Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:33 pm
Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) took to the Senate floor Thursday to demand that President-elect Donald Trump do something about the astonishing and increasing “vile acts of hate and intimidation” by a minority of his supporters. Since Reid last asked Trump to step up, the hate crimes increased by 40% according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Reid pointed out that he had already asked Trump to take a stand yet Trump has done nothing. On Tuesday, Reid noted, ” (T)he Southern Poverty Law Center had reported 315 hate crime since the election. As of yesterday – that was Wednesday – that number jumped to 437. That’s a 40% increase in only two days. That’s startling.”
The Democratic Senator only read a few examples out loud but asked that the entire 17-page document be entered into the record.
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“For example, in Michigan, a Latino family awoke to find that someone has used boxes to form a wall blocking their driveway. The perpetrators left behind vulgar graffiti that denigrated Mexican Americans and praised Donald Trump for ‘taking back America.’
“In Tennessee, two men returned home to find a threatening, homophobic note. Using gay slurs, the message told the men to go back where they came from. A folding knife with a picture of Donald Trump on the handle was stabbed through the paper.”
“At a high school in Missouri, a 15-year old African American student was burned with a hot glue gun and told that he didn’t belong in America. Another African American student at that same school was told by a white student – quote: ‘Are you ready to get back on the boat now that Trump is president?'”
“Seventeen pages of these hate-filled, awful things is too much,” Reid argued.  “There’s only one person who can bring a stop to that quickly, and that’s the President-elect. Our nation is looking at Donald Trump to do something. For the sake of the American people, I hope he will.”
But Donald Trump hasn’t done anything yet, and he didn’t do anything but encourage this kind of behavior on the campaign trail. For everyone who suggested that we would get a new Donald Trump once elected, where is this New Donald?
New Donald is just like Old Donald. Old Donald offered to pay the legal fees of supporters who took care of protesters. Old Donald had his own black supporter tossed out of his rally. Old Donald suggested his opponent might be shot if she won. Old Donald was fine with his aide saying Hillary Clinton should be shot by a firing squad.
Old Donald catered to the anger of white supremacists, and New Donald isn’t about to turn his back on his biggest allies. Â Harry Reid can try to get Donald Trump to lead, but Trump isn’t a leader of the sort we are used to in the White House. He won’t lead his supporters toward lawful civility. Why would he? That’s not who Donald Trump is, and frankly that’s not what his supporters elected.
They got the big bully they wanted, and they are happy to act out on his behalf against frightened Americans.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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