The controversy and worldwide outrage over US President Donald Trump’s use of vulgar and racist language to describe several African nations showed no sign of easing, as newspapers and social media commentary continued to debate the steady deterioration of America’s moral values.
UK’s Observer carried a critical edit, calling Trump an anti-American president. “It is not only that his politics and policies, from tax cuts and climate change to Palestine and nuclear weapons, are disastrously wrong-headed. It is not just that his idea of leadership is divisive, confrontational and irresponsible. Nor does the problem lie solely with his blatant racism, misogyny and chauvinism, though these are indeed massive problems.” The paper added, “The fundamental failing underlying Trump’s presidency is his wilful ignorance. His frequently petulant, childish behaviour combines with a staggering lack of knowledge and contempt for facts to produce serial, chronic misjudgements. Trump, in power, cannot be trusted. He has been exposed as lacking in empathy, shamelessly mendacious, cynical and unversed or uninterested in the enduring human and constitutional values his office is sworn to uphold. Trump is the first and hopefully the last of his kind: an anti-American president.”
Close on the heels, the New York Times lead with a charged comment piece that noted, “Racism is simply the belief that race is an inherent and determining factor in a person’s or a people’s character and capabilities, rendering some inferior and others superior. These beliefs are racial prejudices. The history of America is one in which white people used racism and white supremacy to develop a racial caste system that advantaged them and disadvantaged others. Understanding this, it is not a stretch to understand that Donald Trump’s words and deeds over the course of his life have demonstrated a pattern of expressing racial prejudices that demean people who are black and brown and that play to the racial hostilities of other white people. It is not a stretch to say that Trump is racist. It’s not a stretch to say that he is a white supremacist. It’s not a stretch to say that Trump is a bigot. Those are just facts, supported by the proof of the words that keep coming directly from him. And, when he is called out for his racism, his response is never to ameliorate his rhetoric, but to double down on it.”
The White House says that we should be talking about “security”, a highly cited CNN article informed. “But the President’s remarks and his policies are not about security … If Trump is calling countries with black populations s***holes, it’s because he sees them as cesspools of human excrement, the dark waste of the world — a point made even uglier by his use of Norway, where over 90% of the population is white and three out of four people fit the Aryan blond and blue eyed ideal, as his example of a nation from which America should seek new immigrants,” it opined.
“Racial tension is why Trump is president,” a hard-hitting op-ed in The Independent noted. “His excoriation of illegal Mexican immigrants — and the fight with corporate entities and celebrities that ensued — built up a core base of support within the Republican Party that helped him earn the party’s nomination. Analysis of the general election found that a key reason that less-educated Americans were more likely to support his candidacy was racial attitudes. In swing states, voters preferred Hillary Clinton on the economy — and Trump on the issues of terrorism and immigration. Often, successful presidential candidates shed their campaign-trail rhetoric in search of a message that can be used to unify the American people behind the presidency. Trump has never made any effort to do so. He has the same attitudes now as he did on the campaign trail, clearly, and those attitudes seem to be that blacks, Hispanics and Muslims are dangerous or otherwise undesirable. Call that what you will,” the paper concluded.
