley. The report included photographs of migrants packed into cells and cages; in one photo, a man holds up a cardboard sign that reads “HELP.”
July 14, 2019 – In a series of tweets, Trump attacked four congresswomen of color: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley. He said they “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all).” Trump suggested that they “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” Ocasio-Cortez was born in New York, Tlaib in Detroit, and Pressley in Cincinnati.
July 17, 2019 – At a rally in North Carolina, Trump ridiculed U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s name. “No, no,” he said. “I don’t have time to go with three different names. We’ll call her Cortez.” Trump had made racist remarks about Ocasio-Cortez in the past. During the same rally, he criticized Representative Ilhan Omar and let the crowd chant “send her back” for thirteen seconds before continuing his speech.
July 27, 2019 – Trump attacked Representative Elijah Cummings, calling him a “brutal bully” and referring to Baltimore as “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”
August 14, 2019 – The Brookings Institute relased data suggesting a strong correlation with the increase in hate crimes and Trump's rhetoric. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2 ... -data-say/
January 31, 2020 – During the beginning phases of the COVID pandemic, the Trump administration used the tragedy to place immigration restrictions on Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania, Eritrea, Myanmar, and Kyrgyzstan. None of these countries were COVID hotspots. In 2018, Trump referred to African nations as “shithole countries.”
March 18, 2020 – Trump announced that the U.S.-Mexico border would be sealed off to combat the spread of the coronavirus. But as NPR reported, there were roughly 100 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Mexico—far less than the 8,000 cases in the United States. The measure, though, allowed the administration to deport migrants without due process.
March 18, 2020 – Even though the World Health Organization advised him not to, as his words could give rise to racial profiling, Trump defended his use of the term “Chinese virus” to refer to COVID-19.
June 29, 2020 – Trump retweeted video of one of his supporters screaming "White Power."
October 7, 2016 – Donald Trump reiterated his false claim that the young men known as the “Central Park Five” were guilty of sexually assaulting a jogger in 1989, despite DNA evidence that exonerated them.
April 24, 2017 – In the six months since Donald Trump’s election, the Anti-Defamation League reported anti-Semitic attacks had risen 86 percent. These attacks included grave desecrations, bomb threats, and assaults. https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases ... ar-in-2017
June 6, 2017 – In more than 50 cases nationwide, children were heard bullying classmates with calls for deportation, references to Donald Trump’s name, and blatantly racist language. One eight-year-old girl in California said to a black classmate, “Now that Trump won, you’re going to have to go back to Africa, where you belong.” https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertsamaha/k ... .nmJDl57lX
July 28, 2017 - Trump encouraged police to be very rough with detained suspects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nl00N6I5Ak
August 1, 2017 – The Trump campaign chose a noted white nationalist, William Johnson, to serve among California’s delegates for the next presidential election. Johnson leads the American Freedom Party, which operates with the stated mission of upholding “the customs and the heritage of European American People.” Johnson said after his appointment to the delegation, “I can be a white nationalist and be a strong supporter of Donald Trump and be a good example to everybody.” https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... alifornia/
August 12, 2017 – During the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, neo-Nazis and former Ku Klux Klan members carried tiki torches and shouted slogans including “The Jews Will Not Replace Us.” A white nationalist named James Alex Fields Jr. drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others in the process. After the attack and Heyer’s death, Trump he refused to explicitly rebuke the white nationalists. The president placed partial blame for the attack on the counter-protesters, condemning, “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.” https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/12/politics ... index.html
August 17, 2017 – Donald Trump lamented the removal of Confederate monuments, stating that such actions were “so foolish” and “sad.” He called these statues “beautiful” and spoke to the “history and culture of our great country being ripped apart.” He did not mention slavery in any of his tweets on the Confederacy.
