By Mark Dice – Aug 12, 2019
‘Bring migrants to Hollywood’: Salvini mocks Richard Gere for wading into Mediterranean crisis
In a stinging rebuke, Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has mockingly suggested that Richard Gere should house migrants in his Hollywood villas after the actor involved himself in the Mediterranean migrant crisis.
The Pretty Woman star felt the wrath of the Italian interior minister after visiting the ‘Open Arms’ ship, which has been stranded in the Mediterranean since it collected over 120 migrants from rafts eight days ago.
The 69-year-old urged the Italian government to “stop demonizing people” and compared the situation to the policy approach taken by US President Donald Trump regarding migrants traveling to the US from Central America.
When the matter was brought to Salvini’s attention by a reporter, he offered an incredulous reply. “I am lost! I hope he gets a tan, that he feels good, but I don’t think he misses anything, so, have a good trip,” he said.
Seemingly intrigued by Gere’s unexpected involvement, the Lega Nord leader subsequently issued a statement offering a tongue-in-cheek solution to the ‘Open Arms’ standoff.
“Given this generous millionaire is voicing concern for the fate of the ‘Open Arms’ migrants, we thank him. He can take them back to Hollywood, on his private plane, all the people aboard and support them in his villas. Thank you, Richard!” Salvini said.
Gere has yet to confirm whether he will take up the suggestion.
If Trump’s Rhetoric Caused El Paso Shooting, Obama’s Rhetoric Caused Synagogue Shootings
By Jeff Dunetz
Saturday was a horrible day for America. Two mass shootings. Thirty-one people were killed and more than fifty injured.
Liberals and the mainstream media (yes I know that’s redundant) were quick to place blame for the mass shootings on President Trump’s rhetoric and his followers. Perhaps the most hypocritical example was former VP Joe Biden’s speech that directly linked the anti-Trump interpretation of President Trump’s rhetoric to this past weekend’s shootings. If Biden really believes what he says, he should be slamming the anti-Jewish hatred spewed by Barack Obama, the president for whom he worked.
Biden should be asked, “If President Trump’s words incited this week’s shootings shouldn’t you be blaming Barack Obama’s anti-Semitic words and actions for the recent Synagogue shooting’s in Pittsburgh and Poway? The only answer is yes!
For example, President Obama’s July 31, 2015 phone call organized by the Anti-Israel group J Street and other progressive Jewish groups could be summed up in one sentence. Please help because those rich people are helping those warmongering Jews to fight this incredible Iran deal because they don’t like me and they want to start a war just like they did in Iraq.
In the 20-minute phone call Obama said over and over those opponents of the Iran deal come from the same “array of forces that got us into the Iraq war.” he identified those forces as a “bunch of billionaires who happily finance super PACs” are “putting the squeeze on members of Congress.”
The message was clear to the Jewish participants, William Daroff Senior Vice President for Public Policy & Director of the Washington office of The Jewish Federations of North America tweeted during the meeting “Jews are leading effort to kill #Irandeal. ‘Same people opposing the deal led us into Iraq war,’” and followed with “Canard: Jews got us into Iraq War.”
In a meeting with a hand-picked list of Jewish leaders, Lee Rosenberg of AIPAC questioned Obama’s statement comparing people who object to the Iran deal with those who supported the invasion of Iraq because many anti-Semites claim the Jews pushed Bush into invading Iraq. Obama explained that Netanyahu supported the Iraq invasion (which is true). What the former-president left out was that the prime minister at the time was Ariel Sharon. Sharon strongly urged Bush not to invade Iraq.
Obama also forgot to mention that his vice president Joe Biden, both of his secretaries of state Kerry and Clinton, and his biggest ally in the Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid all supported the invasion of Iraq in Congress and now support his flawed Iran deal.
He even doubled down accusing the Jewish State of being a bunch of warmongers. During an August 2015 speech at American University, Obama again tried to scapegoat the Jews, saying:
So this deal is not just the best choice among alternatives, this is the strongest nonproliferation agreement ever negotiated, and because this is such a strong deal, every nation in the world that has commented publicly, with the exception of the Israeli government, has expressed support.”
