This morning, Trump retweeted three anti-Muslim videos from Jayda Fransen, a leader of the far-right “Britain First” movement. One of the videos appears to be an ISIS snuff film; it purportedly shows a mob pushing a boy off a roof and beating him to death. Another shows a bearded man destroying a statue of the Virgin Mary. The third shows a man identified as a “Muslim migrant” bullying a “Dutch boy on crutches.”
This is straight-up hate-mongering from Trump, meant to foment hostility and hatred toward Muslims in America. The man who murdered MP Jo Cox in the run-up to the Brexit vote shouted “Britain First” before stabbing Cox to death. According to The Guardian, Fransen was found guilty of harassment earlier this month for abusing a Muslim woman wearing a hijab.
Is Trump throwing bloody chunks of red meat to his base to keep their attention off the plutocrat wish list masquerading as a tax bill? Maybe. But a U.S. president using his platform to gin up religious-based hate and bigotry is important nonetheless. Then there’s this:
Great, and we should boycott Fake News CNN. Dealing with them is a total waste of time! https://t.co/8zJ3j7g5el
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2017
It was in response to this tweet by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, in which she reacts to the news that CNN won’t be attending the White House Christmas party:
Christmas comes early! Finally, good news from @CNN. https://t.co/3GeJysIol3
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 29, 2017
Cast your mind back to a simpler time and recall how Jake Tapper, then with ABC, reacted to Obama admin press secretary Robert Gibbs’ suggestion that Fox News isn’t a real news organization. Media hack Steve Krakaur reacted as follows:
It is almost incomprehensible that an administration would put themselves out on a limb so much that they would diminish the livelihood of, as Tapper notes, “thousands of individuals who work” at Fox News in some capacity. The White House is irked by a few dozen people at most – the opinion hosts, the execs, maybe a few anchors. That’s enough to throw the entire organization under the bus?
This is a dangerous path being taken by the White House – one that is wrong, and raises serious questions about their motive here. There are not undercutting Fox News and their viewers, they are undercutting their own credibility on this issue. Expect Tapper’s line of questioning to be just the beginning of the backlash, albeit delayed, at this press intimidation tactic.
Think we’ll get anything resembling that level of outrage now that a U.S. president and his press secretary are openly trying to delegitimize every news organization that doesn’t kiss Trump’s ass? Trump also used the news of Matt Lauer’s firing to take a shot at other media companies:
Wow, Matt Lauer was just fired from NBC for “inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace.” But when will the top executives at NBC & Comcast be fired for putting out so much Fake News. Check out Andy Lack’s past!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2017
All news organizations should boycott the White House Christmas party now if they’ve got a shred of dignity left. Let the Fox News and Breitbart toadies have it all to themselves.
Some folks are saying this latest assault on the media is a distraction from upcoming Trump-Russia news. I hope devastating indictments are on the way. But regardless, it’s not a distraction to focus on an assault on the First Amendment.
I’m calling my senators about the shitty fucking tax bill. And net neutrality. But I’m watching the attempted destruction of the First Amendment by the bigoted demagogue in the White House too. We’re going to have to learn to walk, chew gum, traverse a tight rope over boiling cauldrons of acid, juggle chainsaws and keep our eyes on the ball — all at the same time.
O. Felix Culpa
I can do the walk and chew gum part. I draw the line at boiling vats of acid and juggling chainsaws. They’re too much of a distraction.
sdhays
So, the White House was only “irked” by the people who own and run Fox News, the people who voice opinions on Fox News, and the people who report most of the “news” on Fox News; basically, anyone with any power of the actual broadcasted content of Fox News. Did no one think of the janitors at Fox News?!? I’m sure they were very upset by the idea that Fox News might not get a front seat at a White House press briefing.
How did Tapper write that shit without realizing he was making a parody of himself?
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
It was always manufactured outrage. The always bend over backwards to attack a Dem and appease a thug so they can get invites to Sally Quinn’s parties. The Village.
Mart
I do not see how this ends well.
bystander
I know it’s too much to hope for, so instead of asking Santa Mueller to hand down multiple indictments, I’ll settle for twitler having a myocardial infarction the size of Queens.
