It's No Longer Viable For Anyone To Defend Donald Trump

(Cartoon image is by Ed Hall at artizans.com.)

Donald Trump said on Monday that "Hate has no place in America". He had to say that, because his own racism and defense of white supremacy is coming back to bite him on the ass. Any rational person can see that the El Paso shooter (and other white terrorists) were just doing what they believed their hero (Trump) wanted them to do. They were putting Trump's words (his hate speech) into action.

Don't believe Trump! He doesn't really mean hate is inappropriate. He's basing his whole re-election effort on hate -- just like his 2016 campaign. He's just trying to deflect the blame he so richly deserves. He's even trying to blame the media. But the media is not spreading hate, but just reporting the hate speech of Donald Trump.

Trump is also trying to blame everything but the real causes of the epidemic of mass shootings -- hate speech and guns.

He wants to blame mental illness (after signing a bill to allow the mentally ill to buy guns). But all other nations have approximately the same rate of mental illness as the U.S., and they don't have a problem with mass shootings.

He wants to blame video games. But all nations have access to video games, and none of them have the number of gun deaths or mass shootings that the U.S. has.

He, like his Republican cohorts, wants to blame the lack of prayer. But the European nations are far less religious than the United States, and they don't have anywhere near the number of gun deaths and mass shootings that we see in the United States.

These are false excuses. Reasonable people know what the problem is. It is that guns are too easy to get in this country, even by those who should not have them -- criminals, terrorists, and the dangerously mentally ill. And that proliferation of easily-accessed guns is made worse by a growing white supremacy problem (which Trump has defended).

Trump cannot be believed, and cannot be defended anymore.

Here is part of an op-ed in The Washington Post by Jennifer Rubin about how Trump is no longer defensible:

For decades now, Republicans have insisted mass murders with semiautomatic weapons are not reflective of a gun problem. I can no longer comprehend how such a ludicrous assertion is remotely acceptable. But in one sense they are right: It’s not merely Republicans’ indulgence of the National Rifle Association that puts Americans’ lives in jeopardy; it is the support and enabling of a president that inspires white nationalist terrorists — and even denies white nationalism is a problem. . . .

And while Trump continues to demonize Muslims and foreigners, the facts indicate white nationalists are responsible for more deaths than Islamic fundamentalist-inspired killings under this president. The Anti-Defamation League reported:

In 2018, domestic extremists killed at least 50 people in the U.S., a sharp increase from the 37 extremist-related murders documented in 2017, though still lower than the totals for 2015 (70) and 2016 (72). The 50 deaths make 2018 the fourth-deadliest year on record for domestic extremist-related killings since 1970.

The extremist-related murders in 2018 were overwhelmingly linked to right-wing extremists. Every one of the perpetrators had ties to at least one right-wing extremist movement, although one had recently switched to supporting Islamist extremism. White supremacists were responsible for the great majority of the killings, which is typically the case.

The rise in hate crimes under this president also has been dramatic. The Anti-Defamation League documented, “Right-wing extremists were linked to at least 50 extremist-related murders in the United States in 2018, making them responsible for more deaths than in any year since 1995. . . . Right-wing extremists killed more people in 2018 than in any year since 1995, the year of Timothy McVeigh’s bomb attack on the Oklahoma City federal building.”

Likewise, just a few days ago, a new report explained the magnitude of the problem in cities (which Trump demonizes as “infested” and unlivable):

Hate crimes in thirty of America’s largest cities rose nine percent in 2018 to a decade high of 2,009, according to police data analyzed by the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino (CSHE). Last year marked the fifth consecutive increase in hate crimes, and the steepest rise since 2015. Seventy percent, or 21 police departments, reported increases, with just under half (47 percent), or 14 agencies, hitting or tying decade highs. 2018 was the only year this decade the cities exceeded 2,000. Partial year 2019 data from 18 cities also shows an overall rise. If forthcoming Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 2018 hate crime totals replicate this nine percent rise, it will be the fourth consecutive increase and the highest total since the FBI’s 2001’s record. 

This rise comes even as the overall rate of crime decreases. (“In contrast to a 3.5 percent decline in crime overall in major U.S. Cities in 2018 (source), these latest hate crime data mirror a multiyear rise across myriad other representative crime, social science, and digital datasets on prejudice and fragmented intergroup cohesion.”)

In sum, we are awash in hate crimes and white nationalist-inspired mass murders. We have a president whose words inspire and bolster perpetrators of these heinous acts. That makes Trump not only a moral abomination, which no policy outcome can offset, but a threat to national security. Those encouraged by his words in recent years kill more Americans than Islamist terrorists. If that is not justification for bipartisan repudiation of this president and removal from office at the earliest possible moment I don’t know what is. Those who countenance and support this president for his white-grievance mongering are not merely “deplorable” but dangerous.