Yes, Israel opposed the deal, so did Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, UAE, Bangladesh and most of the other Sunni Muslim States vehemently opposed the JCPOA because of their fears that Shia Iran would use nukes to attack them. But Obama wanted to scapegoat the Jews, and the media was quiet.
Beginning with his first campaign for president, Obama surrounded himself with anti-Semites like General Merrel McPeak. McPeak was the 2008 Obama for President Co-Chair who had an impressive resume of blaming our foreign policy on the “Jewish Lobby.” Perhaps the best example of McPeak’s Antisemitism was when he was asked during an interview why there isn’t peace in the Middle East. He answered, “New York City. Miami. We have a large vote — vote, here in favor of Israel. And no politician wants to run against it.” (in other words, those pesky Jews, who control America’s policy on the Middle East).
One of his first presidential appointments was the anti-Semitic Chas Freeman who blamed his resignation on the evil Israel lobby (a nicer way of saying Jewish lobby). Actually, Chas, it was a lot less than an evil Israel lobby, much of it was the work of a few Jewish bloggers — one of whom was named The Lid who pointed out that you believed things like China was too gentle in putting down the Tiananmen Square protests, the Muslims discovered America and worse.
In 2015 former speaker Boehner invited two world leaders to speak to a joint session of congress. Both times the Speaker’s invitation was made on his own without first checking with the White House. The invitation of the Jewish leader Benjamin Netanyahu was criticized by Obaman; in fact, he encouraged his fellow Democrats to boycott the speech. The speech by the second world leader Pope Francis was celebrated despite the White House not being informed of the invite before it was made. The Catholic’s invitation wasn’t criticized only the Jew’s visit. I am not saying Netanyahu’s visit was criticized only because he is Jewish—I’m just pointing out a fact,
Obama denied Jewish ties to the Land of Israel which according to the State Department definition is anti-Semitic. in his 2009 Cairo speech, Obama said Israel was only created because people felt guilty about the Holocaust.
America’s strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied. Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and Antisemitsm in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed – more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today.
Obama showed the world that he honored Antisemitism. His first Presidential Medal of Freedom honorees was Bishop Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson. The friendliest thing Bishop Desmond Tutu ever said about Jews was “People are scared in this country [the US], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful.” He also said that “the Jews thought they had a monopoly on God.”
Tutu’s co-honoree Mary Robinson presided over the “World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance” that turned into a non-stop hate-fest against Jews and Israel. The conference was so anti-Semitic that Colin Powell, the Secretary of State at the time, walked out.
During his presidency, Obama has allied himself with Al Sharpton who was a leader of the anti-Semitic pogrom in Crown Heights and incited the anti-Semitic firebombing of Freddy’s Fashion Mart in Harlem. He sent his closest adviser, Valerie Jarrett, to keynote an anti-Semitic ISNA conference whose discussions included: how key Obama aides are “Israeli,” proving Jews “have control of the world,” and how the Holocaust is the punishment of Jews for being “serially disobedient to Allah.”
In 2010 Obama’s National Security Adviser, Gen. Jim Jones gave the keynote speech at a Washington Institute For Near East Policy and started it out with an anti-Semitic “joke,” teaching the crowd that Jews are just greedy merchants in the same vein as Shakespeare’s Shylock.
For his second Secretary of Defense Obama appointed Chuck Hagel who believed in the nefarious “worldwide Jewish conspiracy.” Hagel was once quoted as saying “The political reality is that…the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here.”
Obama once called Zbigniew Brzezinski someone I have learned an immense amount from”, and “one of our most outstanding scholars and thinkers. Back in back in 2007, Brzezinski schooled the future president on foreign policy. The former National Security Adviser to Jimmy Carter is a Judeophobic conspiracy theorist, who believes the Jews control U.S foreign policy and Congress.
Of the anti-Semitic Occupy Wall Street movement, the President said, “We are on their side.”
Radical Islamists attacked the Kosher supermarket Hyper-Cacher (French for Super Kosher) in Paris on a Friday afternoon. The attack happened just before the Jewish Sabbath when they knew it would be crowded with Jews. Obama first insisted it was not an anti-Semitic act. And when the world leaders came together to march in Paris as a protest against the Charlie Hebdo shooting and the anti-Semitic Hyper-Cacher attack Obama was conspicuous in his absence.