Jerzy Russian
@O. Felix Culpa: You can juggle chain saws by using this weird trick: remove the chains first! I haven’t seen any weird tricks related to vats of acid.
Radiumgirl
This is truly unprecedented and frightening. The man is all about ginning up his base. He has no idea how to govern, doesn’t know what else to do but continue throwing red meat to the already inflamed masses of frightened bigots.
MomSense
I think we need to change up our tactics. Many of us are contacting our congress critters on a daily basis but they are choosing their wealthy donors over the vast majority of their constituents. What would get through to them? The election wins in NJ, VA, and other states didn’t do the trick. Apparently the Republicans are privately discussing trump’s unfit mental status and this doesn’t even cause them to uphold their obligations to our constitution. It’s at the point where they are speculating that he’s not lying, he’s delusional. Really? And this doesn’t cause some kind of action?
The media seem to be falling in to their lazy and inaccurate descriptions of both sides of this debate. Basic facts and decades worth of data would destroy the Republican talking points but our free press seems unwilling (with a few exceptions) to just do their basic job and inform the public about how this policy will affect us.
Do we start protesting naked? Should we bring our first born to our congress critters’ offices as offerings? Restage the Alinsky O’hare “shit in”? I’d prefer to switch the venue to Reagan National but I admit to holding a grudge. I’m all in for whatever ideas people have.
Emma
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: As a popular commenter says villago delenda est.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Shit, this movie sucks ass. It can’t end soon enough. I only hope Mueller is making some headway. The lack of news from him is frustrating beyond belief. This asshole needs to be gone ten months ago.
Sloane Ranger
In defence of Tapper, he probably saw it as a Pastor Niemoller “First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-because I was not a Socialist. … Then they came for me-and there was no one left to speak for me.” issue so I have some sympathy for his position.
This is a big story here in the UK and Auntie Beeb is saying this will make it harder for May and gang to invite Trump here in any capacity given his open support for someone convicted under our anti-discrimination laws. Political embarrassment and legal challenges galore.
Sloane Ranger
@Sloane Ranger: Wow I’m in moderation for using the S*******t word and it’s only in a quote from Martin Niemoller!
Can someone set me free pretty please?
Starfish
@MomSense: We have an Indivisible group locally that is dedicated to theatrics. They bring extra Handmaid outfits to protest outside of venues where Pence is speaking.
They carried around a cardboard cutout of our Republican Senator so they could ask him questions all summer.
There are other groups devoted to small causes like ousting particularly odious people in local politics.
This morning, a local group that sends postcards is meeting nearby.
drj
According to Dutch media, the perpetrator of the assault on the boy on crutches isn’t even a Muslim migrant, but ethnic Dutch.
(Of course, even he were, it still wouldn’t prove anything.)
Amir Khalid
For context: a devout Muslim destroying a statue of the Virgin Mary would be doing it not to show contempt for the mother of Jesus, who is as revered by Muslims as much as by Christians, but out of disapproval of the graven image which is considered sinful.
Now, about den Scheißgibbon: Twitter is an American company. It has rules against hate-mongering; that’s what Trump is doing. It should enforce those rules, and smite him with the Banhammer for the good of the nation.
MomSense
@Starfish:
I just don’t think it is getting the play it deserves on the tv. I really think we have to go after the media outlets. Start protesting them, following their reporters, asking them why they allow pols to spin and lie.
Steeplejack
But pants are still optional, right? I’m in!
Brachiator
Yesterday, a front pager suggested that Trump was just another Republican, a continuation of typical conservative administrations.
But I don’t know of any modern president, and very few historical presidents, who was so openly vindictive and resentful, who clearly is comfortable with and knowledgeable about hatemongers, and who takes so much pleasure in indulging his resentments.
And Trump is clearly influencing the national conversations on race and immigration. Inspired by their president, some people are feeling more comfortable in getting their racist freak on in public.
Calouste
@Brachiator: I can’t remember another Republican President supporting a pedophile for Senate and retweeting Nazis.
donnah
I emailed my R Senator advising him to vote against the tax bill and got a standard form letter in reply, so I’ll be hitting the phones as well.
