There’s a rather telling detail in a piece in Politico on the reactions of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to the attacks on 9/11.
In a television interview only a few hours after the twin towers collapsed in flames, Trump managed to work in a strange little boast about his real-estate empire:
“40 Wall Street,” he said, referring to his 71-story building blocks away from the now-collapsed twin towers, “actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan … And now it’s the tallest.”
Trump will always be Trump, I guess.
But the Politico story does note that aside from this little bit of brand-building, Trump was actually rather restrained in his response that day, at least by normal Trumpian standards:
A decade and a half before pledging to “bomb the shit out of” ISIS and proposing a deportation force and a Muslim ban, Trump didn’t talk about retribution or leap to conclusions about who was responsible. In fact, he avoided identifying potential enemies—any terrorist organization or Muslims in general.
We live in what is, in many ways, a much uglier America today, and Trump has been one of the leading enablers of this ugliness.
As Mic noted in a post yesterday, Islamophobia is much worse today than it was on 9/11/2001, and hate crimes against Muslims are on the upswing.
Immediately after 9/11, there was a significant rise in anti-Muslim activity.According to the FBI, in 2001 anti-Islamic hate crimes spiked by 1,600 percent with 481 incidents. CAIR noted another surge in 2006 — the reason for it remains unclear. Another spike followed the Park51 controversy in 2010, in which New York City considered building a Muslim community center and mosque near Ground Zero.
But the highest concentration of anti-Muslim crimes came at the end of 2015. According to CAIR’s latest report, 78 mosques were targeted for vandalism that year — more incidents than they had documented in any one year since they started tracking in 2009. Compare this to 2014, when CAIR only documented 22 similar incidents, or 2013, when they documented 20. The 2015 spike came after the attacks at the Charlie Hebdo headquarters in Paris and around the same time Donald Trump infamously proposed that the country should ban Muslims from entering until we “figure out what’s going on.”
Similarly, the Southern Poverty Law Center found that in 2014 while the rate of hate crimes overall had fallen compared with the previous year, hate crimes against Muslims saw a 14 percent increase.
Emphasis mine.
The vicious attacks against Muslims have continued apace this year. The latest: an attack on two Muslim mothers in Brooklyn last Thursday. The New York Daily News reports:
A bigoted Brooklyn woman launched a sickening attack on two Muslim women pushing their babies in strollers — punching them in the face and trying to pull off their hijabs, prosecutors said Friday.
Emirjeta Xhelili, 32, hurled Islamophobic insults as she pounced on the two victims near her Bath Beach home about 1:30 p.m. Thursday, authorities said.
“Get the f–k out of here,” Xhelili, 32, allegedly yelled at the pair, according to prosecutors. “Get the f–k out of America, b—–s.” …
Brooklyn prosecutors said her attack included an attempt to knock over a stroller carrying a 15-month-old baby.
Happily, the baby (and both mothers) are ok, and Xhelili was quickly arrested.
The alleged attacker is, of course, a Trump supporter. The Daily News notes that
Her vile social media musings include several bizarre tweets cheering the candidacy of Donald Trump.
“America is the ark of Noah,” one reads. “Trump’s gonna win.”
Such is life in America fifteen years after 9/11.
H/T — Raw Story/Liberaland for highlighting the Trump quote.
I’m still waiting for him. To pay off these assault charges.
How many floors does 40 Wall Street really have? That’s not as simple a question as it sounds, as this 2003 article from the NYT explains:
For Tower Residents, a New Math
The scary thing is, he probably wasn’t even intending to say anything harmful. He’s just only capable of seeing everything through a self-centered lens. His first thought will always be “how does this affect me?” and that’s the most important.
We all know people like this and they are tedious and irritating but usually we can ignore them.
The prospect of someone like this being president however, is terrifying.
As for that whole “America is the ark of Noah” thing… hmm. This is new theology. Will Trump bring the flood?
WWTH:
That, and the complete lack of a filter to prevent him from blurting it out. He’s always been like this, so he’s unlikely to change now. He’s never going to be suitable to lead any negotiation where the goal is not his own wealth or prestige. Why do so many voters not get this? The guy is not complicated!
Donald Trump has no filter between his brain and his mouth. I doubt he was trying to be insensitive to the victims of 9/11. He just naturally is insensitive in his heart, and that comes out in his words. It’s not an accident that he only sounds like a human being when he’s reading carefully from a teleprompter.
Donald Trump has empathy like a spoiled child – which is none. That’s the kind of clueless selfish statement i would have said when i was about 12 or 13 years old. And this man wants to be president of a country? Maybe this is why these Putin worshipers like him too. They’ve got their thug in the east and now they’ll have a thug in the west too. Moggie is right when they said he’s not complicated – he’s not. Just a selfish, clueless, giftless waste of space.
Not all Trump supporters are (necessarily) bigots; but all bigots are Trump supporters. Surely there’s some meaning in that. If I found myself on the same side as every racist, misogynist, homophobe, Islamophobe, neo-Nazi and every other flavor of bigots I would take a good, hard look at my beliefs.
Brooklyn. Fuck! She would be from Bay Ridge too
And when Clinton dares to call people like her deplorable, the media trots out its mostly white dude panels to talk about ‘divisive rhetoric’. Meanwhile, ‘real progressives’ (I fuckin see you) jump on every excuse to bash her under the auspices of not hurting the feelings of the (white and racist) ‘middle class’. Fuck that noise, I’ll go further than she did. Half of Trump supporters aren’t deplorable, despicable, dreadful human beings. They all are! They’re not marginalized or downtrodden or just doing the best they can. 40% of this country’s voting population is fundamentally rotten, and I’m not gonna pretend otherwise
The whole “deplorable” thing has made it to french news. That makes me sick. They have failed, repeatedly, to report accurately on what’s going on in the US. They’ve failed to expose Trump for what he is.
