By At a town hall rally in New Hampshire Thursday night, Donald Trump took to the podium and immediately began taking questions from the crowd after explaining that he was tired of doing speeches. And, my oh my, the first question was right up Trump’s (racist) ally.
An unidentified man, wearing a white t-shirt with the word “Trump” written across in blue, had the audacity to stand up, with full rage, and say:
“We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muzlams. You know our current president is one. You know he’s not even an American. But anyway, we have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That’s my question, when can we get rid of them?”
I know what you’re thinking. A rally with a bunch of [white] Trump supporters — what could possibly go wrong? Let’s just put this Islamophobic questioner aside for a moment, and let’s talk about how Trump reacted. I mean, he is running for one of the most powerful leadership positions in the world, so he must have had some kind of presidential-like response to shut down the hate, right?
LOL. Chill, guys. We’re talking about Trump here.
With a small chuckle to start, here’s how he responded:
“We need this question. This is the first question. We’re going to be looking at a lot of different things. You know, a lot of people are saying that and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening. We’re going to be looking at that and many other things.”
The 53 seconds of blatant racism went viral, and Trump immediately came under fire for his response. He didn’t even address the outright hatefulness of the question. Many took to Twitter (including Hillary Clinton) and called him out, commenting on how his answer was just plain wrong. Most of the denouncements came from his backing of the false claims toward Obama – and by the way, he argues that he never heard those accusations against the president.
Okay, buddy.
To quote from Muslims Read Hate Comments:
“Obama is not Muslim dammit. The guy wrote a 10,000 page book yelling out that he’s not Muslim for God’s sake.”
But most importantly, let’s talk about how Trump alienated American-Muslims by failing to condemn the question that was clearly full of ignorance and hate. Instead of taking the opportunity to correct and educate the racist supporter, he went as far as to agree with him. Instead of challenging those statements, he reassured the guy that this “Muslim problem” would be on his agenda if elected.
Let’s face it — we all know this isn’t the first (or last) time Trump has publicly said something offensive or racist. So to be quite honest, the video didn’t even faze me.
But the question is, why the heck is this guy taken seriously and why does he have so much support? It looks like fear-mongering and Islamophobia are that deeply embedded within American society and culture. And THAT’S the real problem this country has. God bless.
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Loved the article! Couldn’t agree more! That Muslim Reads link was great too. The comments were abhorrent, but they’re reactions had me rolling.