Donald Trump’s racism, bigotry, authoritarianism, misogyny and idiocy have so far been the subject of two of my articles on this portal – this one and this one, which also point out how such an approach cannot enable the world to win the war against Islamism (not Islam), which is the Nazism of our century, and I would appeal to the readers of those two articles before reading this one. Since then, more events have occurred and older events have come to light that would embarrass Trump.
I may mention here that Trump has accused the Indian and Chinese immigrants of engaging in the biggest “job theft” in the United States as recently as November 2016! He even mockingly mimicked a hypothetical Indian call centre employee’s accent in one of his rallies.
Scientific American, the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the United States and a very prestigious science magazine to which the likes of Albert Einstein have contributed, carried an editorial on 1st September 2016, titled ‘Donald Trump’s Lack of Respect for Science Is Alarming’. Some excerpts from the piece are quoted hereunder-
“(O)ne of the two major party candidates for the highest office in the land has repeatedly and resoundingly demonstrated a disregard, if not outright contempt, for science. Donald Trump also has shown an authoritarian tendency to base policy arguments on questionable assertions of fact and a cult of personality.”
“Science has not played nearly as prominent a role as it should in informing debates over the labeling of genetically modified foods, end of life care and energy policy, among many issues.
The current presidential race, however, is something special. It takes antiscience to previously unexplored terrain. When the major Republican candidate for president has tweeted that global warming is a Chinese plot, threatens to dismantle a climate agreement 20 years in the making and to eliminate an agency that enforces clean air and water regulations, and speaks passionately about a link between vaccines and autism that was utterly discredited years ago, we can only hope that there is nowhere to go but up.”
Interestingly, Morocco’s foreign minister Salaheddine Mezouar said on the eve of UN talks in Marrakesh, amid fears that US presidential candidate Donald Trump will try to pull his country out of the pact if he wins the upcoming election, that there is no turning back from the Paris agreement to which even India and China have consented.
An earlier piece in Scientific American, dated 21st March 2016, stated-
“Trump dislikes hair spray regulations and is dismissive of global warming but the rest of his energy policies seem unclear.”
Another piece in the same magazine dated 27th July 2016 stated-
“Science is slowly coming into focus in the US presidential campaign. Although neither Republican Donald Trump nor Democrat Hillary Clinton has emphasized core research issues, the candidates — and their parties — are beginning to flesh out their positions on climate change, education, biomedical research and other topics that involve the scientific community.
Trump’s pick of Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate on July 15 signalled a sharp turn towards the Republican party’s conservative base. Pence, a self-described Christian conservative, has questioned the existence of climate change, waffled on evolution and criticized President Barack Obama for supporting embryonic-stem-cell research. His new role aligns with the hard-line policy platform adopted at the Republican convention, where Trump officially became the party’s nominee on July 19.
If Trump wins, Pence’s rise could embolden conservative Republicans to seek new limits on federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research. But predicting how Trump would govern is a dangerous parlour game, says Michael Werner, executive director of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine, an advocacy group in Washington DC: ‘We really don’t know what a Trump–Pence administration would do.’
It’s a common refrain. Deciphering Trump’s views on core science issues has been difficult given the free-wheeling style of his populist campaign. He has often seemed to focus more on taunting the political establishment than on staking out policy positions. By contrast, the Clinton campaign has consulted dozens of scientists on topics that include health, education and the environment.”
Besides, large sections of Trump’s support-base continued their unabashed sexism in levelling ad hominem attacks on Hillary Clinton. On sexism, Trump blamed men and women working together as the cause of sexual assault in the context of the military, which overlooks the excellent services women have rendered on battlefields historically and how American female soldiers have contributed immensely to the fight against terrorism. The heroine in taking down the perpetrator of the Fort Hood shootout in 2009 was Kimberly Munley, a female officer.
Further, the New York Times reported that a real estate business run by Trump discriminated against blacks back in the 1960s, which is given Trump’s reluctance to condemn white supremacism. To quote from that report–
“(A)n investigation by The New York Times — drawing on decades-old files from the New York City Commission on Human Rights, internal Justice Department records, court documents and interviews with tenants, civil rights activists and prosecutors — uncovered a long history of racial bias at his family’s properties, in New York and beyond.”
“While there is no evidence that Mr. Trump personally set the rental policies at his father’s properties, he was on hand while they were in place, working out of a cubicle in Trump Management’s Brooklyn offices as early as the summer of 1968.”
Trump’s latest outreach to blacks in September 2016, despite the very racist statements made by him publicly in the past, “wasn’t fooling anyone”, as per Bonnie Greer, the Chancellor of Kingston University in the United Kingdom, and actually reinforced racist stereotypes as per Adam Serwer, who is a senior editor at The Atlantic, covering politics. It has been contended that his history of racism undermines his new outreach to blacks.
Interestingly, while most Republicans court the Jewish vote, Trump has been simultaneously bigoted towards both Jews and Muslims.
Trump’s latest ad campaign a few days ago had anti-Semetic (anti-Jewish) undertones, reminiscient of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, hoax documents prepared by the Nazis portraying Jews in general as people trying to manipulate and rule the world, rather than acknowledging talented Jewish individuals for their merit. To quote from an article in the popular liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz–
“Donald Trump’s final ad for this presidential campaign has been online for less than a few hours and has already inspired claims of being rife with ‘anti-Semitic overtones.’
The video, billed as ‘Donald Trump’s Argument for America,’ assails what the presidential candidate calls the Washington establishment’s ties with ‘global special interests,’ so-called people ‘that don’t have your good in mind.’
