Tag: Trump white supremacy

Trump says Proud Boys should ‘stand down’ after backlash to debate comments

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President Trump on Wednesday said he didn’t know about the Proud Boys but that the group should “stand down” amid intense criticism of his remarks at the previous night’s presidential debate that the far-right group should “stand back and stand by.”

Trump on Wednesday faced blowback from a number of Republicans who said he should have forcefully denounced white supremacy when he was given the chance.

“I don’t know who the Proud Boys are,” Trump told reporters when departing for a campaign trip to Minnesota. “I can only say they have to stand down. Let law enforcement do their work.” Continue reading.

Trump aides struggle to defend Proud Boys remarks at debate

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White House and campaign aides on Wednesday struggled to clean up President Trump‘s comments a night earlier in which he declined to explicitly condemn white supremacy, instead directing a far-right group to “stand back and stand by” during the first presidential debate.

Trump’s comments about the Proud Boys, a far-right militia group, dominated headlines the morning after the debate.

Multiple Trump surrogates faced questions about the remarks during cable news hits, where they downplayed his calls for the group to “stand by” and pointed to the president’s past denunciations of white supremacists. Continue reading.

Watch: Trump Tells White Supremacists To ‘Stand By’

Donald Trump on Tuesday refused to condemn the white supremacists who have been purposefully causing chaos and committing violence at racial justice protests across the country.

“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. But I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left,” Trump said — a comment that does not condemn the violence white supremacists have carried out at protests.

The moment came when debate moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump to specifically condemn the actions of white supremacists, who Trump’s own FBI director said are a danger and account for the majority of the domestic terrorism threats in the country. Continue reading.

Trump refused to condemn white supremacists and militia members in presidential debate marked by disputes over race

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President Trump refused to condemn white supremacists and armed militia members Tuesday during a bellicose debate in which racism emerged as one of the most contentious issues.

He called out one far-right group, using words that some of its members embraced as a call to arms rather than a denunciation.

“Proud Boys — stand back and stand by,” Trump said after Democratic rival Joe Biden challenged him to decry far-right supporters who have taken to the streets in recent months brandishing weapons, and cited the Proud Boys. “But I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left.” Continue reading.

ICE preparing targeted arrests in ‘sanctuary cities,’ amplifying president’s campaign theme

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The Trump administration is preparing an immigration enforcement blitz next month that would target arrests in U.S. cities and jurisdictions that have adopted “sanctuary” policies, according to three U.S. officials who described a plan with public messaging that echoes the president’s law-and-order campaign rhetoric.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation, known informally as the “sanctuary op,” could begin in California as soon as later this week. It would then expand to cities including Denver and Philadelphia, according to two of the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive government law enforcement plans.

Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, probably will travel to at least one of the jurisdictions where the operation will take place to boost President Trump’s claims that leaders in those cities have failed to protect residents from dangerous criminals, two officials said. Continue reading.

Trump administration pushes to end census next week

Commerce Department announces Oct. 5 ‘target date,’ despite federal order against ending count early

Days after a judge ordered the Census Bureau to continue enumerating for another month beyond its current Sept. 30 deadline, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the agency, announced Monday he intends to end all in-person counting efforts next week.

“The Secretary of Commerce has announced a target date of October 5, 2020 to conclude 2020 Census self-response and field data collection operations,” according to a Census Bureau announcement made on Twitter and on its website.

Plaintiffs in a lawsuit and census experts argued a shortened census count would risk missing or double counting people, skewing the results. Because of delays earlier in the year related to the coronavirus pandemic, the administration originally postponed certain counting deadlines and sought a four-month legislative extension of when it needed to delivery census totals to the White House. But it abandoned that effort after President Donald Trump signed a memorandum in July trying to exclude undocumented immigrants from apportionment. Continue reading.

Trump campaign targeted 3.5 million Black voters for suppression: report

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The Trump campaign focused its digital efforts on 3.5 million Black American voters in 2016, targeting them in an effort to deter them from voting.

A new report from the UK’s Channel 4, which also helped expose how Cambridge Analytica precisely targeted voters for the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, makes the stunning revelation.

Pointing to “a vast cache of data used by Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign on almost 200 million American voters,” Channel 4 reports it has obtained the data, which “reveals that 3.5 million Black Americans were categorized by Donald Trump’s campaign as ‘Deterrence’ – voters they wanted to stay home on election day.” Continue reading.

Allegations of racism have marked Trump’s presidency and become key issue as election nears

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In unguarded moments with senior aides, President Trump has maintained that Black Americans have mainly themselves to blame in their struggle for equality, hindered more by lack of initiative than societal impediments, according to current and former U.S. officials.

After phone calls with Jewish lawmakers, Trump has muttered that Jews “are only in it for themselves” and “stick together” in an ethnic allegiance that exceeds other loyalties, officials said.

Trump’s private musings about Hispanics match the vitriol he has displayed in public, and his antipathy to Africa is so ingrained that when first lady Melania Trump planned a 2018 trip to that continent he railed that he “could never understand why she would want to go there.” Continue reading.

Report: Order to shorten count wasn’t made by Census Bureau

ORLANDO, Fla. — The decision to shorten by a month the 2020 head count of every U.S. resident was not made by the U.S. Census Bureau, and some agency officials suspect it was made by the White House or the Department of Commerce, according to a report from the bureau’s watchdog agency.

The report by the Office of Inspector General did not identify who made the decision to shorten the 2020 census from the end of October to the end of September, but it said bureau officials confirm it was not made by them.

The accelerated schedule “increases the risks to the accuracy of the 2020 Census,” the Inspector General report said. “This was the consensus view of the senior Bureau officials we interviewed.” Continue reading.

#EndorseThis: How Trump Encourages White Nationalist Violence And Terror

Now a Department of Homeland Security whistleblower has pointed America’s attention to what has been obvious for years: White nationalist terrorism is a major threat to our lives and liberty — and the Trump administration has done far too little to address this burgeoning menace. In fact, as this MeidasTouch video shows, Donald Trump has provoked and encouraged racist violence from the beginning of his presidency. 

Trump deserves plenty of blame for this toxic excrescence, but too many of his fellow Republicans have gone along. The Republican leadership even allows QAnon, the anti-Semitic and racist conspiracy movement, to co-opt the party’s Congressional candidates. Continue reading.