There was a great article at HuffPo today about Trump’s ridiculous photo op meeting yesterday where he mocked Pelosi and Schumer for refusing to attend the tax meeting. He moved Mc Connell and Ryan out of their chairs on either side of him and put Pelosi’s and Schumer’s name tags there to make it clear that they were absent. The best part of that photo, which of course was on Twitter, was the amount of hilarious responses. I think it’s still on their website, where Trump’s Plan Backfires.
We just have to keep fighting back. It’s hard because we are a minority, the people who follow politics and actually give a damn. Sometimes it feels to me like a nightmare where I can see fires burning all around me and no one else can. People are so ignorant on the whole spectrum of what the Republicans are doing that it feels impossible to get through to them. So we keep writing, calling, and fighting.
Bobby Thomson
@Sloane Ranger:
That’s no defense at all. “They” were Fox News, and he didn’t speak out until they came for him.
GregB
Trump is the monster we warned about.
Mainstreaming snuff films into the body politic. Degenerate. Demented. Depraved.
Betty Cracker
@Amir Khalid: There are plenty of folks on Twitter who dog @jack about that. I’m of two minds: Trump is clearly violating the hate-mongering policy. But his Twitter activities are a useful gauge of his level of derangement.
@donnah:
Right there with you.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Speak of the Devil:
In a now deleted tweet Trump accuses Morning Blow of killing an intern:
The “unsolved mystery” is a reference to an female intern that literally died in Blow’s office.
Blow spent the entire election cycle pumping up Drumpf and savaging Clinton and this is his reward.
PS Imagine the firestorm if a Dem had accused Blow of murder.
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker:
Here’s my suggestion: make Twitter ban his hate-mongering or make Twitter own it. Flood the company with complaints.
LurkerNoLonger
This guy is a fucking embarrassment. This isn’t a distraction, it’s who he is.
Boatboy_srq
@Radiumgirl: For a lawnorder pol, Lord Dampnut is the closest thing to an anarchist agitator that I’ve seen.
Betty Cracker
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: He didn’t delete it. It’s still up.
@Amir Khalid: The people in my TL drag Twitter constantly for not banning Trump for hate-mongering and for their tolerance of literal Nazis.
charon
CNN is pushing back – because direct attack on them.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/11/28/cnn-stars-blitzer-cooper-amanpour-and-others-fire-back-at-trump-in-day-of-rage/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories-2_cnn-920pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&tid=pm_pop&utm_term=.de4078233cb8
(Post story has links to CNN.)
Boatboy_srq
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: No loyalty, no memory, no accountability.
OTOH, quid pro quo arrangements – outside any with the Kremlin and the Russian banks – are likely not going to be a problem for this maladministration because Lord Dampnut won’t come through on the bargain.
#NotPatriotic
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker:
Would it help to make a public campaign of it?
gene108
@bystander:
Dude, the felating of Pence would be epic. The media so damn desperate to have a “normal” President, who does not retweet white supremacists that they will declare Pence the second coming of Reagan, with his steely glare and charming personality.
With Trump, there’s a focal point for the rage, other than the amorphous Republicans.
gene108
@MomSense:
We need to bombard media companies with angry letters, e-mails and phone calls complaining about their coverage. Let them know, there are a lot of potential viewers they are losing because of their coverage.
Make them fear the Left, like they fear the Right.
But damn, where is the time in the day to call Congress, media companies, etc.
This Presidency is exhausting.
Boatboy_srq
@Brachiator: None have been this blatant, or this crass, about the behavior. But Nixon and Shrub wwre comparable, and Reagan’s minions equally partisan.
What you are reacting to is the nouveau riche classlessness, the scorn for polite society – essentially all the things the Republican Establishment disdain tRump for ahd which his base loves. The Old Guard really are no better; they just make the bigotry look and sound prettier, and you can thank Atwater for that.
kindness
My first thought was ‘this is all horrible and look what we have become as a nation.’ My second thought though is that Trump knows hell is knocking at his door in the form of Mueller and is doing his best to obfuscate with racist squid ink displays. It works on us and it works with the MSM (which is really our big issue, how the MSM is continually played) but it won’t work on Mueller.
Please Mueller, we need you to start unloading NOW!
randy khan
Not news at all (fake or otherwise), but these people have no shame.
