BECAUSE TRUMP HAS REPEATEDLY ENCOURAGED POLICE BRUTALITY

It’s been nearly forty years since Donald Trump took out full-page newspaper advertisements advocating for New York to reinstate the death penalty for the purpose of executing five teenagers accused of raping a jogger. Despite later being fully exonerated, Trump seized on the races of the so-called Central Park Five (consisting of four Black men and one Hispanic man) to relentlessly hurl hateful rhetoric their way.

Trump’s penchant for referring to the members of the Central Park Five as “thugs” and “animals” wasn’t diminished by proof of their innocence via DNA testing either. As recently as October 7, 2016, Trump was still publicly reiterating false claims about the group’s guilt in the 1989 crime. His views on this topic sadly align with Trump’s well-documented and vociferous support of police brutality in recent years.

On July 28, 2018, Trump encouraged violence while speaking to a group of law enforcement officials in Long Island, New York. “When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon,” Trump said, “You just see them thrown in, rough. I said, ‘please don’t be too nice.’”

The topic would return to viral prevalence following the murder of George Floyd, an African American man killed by a white police officer who had pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes. As protestors flooded the streets of Minneapolis in outcry, Trump called them “THUGS” in a social media post. Later, in a separate post, he added: “Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Both posts from the sitting US president were given warning labels from Twitter.

Proving his inability to distinguish between the inane and the dire, Trump equated police officers using deadly force with golfers occasionally missing their putts during an interview with Fox News on August 31, 2020. Several months later, on November 14, Trump encouraged Washington, DC, to use force against local protestors. “DC Police, get going,” he posted to Twitter. “[Do] your job and don’t hold back!!!”

Racism also permeates Trump’s recent remarks about his opponent, Kamala Harris, where his baseless attacks have taken aim at the vice president’s intelligence. “She’s a stupid person,” Trump said of Harris during a campaign stop in Erie, Pennsylvania on September 28. In recent weeks, Trump has also called his Black, female opponent “dumb,” “mentally unfit,” “slow,” “stupid” and an “extremely low IQ person.”

This from someone who feels the plot of the horror film franchise “The Purge” could fix what’s wrong with our country. Speaking at a rally on September 30, Trump suggested the US consider adopting “one really violent day… and I mean real rough” as a means of solving the nation’s problems. Take Trump’s steady stream of racist and sexist comments, pair it with his eternal approval for police officers to act as violently as possible, and you’ve got the unmistakable recipe for fascism to flourish.