August 20, 2017 – The Trump administration ended a $400,000 federal grant for Life After Hate, an organization devoted to eradicating white nationalism and helping young people escape white supremacist gang membership. The grant money was awarded annually by the Countering Violent Extremism task force. Originally founded in 2011 by Barack Obama, the CVE task force sought to combat a wide range of violent ideologies—from white nationalism to Islamic extremism—and presented $10 million in grant money to nonprofits pursuing that mission. Among all the CVE grant recipients, Life After Hate was the only one addressing white supremacy. The Trump administration defunded the group at a particularly pivotal moment: Life After Hate has reported a 20-fold increase in requests to help young white nationalists since Trump’s election. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/life-after ... istration/
August 25, 2017 – Donald Trump pardoned former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. An Arizona judge had convicted Arpaio of criminal contempt-of-court for “flagrant disregard” of a court order to cease and desist his practice of racially profiling Latinos. U.S District Judge G. Murray Snow noted Arpaio made “multiple intentional misstatements of fact under oath,” and also told local news stations he would ignore the injunction and “continue ‘doing what he had always been doing.’”
January 14, 2018 – Data suggests Trump's rhetoric encourages racial violence: "We find compelling evidence to support the Trump Effect hypothesis. Using time series analysis, we show that Donald Trump’s election in November of 2016 was associated with a statistically significant surge in reported hate crimes across the United States, even when controlling for alternative explanations. Further, by using panel regression techniques, we show that counties that voted for President Trump by the widest margins in the presidential election also experienced the largest increases in reported hate crimes." https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=3102652
January 16, 2018 – The Daily Stormer, a virulent white supremacist website, wrote that they found Trump’s policies “encouraging and refreshing,” and “Trump is more or less on the same page as us with regard to race and immigration.”
January 29, 2018 – White Supremacist propaganda on college campuses tripled in 2017, according to research conducted by the Anti-Defamation League. These instances varied from hanging banners adorned with swastikas to a full-fledged private speaking event—held on the campus of UC San Diego—called “A Brighter Future” which distributed pamphlets regarding “The Color of Crime” and “Protecting Our Heritage.”
https://www.adl.org/education/resources ... -on-campus
January 31, 2018 – Donald Trump’s first State of the Union Address received public praise from known white supremacists like David Duke and Richard Spencer. Following the speech, Spencer tweeted, “Trump said that he wants to maintain the “nuclear family” by ending chain migration. Basically, he’s implying the superiority of the Prostestent [sic] “wife and kids” over the South American and African extended family. Interesting rhetoric.”
February 21, 2018 – The Southern Poverty Law Center tracked a 4 percent increase in the number of hate groups during 2017. These groups represent a diverse set of ideologies, from anti-Muslim white supremacists to black nationalist organizations with hateful views toward LGBT and Jewish communities. The largest growth during Trump’s first year were in neo-Nazi circles; 22 new neo-Nazi chapters assembled across the nation during 2017.
April 18, 2018 – Donald Trump tweeted, “There is a Revolution going on in California. Soooo many Sanctuary areas want OUT of this ridiculous, crime infested & breeding concept. Jerry Brown is trying to back out of the National Guard at the Border, but the people of the State are not happy. Want Security & Safety NOW!” Though it was unclear what “breeding concept” referred to, the animalistic connotation of breeding, CNN commented, was clear: “Taken literally, the most likely explanation is that he’s talking about sanctuary cities as places where undocumented immigrants breed.”
August 13, 2018 – With the approaching publication of Omarosa Manigault Newman’s Unhinged, an account of working in the White House, Donald Trump went on a sexist, racist rant on Twitter, calling Omarosa “a dog” and “a crazed crying lowlife,” and claimed that she “begged [Trump] for a job, tears in her eyes.” Manigault Newman, a former Apprentice contestant and Trump aide who announced her resignation in December 2017 citing concerns with the administration, suggests in Unhinged that there are recordings of Trump using the N-word.
October 31, 2018 – Donald Trump tweeted a racist political ad depicting an undocumented immigrant who had been convicted of murdering two police officers. The ad featured the tagline, “Democrats let him into our country. Democrats let him stay.” Luis Bracamontes, the convicted man, had a history of crime and was originally released by a sheriff’s department that was headed by Republican Joe Arpaio. He later illegally re-entered the United States during the presidency of George W. Bush.
November 6, 2018 – A class-action lawsuit challenged the government’s detentions of migrants, including children kept in cages. Under Trump, more migrant children have been in government custody than at any time in American history.
November 8, 2018 – Trump introduced new laws denying asylum to migrants who enter the U.S. illegally, despite declining border crossings in recent years. Immigration advocates challenged the ban with a lawsuit, saying the proclamation would deny protection to thousands of vulnerable individuals.