But HRC says “deplorable” and suddenly the world crumbles ? Gimme a break ! Fucking ridiculous.
I was hoping that other country’s foreign news media would be more critical than our own effectively worthless corporate media.
@Axecalibur
Agreed 100%. Supporting fascism makes someone a garbage human being, categorically and without reservation.
Her name is Emirjeta Xhelili, she’s all upset about “foreigners”, and she doesn’t see the irony. Sounds like a Trump supporter all right!
Slate wrote up the “deplorables” comment and had this comment:
I’m actually pretty comfortable with the statement that ~20% of the American electorate are irredeemable racists, and like you I think ~40% is more accurate. However, Clinton is being a politician when she gives Trump supporters a rhetorical out. She knows that a lot of Trump people are not wild about him. My parents support Trump, but are reluctant about it. They are not into him at all, and are not vocal in the slightest (they were quite vocal about Romney). HRC hopes to convert people like my parents to her side, and there is a nonzero possibility that she can get at least some of this group to her side.
My parents are also racist, but they are the genteel kind of racist that would never say a racist thing to you face, only behind your back. They don’t think they are racist, and bristle if you point out the racist things they say. HRC gives them an out; she allows for them to support Trump but also to think that they aren’t racist, to avoid alienating them entirely. It’s a politician’s move.
There’s a key line in that Brooklyn story:
There’s only one way to be American. Difference is not to be tolerated.
I was reminded of that Vox piece from Friday, which used “rolling coal” as a hook – and not just because that too featured someone saying “get the heck out of our country”. It had this quote from Rush Limbaugh:
That’s the toxic message the right has been pumping out for years, like a thick black cloud of diesel smoke. You’re either a conservative, or you’re from another universe. And if you’re from another universe, you can’t be reasoned with, only defeated or driven out.
I think it’s a testament to America that the outcome hasn’t been worse (yet). But that’s scant comfort if someone has just tried to knock your baby out of its buggy.
Rush Limbaugh saying the word reality made my irony meter explode so violently that my face is now full of ironic shrapnel and I’m bleeding ironically.
The pain is genuine though.
@Dalillama Love your Agatha Heterodyne icon. One of my other accounts uses Krosp. Now I’ll have to see if I can use it for my Gravitar here.
As for Trump bragging about how the fall of the World Trade Center made his building the tallest in Downtown Manhattan, all I can say is that I’m not surprised.
I live in Metro Detroit, which has the highest concentration of Arab-Americans in the country. Islamophobia is a regular problem here, if for no other reason than bigots come here from outside the region to cause trouble. Tomorrow happens to be Eid, one of the most important holidays in Islam. The coincidence of Eid with 9-11 is making Detroiters, both Muslim and non-Muslim, nervous.
I can’t wait for this election to be over.
That said, I did try and persuade Snork Junior to consider Trump as his Halloween costume this year. He’s not going for it though.
@personalpest
The name is Albanian. If she’s like many of the Albanians here in Metro Detroit, she’s a Christian, most likely a Catholic (the Catholics in Albania are outnumbered by the Orthodox, who are themselves greatly outnumbered by the Muslims, making them a minority within a minority in their home country). The supposition that she’s Catholic fits with reports that she goes by “Mary Magdalene.” She and her family may have emigrated here to get away from 1) poverty, 2) Communism (or its legacy), and 3) Muslims. She probably still holds those views. It’s too bad the memory of being a religious minority didn’t result in her being more tolerant instead of less!
Meanwhile, Rudy “9/11” Giuliani suggests that the US should take Iraq’s oil, and to hell with international law:
War makes Rudy LOL, and the US can do anything it wants during war, which will probably be indefinite. “America’s Mayor” and member of the Trump inner circle.
That’s not true at all.
Just want to second the idea that not all bigots are Trump supporters. Clinton has plenty too, as di Bernie. Maybe all (or most) US Nazis and fascists are Trump supporters, but there’s plenty more bigotry to go around, plenty of sexist, racist, homophobic Democrat voters.
I’ve really got to love all the people here in the comments complaining about Trump supporters being fascists and just plain evil people. It really supports my belief that people on the far left can’t see shades of grey very well, given that people have supported totalitarians before in the past for totally valid reasons. I wonder to what degree the whole “People who think this way are totally evil!” mindset played into the various left-wing (and yes, I’m saying it, LEFT-WING) movements that killed and suppressed people who disagreed with them?
It’s really not the end of the world if a person is some kind of bigot, you know. There are plenty of character flaws which exist besides bigotry, and I highly doubt that anyone who comments here is fit to die on a cross for someone else’ sake. I know plenty of people who exhibit symptoms of bigotry, and many of them are otherwise kind, considerate, well-mannered, soft-spoken, and intelligent people. Likewise, I know plenty of people who make a big song and dance about the social-justice complaint of the week, yet are shitty, self-centered, and utterly misanthropic people. Quit acting like someone is categorically evil for possessing an otherwise common character attribute, you’re not entitled to a world where people like this don’t have the right to exist.
So, TIL that today is a Muslim holiday or celebration of sorts, so queue up Fox News and the rest of the Islamophobes shrieking that Muslims are “celebrating” 9/11.