Donald Trump: America’s Biggest Bigot

Trump said he wasn’t convinced President Obama was an American citizen and that there was good reason to speculate on that question. Then, on an interview on “The View” Trump declared “I want him to show his birth certificate.” Trump claimed “there’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t like.”

[Speaking Truth To Power]


Trump’s Devilish Ratings Strategy

Donald Trump’s current attacks on President Obama are another example of the fallacy that we’re now living in a “post-racial” society.

His specious statements prove some will still shamelessly promote prejudice to make dollars and cents.

In the past weeks, Trump has been titillating America with insinuations that he may run for president as a Republican, and some polls have him in second place behind Mitt Romney. In doing so, he has taken reams of pages out of the Tea Party and “Birthers” racist playbook. He has been whipping-up the discredited Birther claim that President Obama wasn’t born in America.

On a March 17, 2011 “Good Morning America” interview, Trump said he wasn’t convinced President Obama was an American citizen and that there was good reason to speculate on that question. Then, on an interview on “The View” Trump declared “I want him to show his birth certificate.” Trump claimed “there’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t like.”  Whoppi Goldberg described Trump’s comment as being “the biggest pile of dog mess I’ve heard in ages.”

Later, on a March 28, 2011 Fox and Friends interview, he questioned President Obama’s birthplace: “This is the President of the United   States…He could have been born outside of this country. Why can’t he produce a birth certificate?” Two day later, on the Laura Ingraham Show, Trump also insinuated the president may have been a Muslim saying “I have a birth certificate. People have birth certificates. He doesn’t have a birth certificate. He may have one but there is something on that birth certificate—maybe religion, maybe it says he is a
Muslim, I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want that. Or, he may not have one.”

But Lawrence O’Donnell of NBC—which host Trump’s show “The Apprentice”—thinks the network should utter the words Trump is famous for:
“you’re fired.” Speaking on his show “The Last Word,” O’Donnell asked Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart “How crazy do you have to be, how many lies do you have to tell about the President of the United States, how much hate do you have to promote that Donald Trump has promoted to get yourself kicked off of prime time NBC?”

Indeed, but then promoting hate is something that has always proven beneficial in politics and Trump is calculating it will be beneficial for his idiotic NBC show—and by extension his bankrupt businesses. In fact, O’Donnell showed a chart highlighting the raising ratings, of “The Apprentice,” as Trump degenerated into whipping up prejudice against the president. Is anyone surprised Trump would employ vile tactics to promote himself? This morally—and literally—bankrupt buffoon has been doing this stuff for years.

The previous occasion was when he shamelessly injected himself into the Muslim Park 51 controversy, by offering to buy away that property from the developers. Trump, as is his modus operandi, saw an opportunity for personal publicity when the proposed building of the Islamic center was being targeted by the forces of intolerance and ignorance. At issue was the fact that many—like Republican xenophobe Congressman Peter King—were arguing the Muslim center was too close to Ground Zero, although, a Mosque had been in that vicinity since the year the Twin Towers opened.

But the most famous example, of Trump playing to prejudice, was his involvement in the Central Park Five Case. In that blatant miscarriage of
justice, five Black teenagers Raymond Santana, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, and Kharey Wise were all convicted of raping white investment banker Trisha Meili. However, they were tried in the court of White public opinion long before they ever entered a courtroom. We can thank the likes of Donald Trump for that.

During the lead-up to the trial, Trump spent $85,000 to place an advertisement entitled “Bring Back The Death Penalty, Bring Back Our Police” in The New York Times, New York Daily News, New York Post and Newsday. Trump opined in part ”I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.”

In 2002, Mathias Reyes confessed to being the sole perpetrator of the crime—and the DNA evidence confirmed this. Yet, Trump has never accepted any responsibility for helping to create the climate that sealed the fate of these innocent kids. Tragically, they are still fighting for compensation for the years they spent in prison.

Trump has now shown a clear pattern of stroking prejudice for profit. When he paid for the ad, before the Central Park Five trial, he was facing looming bankruptcy and indeed filed in 1991 having debts totaling around $900 million. Since then he has filed for bankruptcy at least three times. Why is such an inept businessman, who inherited his money from daddy, characterized as a mogul, when in fact he is a numskull? Trump filed for Chapter 11, in 2009, and, reportedly, had a debt ratio of $50 million in assets to $500 million in debt.

In the end, Trump’s idiotic, inflammatory grandstanding is meant to elevate his personal standing—this time at the expense of the nation’s first Black president. After Tucson, that makes his antics extremely dangerous and unacceptable.

“Speaking Truth To Empower.”

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