It\u2019s hard to believe that very many Americans would even consider electing a card-carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan to be our president. So why did we elect Donald Trump? And why do we keep him?<\/p>\n
Trump was never a member of the Klan, at least not that we know of, but if he had been he would have deserved an honored place in the KKK Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n
Trump denies being a racist, of course, but he has a history of making speeches and taking actions that journalists, his former employees, even his friends and family members have agreed were racist.<\/p>\n
In 2018, The New York Times even undertook a study of racial comments he\u2019s made in public. The Times concluded: \u201cHere\u2019s the truth: Donald Trump is a racist. He talks about and treats people differently based on their race. He has done so for years, and he is still doing so.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Times attempted to compile a definitive list of his racist comments, at least the publicly known ones. Here\u2019s a condensed version of some of the items on that list:<\/p>\n
In the 1970s his real-estate company tried to avoid renting apartments to Black people while offering white prospects special privileges.<\/p>\n
He said of a Black accountant at one of his hotels, \u201cI think that the guy is lazy. And it\u2019s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in Blacks.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2015 Trump called for \u201ca total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.\u201d His plan would have even denied readmission to Muslim-American citizens who were outside of the country at the time.<\/p>\n
He said a federal judge hearing a case about Trump University was biased because of the judge\u2019s Mexican heritage.<\/p>\n
In June 2017 he said 15,000 recent immigrants from Haiti \u201call have AIDS\u201d and that 40,000 Nigerians, once seeing the United States, would never \u201cgo back to their huts\u201d in Africa.<\/p>\n
At the White House earlier this month, Trump called for less immigration from Haiti and Africa and more from Norway (although there is none from Norway).<\/p>\n
During a White House meeting in 2018, he referred to some undocumented immigrants as \u201canimals\u201d who would \u201cpour into and infest our country.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s just a partial list.<\/p>\n
And that was seven years ago. It has continued, and it continues.<\/p>\n