During his last year as president, Obama’s State Department condemned Israel for allowing people to build houses on land on the western side of the Jordan River. But that’s only part of the story. The property was legally purchased in 2009 by Dr. Irving and Cherna Moskowitz from a US Presbyterian Church. There were no complaints when the Presbyterian Church owned it. Team Obama wasn’t objecting to the fact that houses were being built on that land back then. If the homes were intended for Christian or Muslim families, there would have been no issue.
As it is was with so many other cases during the Obama administration, the objection was based on that Jews were going to live in those buildings. There is no other faith in the world that the Obama administration objected to legally purchasing land or buildings then moving into the property they legally purchased.
Obama signed the bipartisan Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015, which contained provisions fighting the anti-Semitic BDS movement, but upon signing the bill, announced that he would not enforce the anti-BDS provisions
One of Obama’s last acts as president was abstaining on a UN Security Council resolution. That abstention was named by the Simon Weisenthal Center as the most anti-Semitic act of 2016:
US President Barack Obama’s “abstention” was actually an endorsement of an onerous, one-sided resolution that, among other items, defines Judaism’s holiest site as “occupied Palestinian territory” and encourages nations to undertake the boycott of goods made by Jews in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. Make no mistake. This new resolution – developed with the Obama administration’s knowledge and some say with its collusion – is much worse and more dangerous than the United Nation’s notorious 1975 “Zionism equals racism” resolution.
The list of Obama’s Antisemitism would be much longer if examples from the Obama administration’s own definition of how anti-Israel acts and statements could be considered anti-Semitic were added. Obama’s hatred of Jews met that definition also. But you get the idea.
NOT ONCE! Not once in all those (and other) cases where Obama and his team seemed to step over the line into Antisemitism territory were there questions from the media asking Obama if he had an issue with Jews. Not once did any of the mainstream media point out Obama’s possible anti-Semitism. But they invent Trump’s racism. and if Joe Biden believes words create maniacs who want to kill people why was he silent with Obama?
Here’s the bottom line, I do not believe Obama’s anti-Semitic speech and/or actions motivated the shooting at the Pittsburgh or Poway Synagogue shootings. Nor do I think Bernie Sanders had anything to do with the shooting of Rep. Scalise at a GOP baseball practice, or that Elizabeth Warren motivated the Dayton shooting. And I certainly don’t believe the liberal line that President Trump incited this weekend’s horrible massacres.
But if liberal politicians, media talking heads and especially Joe Biden are blaming Trump’s words for the massacres in Dayton and Ohio, then it is just as legitimate to blame Obama for the horrible synagogue shootings in recent months.
Illinois Leaders Warn Illegal Aliens of Possible ICE Raids
By Amy Furr
Government leaders in Illinois urged illegal aliens to know their rights after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were reportedly seen in a Chicago neighborhood on Thursday.
“If @ICEgov tries to intimidate you or your family, know your rights,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker tweeted. “The state of Illinois refuses to coordinate with federal immigration enforcement. I signed a law ensuring local law enforcement does the same. We’re doing all we can to protect our residents.”
Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th Ward alderman, tweeted that his office had received reports of ICE agents approaching businesses and homes in the Pilsen area.
“We’ve confirmed these reports with the National Immigrant Justice Center,” he said.
The reports come after ICE agents arrested 680 illegal aliens in Mississippi this week, the largest single-state raid in U.S. history, Breitbart News reported.
The individuals were arrested at seven food processing plants across six cities including Bay Springs, Carthage, Canton, Morton, Pelahatchie, and Sebastapol.
“According to federal officials, some of the hundreds of illegal aliens arrested on Wednesday have already been ordered deported by an immigration judge and have refused to self-deport. Those illegal aliens will be quickly deported,” the report said.
A press release from the ICE website stated that the agency will investigate the individuals arrested on a case-by-case basis.
“In all cases, all the illegal aliens encountered as part of this operation are either being placed into removal proceedings before the federal immigration courts, and for those who already received due process and have been ordered removed, processed for removal from the U.S.,” the release said.
However, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) called on President Trump during an interview Thursday to stop the raids, comparing them to the tactics of the Nazi secret police.