The only problem: the figures Trump’s campaign chose to illustrate both are exclusively Jewish and from the financial world.
‘The establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election… For those who control the levers of power in Washington and for the global special interests…’ Trump says in the video. When Trump says ‘levers of power in Washington’ we see footage of Jewish billionaire and philanthropist George Soros, shortly after we see Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen appearing imposed over the term “global special interests.’
Later in the video, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein also makes an appearance.
Huffington Post, which has been vocal in its criticism of Trump, reported what it called the video’s ‘anti-Semitic overtones,’ claiming its theme was reminiscent to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Huffington Post quoted Richard Spencer, head of what it called a white nationalist advocacy group, as describing Trump’s video as ‘powerful’.”
“This is Trump’s latest flirt with purported anti-Semitism, with a Tweet published from his official account a few months ago featuring what many took to be a Star of David alongside a dollar bills and an image of Hillary Clinton. The image was found to be taken from a white supremacists’ web site. The Trump campaign subsequently deleted the tweet and replaced the star with a circle.”
While he had tried his minority outreach, which included Jews, if another report in the popular Israeli newspaper Haaretz is any indication, at least by the beginning of September, he couldn’t manage to win the confidence of most Jews, who continued to dislike him. To quote from that report dated September 2016-
“The images of Trump in a tallit will presumably do little to improve Trump’s standing among Jewish American voters, who strongly favor Hillary Clinton over Trump. According to the latest Gallup data, Jews favor Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump 52 to 23 percent.
Despite the fact that Trump’s daughter Ivanka famously converted to Orthodox Judaism for her now-husband Jared Kushner and he has bragged of his Jewish grandchildren, repeatedly declared his support for Israel, many Jews are put off and deeply distressed for his campaign’s ties to the so-called “alt right” which includes white supremacist and anti-Semitic elements.”
In October 2016, Haaretz carried a piece by David Lissy, a Jewish gentleman from Trump’s own Republican Party and who has formerly served as the Executive Director of the Masorti Foundation for Conservative Judaism, very critical of Trump. To quote some excerpts from the same-
“I do not need to agree with Hillary Clinton on all issues to know that she at least understands them. I think her world view is informed and realistic, not one of foolish bombast.”
“What I think most distresses me about Donald Trump, and this also goes to core Jewish values, is that he promotes disdain for the democratic process itself. Doing the classic Trump two-step, he has even suggested that if he loses the election it could only be because he was cheated out of it. In close elections in 1960, and again in 2000, we were blessed by the fact that the losing candidate supported the legitimacy of the result while having realistic cause to challenge it. Trump seems more interested in promoting himself than in the democratic process or the future of the country.”
“My concerns about Donald Trump go well beyond his tweeting and his offensive statements. As someone with business experience myself (I was a senior officer of a $4 billion company), I see little to suggest that Trump was a good businessman. He started with a huge (could not resist the word) parental assist, bullied and cheated those without the financial resources to fight him in court and had large losses.
As for taxes, Trump is apparently not man enough to directly explain that, while perhaps legal, he has not paid anything to support the government he now wants to lead. It says something about his character, or lack thereof, that in past elections he thought nothing about caustic comments about the percentage of income paid by others as federal tax. I would call this the Trump double standard. As for Trump’s losses and other business failures, it defies all logic to suggest they are the result of good business decisions.
Truth may be subjective, but facts are concrete. Trump’s disregard for facts, for reality, is frightening. In terms of a president making a decision, what is really scary is the thought Trump might actually believe the nonsense he spouts.
Jewish values matter to me. Trump’s notion of charity is a perversion of Jewish values. He gives ostentatiously, but apparently primarily with other people’s money. When confronted by grieving parents of a fallen soldier, his stated view of his own sacrifice was so bizarre as to defy comment.”
The “fallen soldier” the Jewish gentleman David Lissy refers to was Humayun Khan, an American Muslim soldier martyred in the Iraq war of 2003, to save the lives of other American soldiers.
The BBC also carried a report on how Trump tried to play dirty in his real estate business in Mumbai in 2011. Speaking of Trump’s business skills, one of his casinos in which he had heavily invested, was incurring losses and was shut down in August 2016.
Trump’s conduct in the first presidential debate with Clinton, in which he interrupted the latter, some 26 times, also came to light.
Trump also faced immense criticism for insulting American prisoners of war by saying that he doesn’t respect those who get captured in war. Trump’s pathetic record at name-calling can be seen here.
CNN also reported how in 2005, in a certain radio show, Trump made highly sexist comments, going to the extent of saying that it was alright to call his daughter a piece of ass! This is only a part of the series of sexist comments publicly made by Trump (keeping out the “locker room talk”), and when questioned on his sexism by right-wing channel Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly about the same, Trump has been quite rude to her.
As recently as in October 2016, Trump’s own Republican Party was considering having him step down!
A certain supporter of Trump’s has explicitly said–
“Partly I just want to watch the chaos unfold if a purely ego-driven man were to experience success with a presidential run. I’m a young guy who is immature, a bit antisocial, and with no plans for kids or a wife ever. At some level, I don’t really care how things go with America as long as it’s fun to watch, like watching a basketball game when your favorite team isn’t playing. I hope this sheds light.”
Also, I’d like to inform Indian readers that former diplomat Shyam Saran, who, by the way, is for India officially raising the issue of human rights violations in Balochistan and POK, has contended with very persuasive reasoning that Hillary Clinton as US president would be good for India in this article.
Originally published on Khurpi.
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