tagged w/ Donald Trump Birther
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By Michael Cohen:
It remains to be seen whether Donald Trump will officially run for president. But whatever his decision, one thing is clear: His political effort so far may be the most racist and xenophobic on the campaign trail in some time.
Trump is not only directing coded racial barbs at President Barack Obama, he is aiming his rhetorical guns on those he describes as scheming foreigners as well. Scarily, Trump’s words seem to be contributing to his growing popularity in a Republican Party increasingly dominated by, and dependent on, white voters.
Thrump’s rhetoric comes at a time when the two parties are divided along racial lines. According to recent polling, nearly 90 percent of GOP voters are non-Hispanic whites. In the 2010 midterms, 60 percent of whites cast a Republican congressional ballot — the party’s highest percentage of that vote in modern exit polling.
While the Democratic share among non-white voters shrank in 2010, it exceeded 70 percent — a number likely to increase when Obama is on the ticket in 2012. When it comes to questions about Obama’s performance or the role of government, the racial divide is even more striking.
At the same time, polls suggest that, more than other Americans, voters sympathetic to the tea party movement are more likely to hold “racially resentful” views of minorities.
Trump is staking his populist claim against this backdrop. He began by openly questioning Obama’s place of birth. Trump’s entry into the birther controversy helped rocket his presidential bid to prominence.
As David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker suggests, the issue of Obama’s citizenship, which is doubted by more than six in 10 GOP voters, represents a concerted effort “to arouse a fear of the Other.” It is an unsubtle effort to foster the notion that the president, a black man born of an African father, is somehow not “one of us.”
It’s taken nearly three years for the media to label the birther nonsense a racially motivated accusation, which is remarkable.
But even after the president released his long-form birth certificate Wednesday, Trump continued his attacks — calling on the president to release his college records. Trump insisted he has “heard” that Obama was a “terrible student.” “How,” Trump wondered, “does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?”
It doesn’t take a political genius to figure out the coded implications of this argument — Obama had benefited from affirmative action. After all, how else could a bad student who happens to be black get into Ivy League schools?
This is only one toxic element of Trump’s message. His attacks on foreigners are worse because he doesn’t bother to speak in code. Trump has a xenophobic explanation for the stagnant U.S. economy and persistently high unemployment: Non-white foreigners are trying to “screw” us.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), dominated by Muslim nations, is “laughing at us,” Trump insists, and will raise oil prices to “suck the blood out of any [economic] recovery.”
Depending on what day of the week it is, China is either “raping,” “screwing” or “decimating” the United States. According to Trump, the Chinese make “lousy” products, steal American jobs and manipulate their currency to gain advantage over the United States.
The only reason, Trump insists, that China is beating the United States is that its “leaders are smarter,” bringing his accusations about Obama’s alleged scholastic underperformance into a unified field theory of racial determinism.
Trump, in a speech Friday in Las Vegas, even resorted to a faux “Asian” accent — “We would like very much to sign contract. You are a wonderful, wonderful trading partner” — to mock South Korea for playing hardball in trade negotiations while receiving U.S. military assistance.
Trump complained in similar terms about Iraqis’ supposed lack of appreciation for the war fought on their soil. “We won the war,” Trump said. “We take over the oilfields. We use the oil.” In Trump’s world, this is “reimbursement” for liberating the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein.
Trump’s populist rhetoric offers an easy way to deal with recalcitrant or uppity foreign leaders or others who don’t appreciate U.S. largess: A strong president who can knock some sense into countries that fail to show deference.
In calling for new tariffs on China, Trump asserted he “would tell China that you’re either going to shape up or I’m going to tax you at 25 percent for all the products you send into this country.”
When it comes to Saudi Arabia and the recent jump in gas prices, Trump is even less subtle. The problem, as he diagnosed it, is that “nobody in Washington sits back and says, ‘You’re not gonna raise that f***ing price, you understand me?’”
Clearly, Trump seems to have said that Obama can’t do this because he’s not very smart, he’s too weak and he might be one of “them.”
While Trump may not grasp how international diplomacy is conducted, his language seems to play well in the cheap seats.
Considering that Trump’s entire “campaign” feels like a public relations effort to attract attention to himself and his television program, “Celebrity Apprentice,” it’s hard to take his presidential plans too seriously.
Yet he is having a sizable impact. On Wednesday, the president released his long-form birth certificate — an event for which Trump happily took credit. Trump’s climbing poll numbers also suggest that his populist rhetoric resonates among Republicans.
At a time of economic uncertainty and dislocation, Trump’s blame game may strike a nerve among Americans looking for a scapegoat. His rhetoric could have a lasting impact, regardless of whether he runs for president, and risks driving the GOP nomination contest — and the nation’s politics — into dangerously divisive territory.