“I think it’s unfortunate when ICE has to be made into this kind of agency and to be an intimidator rather than an agency that has in the past made sure that we are safe in this nation,” she said.
“But when their neighbors are rounded up in a vile way, when children are left unprotected, I’m disappointed. And the president and Stephen Miller need to stop these Gestapo tactics, and we need to work together to pass comprehensive immigration reform,” Lee concluded.
WashPo: ‘Free Speech Makes It Difficult to Prosecute White Supremacy’
By Chris Menahan
The Washington Post lamented Thursday that the First Amendment makes it difficult to prosecute “white supremacists” for their political beliefs.
From The Washington Post, “Why free speech makes it difficult to prosecute white supremacy in America”
Federal authorities have used RICO many times to prosecute white prison gangs, but what got the members of organizations such as the Aryan Brotherhood locked up under the statute was not the racism they believed but the acts they committed: crimes including drug trafficking, murder, kidnapping and money laundering.
In the case of mass shootings by those who believe in white supremacy, such as the young white man who allegedly killed 22 people at a Walmart store in El Paso last weekend, prosecutors don’t need RICO to make a criminal case.
But if they wanted to use RICO to hold accountable the collective ideology that radicalized the shooter, they would need to prove that there was an organized enterprise involved with that ideology, that there was a traceable criminal conspiracy to commit violence and that there was a leader or leaders who instructed others to cause harm.
Without that, the collective ideology is not a conspiracy but hate speech. And in the United States, hate speech is not criminal. It’s a right protected by the First Amendment.
C’mon now, where’s your can-do attitude?
This is more like it:
But according to retired law professor G. Robert Blakey, who wrote the RICO statute and is considered the nation’s foremost authority on it, federal authorities should be using RICO to more rigorously investigate white extremist groups without violating free speech protections.
It wouldn’t be easy, he said, but there’s “no excuse” not to try.
Well said. The Bill of Rights is no reason not to start locking people up for their political beliefs!
Incidentally, the Post reported one day earlier how a Trump appointed prosecutor is “putting white supremacists in jail” by hitting them with archaic rioting charges for fighting with antifa (despite one California judge already throwing said rioting charges out for violating the First Amendment):
By the way, if you’re wondering who classifies as a “white supremacist” in modern America, just ask rapidly-rising Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren:
That’s all we need to hear, Liz! Lock him up!
MAN WRONGLY EXPOSED AS “TRUMP DONOR” BY JOAQUIN CASTRO FEARS FOR FAMILY’S SAFETY – HAD ACTUALLY DONATED TO CASTRO
List wrongly identified man as top Trump donor
AUGUST 9, 2019
A man whose name erroneously appears on a Trump donor list propagated by Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) says he needed to go over emergency plans with his family after the list put him in danger.
“Harper Huddleston” and his business were listed as one of Trump’s top San Antonio area donors in a list tweeted out by Castro earlier this week, but Huddleston says the name on the list refers to his retired father, with whom he shares a first name.
“He said the mix-up was because they share the same first name, but have different middle names, though his father does not go by the name Harper,” reported Fox News.
Huddleston says while he’s a Trump supporter, he has actually donated to the mayoral campaign of Joaquin’s brother Julian Castro, who is currently running for president.
The mix-up has put Huddleston and his family in danger, and he, his wife and three children have been forced to review emergency strategies on how to stay safe.
“We convened together as a family and talked about situational awareness, exit strategy, avoiding and exiting conflict, talked about staying low and close to home and just being at our very highest senses,” Huddleston said in an interview with Fox & Friends.
Huddleston said he takes issue with Castro using his large platform as a politician, amplified by the media, to demonize an entire group as racist, and says it has only strengthened his support for Trump.
“All this does is galvanize the interest and reinvigorate making America great again,” he stated.
Despite taking heat from both Republicans and Democrats on the issue, not to mention the fact that two mass shootings were carried out over the weekend in the name of political violence, Castro has yet to delete the tweet.
Bernie Sanders And Julian Castro Speaking At Conference For Islamists Linked To Terrorism By DOJ
by | Aug 8, 2019 | Foreign Policy/Terrorism, Politics
Per the Clarion Project, a pair of Democrats running for their party’s presidential nomination has agreed to speak at the convention of an Islamist group tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. The pair Bernie Sanders and Julian Castro will be participating in a “presidential forum” held by the Islamic Society of North America(ISNA) during its convention in Houston on August 31, 2019.