Beth in VA
This is a horrible news day. It just feels so mach like watching one of the train cats get accordianed in this terrible slow motion train wreck our country is in post 2016 election. Thank you Betty Cracker for keeping us sane, reminding us we’re not alone in this nightmare.
Brachiator
@Boatboy_srq:
Bullshit. I hate Nixon, but I do not know where he was as openly racist as Trump. And Shrub? No fucking comparison.
Uh, no. This is not what I am reacting to at all. Trump has deliberately cultivated relationships with people like Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen. He knows who all the European nativists and racists are, and clearly sees himself as one of them.
And Trump’s racism, and particularly his demonizing of Muslims ain’t got Jack shit to do with Atwater.
Also, racism is America’s old time religion. White Democrats today resist it, fight against it, and are more likely to reject it, but it is as much a part of their political history as it is the Republicans.
Beth in VA
@Beth in VA: Train *cars* I meant.
No Drought No More
Reagan didn’t know. Has anyone asked Trump if he believes nuclear missiles can be triggered to self-destruct in mid-flight? That is, should diplomacy win the day, and war averted at the last possible moment.
And would Trump even comprehend it? Or would he choose to believe- like his “grab ’em by the P” tape he now claims is a forgery- that it’s not true, and that the missiles can too be blown up mid-flight?
Enquiring minds think it’s a good question..
Neldob
And IIRC, it was CNN that gave the evil cowardly dotard So much free publicity. His campaign speeches drew an audience.
Neldob
@gene108: Yes. Lots and lots of emails and postcards calling them out. And friends in red states encouraged to do the same. That they get away with this tax shit sandwich after all the years of deficit complaints is insane.
feebog
@kindness:
No. That’s not how it works. Full disclosure; I was a contract investigator for a government agency. I didn’t investigate criminal matters (sexual harassment, hostile work environment, threat assessment), however, investigations such as Mueller is conducting take an enormous amount of man hours. It is true Mueller got a head start because he essentially took over an ongoing investigation, but there are a lot of threads to be investigated. Flynn’s lawyer terminating their joint defense agreement with other subjects indicates Mueller may be moving into the second phase of his investigation. But there is a long, long way to go, and other unforeseen factors may further complicate and delay the investigation.
cleek
there is no evidence the “man” was Muslim, or an immigrant; and, he was actually just 16 years old. there’s even reporting to the contrary.
https://www.snopes.com/video-beating-dutch-boy-crutches/
Sloane Ranger
@Bobby Thomson: According to the story, he was at ABC at the time, so the Obama White House banning Fox wouldn’t have affected him. Or is ABC an affiliate of Fox? Not seeking to justify him but he could have seen it as the thin end of the wedge. If you start banning organisations from the Press Room, where does it end?
And he and CNN have started showing a bit of backbone in the last few months. Not a lot, but enough to irritate the Tangerine Turd. Hence his attacks on them.
MomSense
@gene108:
It’s exhausting!
MCA1
@Betty Cracker: I would be all in favor of Twitter banning him. First, because it would piss him off and be another loss (and a small bit of comeuppance) for him. But also, he would find another outlet for his ravings within 48 hours, anyway, so it’s not like we would lose his voluntary public display of his degeneracy, serving as a constant reminder of how disqualified he is. In the interim, we’d get a few moments of peace and sanity, and when he fired it up again on snapchat or a new WH blog or wherever, the contrast would be all the sharper. It would be like we’re all outlaws holed up in a cave somewhere, and the FBI started blaring music outside to torment us until we came out, but then their generator ran out of gas for an hour or so.
msdc
I will never, ever understand how the British political parties and public allowed Brexit to pass after that happened.
But then again, look where we are.
Cheryl Rofer
@feebog: Further, Mueller will speak only when he feels he has the case wrapped up.
TenguPhule
You missed the banana peels being thrown by our purer then thou friends.
burnspbesq
Here’s my current favorite example of shameless Republican duplicity. I call it Hatch’s Trojan Horse.
Hatch has always had a bug up his ass about integrating the corporate and individual income taxes, which is a polite way of saying doing away with the corporate income tax. So he slid a provision creating a dividends-paid deduction, but set the percentage of qualifying dividends that a corporation can deduct at zero, so it’s scored as not losing any revenue within the ten-year window.
