Racism, bias, and xenophobia: How Trump’s bigoted views foster division and abase the presidency | Editorial

From the minute Donald Trump launched his first presidential bid in 2015 by accusing Mexico of sending criminals, rapists, and drug dealers to America, he has demonized marginalized groups.

Only in Donald Trump’s doublethink world would he try to appeal to Black voters by reminding them that he is an unapologetic racist.

During a recent campaign rally before mainly conservative Black voters in South Carolina, Trump said the stage lights were so bright that he couldn’t see many faces in the crowd. Then he added: “I can only see the Black ones. I can’t see any white ones.”

Trump went on to claim Black people identify with him now that he has been indicted four times and sat for a mug shot. He said the criminal charges and civil judgments for sexual abuse, defamation, and fraud show that he, too — a rich, privileged white male — has faced discrimination.

In normal times, voters would be appalled to learn the likely 2024 Republican standard-bearer thinks and talks like Archie Bunker. Instead, Trump’s outrageous comments came and went with little attention paid. That is because Trump’s decades-long history of racist rants no longer shocks anyone. Nor does his xenophobia and misogyny.

The good news is some Republican voters know Trump is unfit for office, and they refuse to support him. However, most GOP officials continue to go along with Trump’s racism and other considerable flaws. Sadly, many MAGA supporters embrace his racist rhetoric.

From the minute Trump launched his first presidential bid in 2015 by accusing Mexico of sending criminals, rapists, and drug dealers to America, he has demonized marginalized groups. His bigoted words divided America and fueled an increase in hate crimes.

Trump’s racist bona fides are hard-won.

In 1973, the U.S. Justice Department sued Trump for discriminating against Black apartment seekers looking to rent in buildings owned by the company his father started. The case was eventually settled.

In 1989, Trump took out full-page ads calling for the execution of five Black and Latino teenagers who were wrongly convicted of raping a white woman in Central Park. DNA evidence helped exonerate the teens in 2002, but Trump refused to apologize for wanting them put to death.

A 1991 book written by John O’Donnell, the former president of a Trump casino, quoted Trump saying that “laziness is a trait in blacks.” The book recounted Trump complaining about a Black accountant: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.” In a magazine story for Playboy, Trump told Mark Bowden, a former Inquirer reporter, “The stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true.”

In 1993, Trump testified in Washington regarding the legitimacy of Native American tribes seeking to build casinos in New York. He cited their dark skin as proof they were faking their heritage. “They don’t look like Indians to me,” Trump said.

In 2004, when Trump hosted the reality TV show The Apprentice, he used a racial epithet to question if viewers would “buy” a Black person winning the competition for a job at his company, according to one of the show’s producers. (Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, later said she heard her uncle use antisemitic and racial slurs, including the N-word.)

In 2011, Trump began falsely claiming that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and thus was ineligible to be president. Obama, America’s first Black president, wrote in his memoir how Trump used the birther conspiracy to prey on the “racial anxiety” of white Americans.

Trump later promoted similar birther claims about Vice President Kamala Harris and dusted off the same racist trope about Nikki Haley, whose parents were born in India.

In June 2016, Trump used twisted logic to claim a federal judge presiding over a civil fraud case involving defunct Trump University should be removed because of his “Mexican heritage,” claiming he had a conflict of interest stemming from Trump’s desire to build a wall along the southern border.

Judge Gonzalo Curiel, whose parents immigrated from Mexico, was born in Indiana. Then-House Speaker Paul Ryan called Trump’s comments “racist,” but continued to support his presidential candidacy.

A month later, Trump belittled the parents of a Muslim U.S. Army captain killed in Iraq after the soldier’s father, attorney Khizr Khan, criticized Trump for wanting to build a wall to keep immigrants out of the country.

Once in the White House, Trump ramped up his racist and xenophobic views through both words and deeds.

In March 2017, Trump signed an executive order that blocked citizens from six majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States. (If elected in November, Trump promises to ban Palestinian refugees from Gaza from entering the country.)

Months after the ban on Muslim visitors, Trump used racist dog whistles to attack then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick for kneeling during the national anthem, asking a crowd of mostly white people if “people like yourselves” agreed with Trump’s anger at “those people.”

During a 2018 meeting with lawmakers to discuss a bipartisan immigration deal that would protect immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and countries in Africa, Trump asked, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” He then added that the United States should bring more people from countries like Norway.

In a 2019 tweet, Trump told four congresswomen of color to “go back” to the countries they came from. The following year, Trump rolled out the angry Black woman trope soon after Biden selected Harris as his running mate.

After the pandemic spread from China in 2020, Trump referred to the deadly coronavirus as the “kung flu.” Supporters at a rally in Arizona responded with cheers and laughs. As he campaigned last year, Trump repeatedly said undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.”

As Trump’s recent legal troubles mounted, he has used coded racial attacks to go after Black prosecutors leading the cases, calling Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg an “animal.”

After Trump was indicted in Georgia, he called Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis a “rabid partisan” who had a relationship with a gang member. After New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a civil fraud suit alleging Trump inflated his assets, he called her a “racist.”

As the 2024 presidential race comes into focus, Trump is once again playing on voters’ fears and differences instead of America’s strengths and similarities. It’s a tired act. The country cannot move forward by sending a bigot back to the Oval Office.