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Trump promises to treat Muslim Americans differently based on their religious faith

June 20, 2016 by AZ BlueMeanie

Last week, President Obama had this to say in response to the Islamophobic fear mongering of Donald Trump following the mass shooting in Orlando, Florida:

“But we are now seeing how dangerous this kind of mind set and this kind of thinking can be. We are starting to see where this kind of rhetoric and loose talk and sloppiness about who exactly we are fighting, where this can lead us.

“We now have proposals from the presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States to bar all Muslims from immigrating into America. And you hear language that singles out immigrants and suggests entire religious communities are complacent in violence.

“Where does this stop? The Orlando killer, one of the San Bernardino killers, the Fort Hood killer – they were all U.S. citizens. Are we going to start treating all Muslim-Americans differently? Are we going to start subjecting them to special surveillance? Are we going to start discriminate them, because of their faith?”

To which the crypto-fascist Donald Trump has now responded with an affirmative “hell yes!”Donald Trump Calls for Profiling to Stop Terrorists:

Donald J. Trump on Sunday renewed his call for the United States to consider profiling as a preventive tactic against terrorism in the aftermath of the mass shooting last week in Orlando, Fla.

“I hate the concept of profiling, but we have to start using common sense,” Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Mr. Trump issued a similar call in December after the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., which left 14 people dead and more than 20 injured.

What Trump means when he says ‘America First’

June 19, 2016 by AZ BlueMeanie

Twitter troll Donald Trump sent this tweet on Flag Day. Donald J. Trump on Twitter: “AMERICA FIRST!”.

Oh lord. I have my doubts whether this crypto-fascist really knows the history behind this motto. There are a lot of Americans who are equally ignorant of the history behind this motto.

Eric Rauchway, professor of history at the University of California at Davis, explains at the Washington Post. Donald Trump’s new favorite slogan was invented for Nazi sympathizers:

Donald Trump greeted Twitter on Flag Day with two words in all caps: “AMERICA FIRST!”

He has made this slogan a theme for his campaign, and he has begun using it to contrast himself with President Obama, whose criticism of Trump’s rhetoric on Tuesday was answered with a Trump statement promising, “When I am president, it will always be America first.”

He wasn’t quite promising “America über alles,” but it comes close. “America First” was the motto of Nazi-friendly Americans in the 1930s, and Trump has more than just a catchphrase in common with them.

Primaries end, now attention turns to defeating the dangerous demagogue Trump

August 27, 2020June 15, 2016 by AZ BlueMeanie

The long primary season finally came to an end on Tuesday night with the primary in Washington, D.C. Hillary Clinton easily won with over 78% of the vote.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders met Tuesday night to discuss the next phase of the campaign. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders Meet as Their Battle Ends:

Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders met privately for nearly two hours on Tuesday night to size each other up as they started exploring what kind of alliance they might build for the general election battle against Donald J. Trump.

Yet Mr. Sanders chose to withhold his endorsement of Mrs. Clinton, several Sanders advisers said, because he wants her to take steps to win his confidence before the Democratic convention, where his supporters expect him to speak and Clinton advisers hope he will give her his full-throated backing.

Aides to Mrs. Clinton said she had never expected his endorsement Tuesday night. A statement from the Clinton campaign after the meeting described it as “a positive discussion about their primary campaign, about unifying the party and about the dangerous threat that Donald Trump poses to our nation.”

They discussed issues like raising wages and reducing college costs, and “agreed to continue working on their shared agenda, including through the platform development process for the upcoming Democratic National Convention.”

A rhetorical war of words

June 14, 2016 by AZ BlueMeanie

Paul Waldman of the Washington Post reports in the Happy Hour Roundup that some “lefties” had an anxiety attack on Monday when Hillary Clinton seemed to say that she is willing to use the phrase “radical Islamism.” A Clinton aide emails over clarification:

She was calling him out. She insisted today that she won’t declare war against an entire religion the way that Trump has, but she isn’t going to let us be distracted with semantic games. The real question is, what’s your plan? And he clearly doesn’t have one.

If you actually read her quote, it seems likely that Clinton meant to use the phrase more in the spirit of, “I’ll repeat this phrase to show how meaningless it is.” This is hardly the “break” with Obama that is being portrayed. Clinton’s point, in multiple interviews this morning, was that Trump’s formulation (“radical Islam radical Islam radical Islam”) risks being seen as an attack on an entire religion and plays into ISIS’s hands.

Steve Benen adds, Clinton explains, ‘Rhetoric is not going to solve the problem’:

Donald Trump is absolutely convinced that the key to counter-terrorism is religion-specific rhetoric. Somehow, if officials ignore the conclusions reached by the Bush and Obama administrations, and repeatedly use the phrase “Islamic terrorism,” then Americans will magically be safer.

It’s a child-like approach to national security, but according to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, it’s also the pillar of his campaign’s counter-terrorism policy.

Twitter troll Trump fails his first test of leadership after Orlando

June 13, 2016 by AZ BlueMeanie

Last week the editors of the Arizona Republic engaged in a round-table discussion of the question, Is the media to blame for Trump? (“Donald Trump gets more press coverage than other candidates. Our editorial board debates whether that is a problem.” We report, you decide.)

Yada, yada, yada . . . Donald Trump answered that question in the affirmative last week. Trump is laughing in the face of the media, and mocking them for how easily he can manipulate them and their celebrity-based news coverage. Bloomberg Politics reported Trump Says ‘No Reason’ to Raise $1 Billion for Campaign:

Trump, who has held just two major fundraising events since agreeing three weeks ago to help the party raise cash, said he would rely instead more on his own star power as a former reality-TV personality to earn free media, and has no specific goals for how much money his campaign needs.

“There’s no reason to raise that,” Trump said about raising $1 billion. “I just don’t think I need nearly as much money as other people need because I get so much publicity. I get so many invitations to be on television. I get so many interviews, if I want them.”

Nowhere is Trump’s easy manipulation of the feckless news media more self-evident than on Twitter, where this Twitter troll lives. The lazy media reports his every tweet as if tweets are news, rather than do actual interviews and Q & A of the candidate. (I am convinced that Twitter is the death of political journalism).