If that provision is in a final bill and gets signed into law, I’m confident that I know what happens next.
In next year’s “technical corrections” bill (and there is guaranteed to be a technical corrections bill, because both the House and Senate bills are full of obvious drafting mistakes), lo and behold, there will be a provision changing “zero percent” to a serious number (my guess is 50).
Un. Real.
It’s Section 13011 of the Senate bill.
Bobby Thomson
@Sloane Ranger: you still don’t get it. Fox is the Nazis in this analogy, not the Jews.
Boatboy_srq
@Brachiator: Nixon was just as racist, just not overtly so. He was far more visibly anti-Left, which in the 60s/70s wes pretty close to interchangeable.
I don’t think I really need to remind you how Atwater taught the US Conservatists to spout racial hatred in pretty words and phrases so ordinary people wouldn’t catch on, in terms such as “forced busing” and “entitlements” and “city dwellers” and “fiscal responsibility” and “states’ rifhts” and “just say no” and “school choice”. Even “family values” “single-income families” began as racist dogwhistle before they were reinterpreted as anti-LGBT and anti-choice terms. I don’t think I need to remind you the John Birch Society’s anti-UN stance was as much to stop the US funding international programs for Those People in Those Places as it was anything else. I don’t think I need to remind you of Prescott Bush (that thinly-disguised fascist), or the Dulles brothers, or “young bucks eating T-bones” or “welfare moms driving Cadillacs” or even Willie Horton.
What I do apparently need to remind you of is that for not a few of us, the hatred and bigotry have been visible for some time, and the only thing distinguishing Lord Dampnut from the rest of the pack is the complete absence of any pretense at politesse. What tRump tweets is what every Bush and Reagan and Nixon and Buchanan and Helms and Thurmond and Lott and McConnell and all the other Republican leaders have nodded-and-winked for the last four-plus decades – it’s just stripped of all the nods and winks and is now naked for all to see.
You arwe right that tRump is the first to make these statements in plain language. But he is hardly the first to make statements that mean the same things, or enact policies that hurt the same groups for the same reasons. The rot goes deep and spreads far. Outside his complete loutishness and his gauche persona, tRump is indistinguishable from his GOP predecessors in this regard.
Boatboy_srq
@msdc: Massive infusion of cash to fund a huge propaganda effort via BSkyB and the Times of London (both Newscorp properties); social media coopted by the FSB; and a longstsanding love/hate relationship with the EU.
Boatboy_srq
@Brachiator: ETA: OF COURSE tRump’s anti-Muslim rants have to do with Atwater. This is the language of opposition to Malcolm X and NoI. 60’s AA civil rights agitation had a pronounced (though nor majority) Muslim component. tRump is merely following the Reichwing rejection of the non-white regardless of faith, and playing on the reactions to 1993, 9/11 and FundiEvangelical pro-Israel attitudes. The tools are the same even if the target is slightly different.
J R in WV
@Sloane Ranger:
No, ABC is an affiliate of ESPN and Disney. AKA Giant Evil Corp. or so I hear.
Sloane Ranger
@J R in WV: Thanks. Not au fait with who owns who Stateside!
sherparick
Mr. Trump took the following oath of office: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”[2]
Not the parts he likes, not the parts that make him feel good and wonderful, or only when it protects his “friends” and to ignore or trample when it concerns his enemies, like a third world thug.
He needs to be impeached and removed from office for he has committed “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” in violating his oath of office, in not faithfully executing the laws of the country, and in obstructing an investigation into a Foreign country’s interference and corruption of the 2016 election.
Hamilton in Federalist No. 65 laid out the premises for impeachment and the reality that it concerns POLITICAL, not necessarily criminal, offenses:
“A well constituted court for the trial of impeachments, is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself. The prosecution of them, for this reason, will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties, more or less friendly or inimical, to the accused….”
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@TenguPhule:
Antiope would set her shoes, the gum, the tight rope, the chainsaws, the ball, the banana peels, AND the purity ponies on fire and say, “Watch an Amazon do this work!”
Procopius
“All news organizations should boycott the WH christmas parties now …” But, but, but … ACCESS!!!
Procopius
@No Drought No More: I keep remembering the possibly apocryphal quote, Why do we have atomic bombs, if we can’t use them?”