Sanders and Castro, are apparently unaware of *or don’t care that ISNA has been linked to terrorism by the U.S. Government and that some US-based terrorists have emerged from ISNA.
The U.S. Justice Department lists ISNA as an “entity” of the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical and often violent arm of the Islamist global political project. The Brotherhood’s goal is a worldwide caliphate with all of humanity living under sharia law. Declassified FBI memos indicate that ISNA was identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front as early as 1987. “The entire organization is structured, controlled and funded by followers and supporters of the Islamic Revolution as advocated by the founders” of the Brotherhood in Egypt, said one source. In August 1988, that same source furnished the FBI with a private ISNA document “clearly stat[ing] that ISNA has a political goal to exert influence on political decision making and legislation in North America that is contrary to their certification in their not-for-profit tax returns as filed both with the State of Indiana and with IRS.” And a 1988 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood document bluntly identified ISNA as part of the “apparatus of the Brotherhood.”
In December 2003, U.S. Senators Charles Grassley and Max Baucus of the Senate Committee on Finance listed ISNA as one of 25 American Muslim organizations that “finance terrorism and perpetuate violence.”
During ISNA’s 2006 convention, guest speaker Kamran Memon, an attorney with the group Muslims for a Safe America, tried to rationalize al Qaeda’s terrorist activities as a response to provocative American policies overseas:
At the end of December 2008, the word guilty was read a total of 108 times in a Dallas federal courtroom. A jury convicted the Holy Land Foundation and each of the five defendants of raising money to fund Hamas terrorism. The defendants were guilty of three dozen counts related to the illegal funneling of at least $12 million to the Palestinian terrorist group. Named as unindicted co-conspirators in the trial by the Justice Department were the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) which is part of ISNA. ]’
Dr. Mark Christian is the President and Executive Director of the Global Faith Institute. A former Islamic Imam who converted from Islam to Christianity, he has dedicated his life and work to the proposition that “the first victims of Islam are the Muslim themselves.” One of ISNA’s projects is to fund mosques across the US, which on first glance is not a bad thing, but according to Dr, Christian some regular attendees of ISNA mosques have turned out to be terrorists, including:
- Alton Nolen, an Oklahoma man who in September 2014 beheaded his co-worker and attempted to behead another;
- U.S. Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan, who in November 2009 went on a shooting rampage inside the Army post at Fort Hood, Texas — killing 13 people and wounding at least 31 others;
- Tamerlan Anzorovich Tsarnaev and his brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who planted bombs at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, killing 3 people and injuring as many as 264 others;
- Abdurahman Alamoudi, ISNA’s founder, and first president, who in 2004 was sentenced to 23 years in prison for terrorism-related activities;
- Aafia Siddiqui, an MIT scientist-turned-al-Qaeda agent, who in 2010 was sentenced to 86 years in prison for his role in plotting a chemical attack in New York;
- Tarek Mehanna, who in 2012 was sentenced to 17 years in prison for conspiring to use automatic weapons to commit mass murder in a Massachusetts mall;
- Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an ISNA mosque trustee and an Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader who has issued numerous fatwas supporting Islamic extremism and denouncing Israel and the U.S.;
- Jamal Badawi, a former ISNA trustee who in 2007 was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a plan to funnel millions of dollars to Palestinian suicide bombers.
With these and other examples of ISNA’s terrorist connections, why would Castro and/or Sanders want to come within one hundred miles of this convention?
Understand the objection here is not that they are wrong for speaking and doing outreach toward the American Muslim community. However, two people who want to be president of the United States should not be doing outreach toward or giving gravitas to a terrorist-connected organization. It is almost as if they don’t care. Sadly they probably don’t.
Democrat Jerry Nadler Anounces He Has Started Formal Impeachment Proceeding Against President Trump – (THIS IS WHY THEY WANT OUR GUNS AMERICA!)
By Jim Hoft
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) announces on Thursday night he has started formal impeachment proceedings against President Trump.
Democrats want to remove Trump because they don’t like him.