December 6, 2018 – A New York Times story revealed that Trump employed undocumented workers for years at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. Immigrants worked as housekeepers, groundskeepers, waitstaff and stonemasons. Trump has frequently referred to illegal immigration a national crisis which, “hurts American workers; burdens American taxpayers; and undermines public safety; and places enormous strain on local schools, hospitals, and communities.”
December 7, 2018 – A seven-year-old girl from Guatemala died of dehydration and shock in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol. After the death of Jakelin Caal Maquin was made public, a White House spokesman said, “Does the administration take responsibility for a parent taking a child on a trek through Mexico to get to this country? No.”
December 25, 2018 – An eight-year-old from Guatemala died on Christmas Day in custody of Customs and Border Patrol. Felipe Gomez Alonso was the second child to die in a month while in U.S. custody. “So you have drugs, you have human trafficking,” Trump told reporters later in the day. “You have illegal people coming into our country. We can’t do that. We don’t know who they are.”
January 19, 2019 – A government watchdog report revealed that thousands more children were separated from their parents at the southern border than had been reported. The report also said that the Trump administration’s policy of separating children actually began months before it was announced. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... 603282002/
March 23, 2019 – Racial hate crimes skyrocketed 226% in countires where Trump held rallies. https://www.businessinsider.com/Trump-c ... aga-2019-3
May 9, 2019 – At a rally in Florida, Trump said, “How do you stop these people?” when referring to migrants at the border. An audience member yelled, “Shoot them!” The president then smirked and joked, “Only in the Panhandle!”
June 27, 2019 – Customs and Border Protection officers detained eighteen-year-old American Francisco Erwin Galicia for twenty-six days. Under Trump, border officials can now fast-track deportations. Galicia was carrying a Texas ID, a Social Security card, and a copy of his birth certificate.
July 1, 2019 – Roughly 9,500 current and former Border Patrol agents used a secret Facebook group for exchanging derogatory remarks about migrants and lawmakers, ProPublica revealed. Members of the group joked about migrants deaths, referred to Latina lawmakers as “scumbuckets” and “hoes,” and shared vulgar illustrations depicting U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
July 2, 2019 – The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General issued a report calling for immediate action to alleviate “dangerous overcrowding and prolonged detention” of migrants in the Rio Grande Valley. The report included photographs of migrants packed into cells and cages; in one photo, a man holds up a cardboard sign that reads “HELP.”
July 14, 2019 – In a series of tweets, Trump attacked four congresswomen of color: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley. He said they “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all).” Trump suggested that they “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” Ocasio-Cortez was born in New York, Tlaib in Detroit, and Pressley in Cincinnati.
July 17, 2019 – At a rally in North Carolina, Trump ridiculed U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s name. “No, no,” he said. “I don’t have time to go with three different names. We’ll call her Cortez.” Trump had made racist remarks about Ocasio-Cortez in the past. During the same rally, he criticized Representative Ilhan Omar and let the crowd chant “send her back” for thirteen seconds before continuing his speech.
July 27, 2019 – Trump attacked Representative Elijah Cummings, calling him a “brutal bully” and referring to Baltimore as “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”
August 14, 2019 – The Brookings Institute relased data suggesting a strong correlation with the increase in hate crimes and Trump's rhetoric. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2 ... -data-say/
January 31, 2020 – During the beginning phases of the COVID pandemic, the Trump administration used the tragedy to place immigration restrictions on Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania, Eritrea, Myanmar, and Kyrgyzstan. None of these countries were COVID hotspots. In 2018, Trump referred to African nations as “shithole countries.”
March 18, 2020 – Trump announced that the U.S.-Mexico border would be sealed off to combat the spread of the coronavirus. But as NPR reported, there were roughly 100 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Mexico—far less than the 8,000 cases in the United States. The measure, though, allowed the administration to deport migrants without due process.
March 18, 2020 – Even though the World Health Organization advised him not to, as his words could give rise to racial profiling, Trump defended his use of the term “Chinese virus” to refer to COVID-19.
June 29, 2020 – Trump retweeted video of one of his supporters screaming "White Power."