Monday, November 5, 2018

Trump’s Amorality Is Spreading Throughout the GOP

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-shooting-response-748320/?fbclid=IwAR1wPmsE4anv6lLCUH31iPFvMVSCc8LgtL31j7sxe-LbvrakP7hazJ-kta0
"The man who shot up the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh had railed against the “invaders” in the migrant caravan the president has propped up as his key talking point leading into the midterms. The shooter criticized the president for not being harsh enough on the Jewish people, although it’s hard to argue that Trump’s actions since taking office — from praising the “fine people” protesting the presence of Jews in America last year in Charlottesville, to his repeated denigrations of “globalists,” to his laughing last Friday at the idea of George Soros being jailed — hasn’t emboldened anyone with antisemitic views. White nationalist Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is so confident he will win reelection next week that he’s been in eastern Europe rubbing elbows with far-right groups like the anti-immigrant, Nazi-founded Freedom Party in Austria. “If they were in America pushing the platform that they push, they would be Republicans,” Kind said, according to the Washington Post. On Monday morning, the president echoed the shooter’s language by referring to the migrant caravan as an “invasion.” But Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders doesn’t see the president as having anything to do with any of this, implying that the attack on Saturday was carried out despite the president’s love of the Jewish people. The Jewish community in Pittsburgh disagrees. Jewish leaders in the city on Sunday penned an open letter to the president, writing that he is not welcome in Pittsburgh until he denounced white nationalism. “For the past three years your words and your policies have emboldened a growing white nationalist movement,” they wrote. “You yourself called the murderer evil, but yesterday’s violence is the direct culmination of your influence.” They added that Trump has “also deliberately undermined the safety of people of color, Muslims, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities” and that Saturday’s “massacre is not the first act of terror you incited against a minority group in our country"."