Echo Chamber: NYT, WaPo Print 11 Similar Talking Points on Same Day to Blame Trump for El Paso Terror
By Aaron Klein – AUGUST 9, 2019
NEW YORK — In separate articles on the same day, the New York Times and Washington Post each seemingly parroted the same talking points 11 times in respective articles in their zest to baselessly connect President Trump’s rhetoric and policies to an unhinged manifesto attributed to the 21-year-old accused of murdering 22 people in cold blood and injuring dozens when he opened fire in a Walmart in El Paso.
The manifesto is clearly the work of a demented mind and expressed views that are all over the map, yet both newspapers selectively cited the document to divine the El Paso shooter’s alleged motives and link the mass murder to Trump.
Earlier this week, this reporter documented the manifesto attributed to shooting suspect Patrick Wood Crusius actually shows that the author did not have a coherent political viewpoint. While the text contains racist language targeting the Hispanic community, it also evidences hatred toward what the writer labeled “average Americans” and calls for a decrease in the general American population.
Missing from much of the news media coverage is that the manifesto promotes far-left policy prescriptions including universal healthcare and a socialist-style “universal income.” Perhaps the two main themes of the document are actually anti-corporatist and eco-extremist sentiment and the shooter repeatedly labeled both Republicans and Democrats as sellouts to corporations on a host of issues.
Still, two widely cited front-page articles, both published on August 4, were printed by the New York Times and Washington Post respectively in an attempt to link Trump’s rhetoric to the shooting.
Regardless of the El Paso shooter’s motivations, Trump throughout his presidency has stoked fear and hatred of the other, whether Latino immigrants or black people living in cities or Muslims.
Although he has not directly espoused the “great replacement” theory of white supremacists, Trump has openly questioned America’s identity as a multiethnic nation, such as by encouraging migration from Nordic states as opposed to Latin America.
4 – Times:
While other leaders have expressed concern about border security and the costs of illegal immigration, Mr. Trump has filled his public speeches and Twitter feed with sometimes false, fear-stoking language even as he welcomed to the White House a corps of hard-liners, demonizers and conspiracy theorists shunned by past presidents of both parties. Because of this, Mr. Trump is ill equipped to provide the kind of unifying, healing force that other presidents projected in times of national tragedy.
Post:
In speeches and on social media, the president has capitalized on divisions of race, religion and identity as a political strategy to galvanize support among his white followers.
After yet another mass slaying, the question surrounding the president is no longer whether he will respond as other presidents once did, but whether his words contributed to the carnage.
5 – Times:
“Hate has no place in our country, and we’re going to take care of it,” the president said, declining to elaborate but promising to speak more on Monday morning. He made no mention of white supremacy or the El Paso manifesto, but instead focused on what he called “a mental illness problem.
Post:
“Hate has no place in our country, and we’re going to take care of it,” Trump said in Morristown, N.J., just before flying home to Washington. He did not respond to questions from reporters about the El Paso shooter’s manifesto but said generally that “this has been going on for years” and acknowledged that “perhaps more has to be done.”
6 – Times:
Democratic presidential candidates wasted little time on Sunday pointing the finger at Mr. Trump, arguing that he had encouraged extremism with what they called hateful language. Mr. Trump’s advisers and allies rejected that, arguing that the president’s political foes were exploiting a tragedy to further their political ambitions.
“I’m saying that President Trump has a lot to do with what happened in El Paso yesterday,” Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic presidential candidate who represented El Paso in Congress, said on “Face the Nation” on CBS. Mr. O’Rourke said Mr. Trump “sows the kind of fear, the kind of reaction that we saw in El Paso yesterday.”
Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, said it was outrageous to hold Mr. Trump responsible for the acts of a madman or suggest the president sympathized with white supremacists.
“I don’t think it’s at all fair to sit here and say that he doesn’t think that white nationalism is bad for the nation,” he said on “This Week” on ABC. “These are sick people. You cannot be a white supremacist and be normal in the head. These are sick people. You know it, I know it, the president knows it. And this type of thing has to stop. And we have to figure out a way to fix the problem, not figure out a way to lay blame.”
Post:
But some Democratic leaders on Sunday said Trump’s demagoguery makes him plainly culpable.
Beto O’Rourke, a former congressman from El Paso running for president, said it was appropriate to label Trump a white nationalist and said his rhetoric is reminiscent of Nazi Germany.