In the end, it’s unimaginable that Trump could ever win the White House. But when a wannabe populist politician, using racist and xenophobic language, rises to the top of the list of GOP presidential aspirants, every American should be concerned.
Michael Cohen is the author of “Live From the Campaign Trail: The Greatest Presidential Campaign Speeches of the 20th Century and How They Shaped Modern America.”By Michael Cohen:
It remains to be seen whether Donald Trump will officially run... more
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Donald Trump on "Hannity" Thursday night:
He's been a horrible president. I always said the worst president was Jimmy Carter. Guess what? Jimmy Carter goes to second place. Barack Obama has been the worst president -- ever. The history of America -- Barack Obama is No. 1."
...or
Donald Trump in an exchange with CNN's Wolf Blitzer; September 2007:
Trump: A Democratic candidate -- whoever wins (the primary) -- is going to have a huge advantage because of Bush. People don't like him. People think he's been a horrible president, possibly the worst in the history of this country.Donald Trump on "Hannity" Thursday night:
He's been a horrible... more
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http://factcheck.org/2011/04/donald-youre-fired/
Trump repeats false claims about Obama's birthplace.
April 9, 2011
Summary
If Donald Trump worked for us, we’d have to say: "Donald, you’re fired — for incompetence." The successful developer and TV celebrity says he’d make a good president, and maybe he would — we take no stand either way about that. But when it comes to getting facts straight, he fouls up again and again on the basics of President Barack Obama’s birth. As a rookie reporter, he just wouldn’t make it.
He claims the president’s grandmother says Obama was born in Kenya. In fact, the recording to which he refers shows Sarah Obama repeatedly saying through a translator: "He was born in America."
He claims that no hospital in Hawaii has a record of Obama’s birth. Hospital records are confidential under federal law, but Honolulu’s Kapi’olani Medical Center has published a letter from Obama calling it "the place of my birth," thus publicly confirming it as his birthplace.
He insists that the official "Certification of Live Birth" that Obama produced in 2008 is "not a birth certificate." That’s wrong. The U.S. Department of State uses "birth certificate" as a generic term to include the official Hawaii document, which satisfies legal requirements for proving citizenship and obtaining a passport.
He claims that there’s no signature or certification number on the document released by Obama. Wrong again. Photos of the document, which we posted in 2008, clearly show those details.
He says newspaper announcements of Obama’s birth that appeared in Hawaii newspapers in 1961 "probably" were placed there fraudulently by his now-deceased American grandparents. Actually, a state health department official and a former managing editor of one of the newspapers said the information came straight from the state health department.
He claims "nobody knew" Obama when he was growing up and "nobody ever comes forward" who knew him as a child. "If I ever decide to run, you may go back and interview people from my kindergarten," Trump said. Well, two retired kindergarten teachers in a 2009 news story fondly recall teaching a young Barack Obama.
The evidence that Obama was born in the U.S.A. is so overwhelming that we haven’t had much to say lately about the sort of bogus claims that Trump repeats. Hawaii’s top official in charge of vital records stated long ago, for example, that the confidential records underlying Obama’s official birth certificate show that he was born in Hawaii and is "a natural born American citizen."
But when a leading prospect for the Republican presidential nomination embraces and repeats these spurious claims and groundless conspiracy theories on national television, we are forced to wade into this swamp once again. For details of where Trump goes wrong, and full documentation of the facts, please read on to our Analysis section.
Much much more at the link....well worth the read!!!http://factcheck.org/2011/04/donald-youre-fired/
Trump repeats false claims about... more
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Donald Trump doesn't like "birthers." He calls the word "unfair" to people who don't believe President Obama was born in the USA. Very well, then. If not birthers, how about if we call them "morons"? How about "jack----s," "imbeciles," "idiots" or "doofuses?" How about "pinheads" -- or would that require a royalty to Bill O'Reilly? As mama used to say, enough is enoughDonald Trump doesn't like "birthers." He calls the word... more
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Donald Trump doesn't like "birthers." He calls the word "unfair" to people who don't believe President Obama was born in the USA. Very well, then. If not birthers, how about if we call them "morons"? How about "jack----s," "imbeciles," "idiots" or "doofuses?" How about "pinheads" -- or would that require a royalty to Bill O'Reilly? As mama used to say, enough is enoughDonald Trump doesn't like "birthers." He calls the word... more
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Donald Trump has joined the "birthers," the odd movement that questions President Barack Obama's Hawaii birth certificate. That's a good way for the celebrity billionaire to sound like he's making a serious run for the Republican presidential nomination, which he says he is considering. It also makes him sound like a secret agent for the DemocratsDonald Trump has joined the "birthers," the odd movement that questions... more
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