“He doesn’t just tolerate it; he encourages it, calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals, warning of an invasion at our border, seeking to ban all people of one religion. Folks are responding to this,” O’Rourke said on CNN. He added, “He is saying that some people are inherently defective or dangerous, reminiscent of something that you might hear in the Third Reich, not something that you expect in the United States of America.”
Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, flatly dismissed the suggestion that Trump was to blame.
“Goodness gracious, is someone really blaming the president? People are sick,” Mulvaney said on NBC. He pointed to the manifesto, adding, “If you do read that, you can see him say that he’s felt this way for a long time, from even before President Trump got elected.”
Mulvaney acknowledged that “some people don’t approve of the verbiage that the president uses,” but he argued: “People are going to hear what they want to hear. My guess is this guy’s in that parking lot out in El Paso, Texas, in that Walmart doing this even if Hillary Clinton is president.”
7 – Times:
Linking political speech, however heated, to the specific acts of ruthless mass killers is a fraught exercise, but experts on political communication said national leaders could shape an environment with their words and deeds, and bore a special responsibility to avoid inflaming individuals or groups, however unintentionally.
“The people who carry out these attacks are already violent and hateful people,” said Nathan P. Kalmoe, an assistant professor at Louisiana State University who has studied hate speech. “But top political leaders and partisan media figures encourage extremism when they endorse white supremacist ideas and play with violent language. Having the most powerful person on Earth echo their hateful views may even give extremists a sense of impunity.”
This has come up repeatedly during Mr. Trump’s presidency, whether it be the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, Va., or the bomber who sent explosives to Mr. Trump’s political adversaries and prominent news media figures or the gunman who stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue after ranting online about “invaders” to the United States.
Post:
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University and expert on authoritarianism, said Trump has been strategic.
“This is a concerted attempt to construct and legitimize an ideology of hatred against nonwhite people and the idea that whites will be replaced by others,” she said. “When you have a racist in power who incites violence through his speeches, his tweets, and you add in this volatile situation of very laxly regulated arms, this is uncharted territory.”
8 – Times:
David Livingstone Smith, a philosophy professor at the University of New England and the author of a book on dehumanization of whole categories of people, said Mr. Trump had emboldened Americans whose views were seen as unacceptable in everyday society not long ago.
“This has always been part of American life,” he said. “But Trump has given people permission to say what they think. And that’s crack cocaine. That’s powerful. When someone allows you to be authentic, that’s a very, very potent thing. People have come out of the shadows.”
Post:
Leonard Zeskind, author of “Blood and Politics,” a history of the white nationalist movement, said the ugliest phenomena often develop in countries when there is a vacuum of moral leadership. Zeskind explained that white nationalism is autonomous from any political formation, but that Trump energizes its followers.
“He gives it voice. He’s their megaphone,” Zeskind said. He added, “Donald Trump, dumping on immigrants all the time, creates an atmosphere where some people interpret that to be an okay sign for violence against immigrants.”
9 – Times:
He denounces immigrant gang members as “animals” and complains that unauthorized migrants “pour into and infest” the United States.
Post:
President Trump has relentlessly used his bully pulpit to decry Latino migration as “an invasion of our country.” He has demonized undocumented immigrants as “thugs” and “animals.”
10 – Times:
Illegal immigration is a “monstrosity,” he says, while demanding that even American-born congresswomen of color “go back” to their home countries.
Post:
Last month he attacked four congresswomen of color and said they should “go back” to the countries they came from, even though three were born in the United States and all four are U.S. citizens.
11 – Times:
At a Florida rally in May, the president asked the crowd for ideas to block migrants from crossing the border.
“How do you stop these people?” he asked.
“Shoot them!” one man shouted.
The crowd laughed and Mr. Trump smiled. “That’s only in the Panhandle you can get away with that stuff,” he said. “Only in the Panhandle.
Post:
“How do you stop these people? You can’t,” Trump lamented at a May rally in Panama City Beach, Fla. Someone in the crowd yelled back one idea: “Shoot them.” The audience of thousands cheered and Trump smiled. Shrugging off the suggestion, he quipped, “Only in the Panhandle can you get away with that statement.”
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