The PBS NewsHour displayed its usual disaste for the Trump victory on Tuesday night by investigating whether today’s political climate is leading to a “spike in racist incidents”? Naturally, PBS turned to the radical-left Southern Poverty Law Center for predictable answers.
PBS reporter Stephanie Sy recounted incidents where tiny groups of neo-Nazis marched to cause outrage, like outside a playhouse with The Diary Of Anne Frank. Then she added “since the election, Black, Latino and LGBTQ Americans in at least 25 states, including kids and teens, have been subjected to racist text messages.”
SPLC CEO Margaret Huang had an easy answer for this: Trump backers.
SY: Based on the content, Margaret, what do you make of these mass texts? And what is the intention behind them?
MARGARET HUANG, SPLC: It's really clear to us that hate and extremist groups are using the election of Donald Trump as an encouragement to cause fear and anxiety in communities of color and religious communities and in the LGBTQ community.
Because of his use of racist, sexist, and other discriminatory rhetoric on the campaign trail, he's essentially encouraged his followers to spew hateful rhetoric, and he's emboldened them to embrace this hateful ideology.
Sy did raise the troubling notion that Trump gained support among minority voters:
SY: You know, even if Trump has stirred up feelings of racial animus, he also saw gains, as you know, in this election among Latinos and African Americans. With the second Trump term, do you expect that there will be more or less tolerance for this kind of hate speech?
HUANG: I think that many people who supported the president-elect did so because they share his rhetoric and ideology. But many other people did not. Many people voted for him for economic reasons because they're frustrated by the economic situation of the country, and they wanted a change from what they were experiencing over the last few years.
That is not a mandate to embrace racial hatred or misogyny. And I believe, in fact, that, as we move forward with the incoming administration, more and more people are going to reject that rhetoric and call for a change.
PBS and its chosen experts can always hope the country will shift back to the left and reject the Republicans.
Sy then mentioned the rise of apparent white supremacist incidents. Again, Huang pointed at Trump:
HUANG: I think, again, so much of that was heard on the campaign trail from the candidate, candidate Trump himself. I think that's what spurs so many other people to feel emboldened to embrace that rhetoric.
And I think we're going to see more of it for a time, particularly as Trump nominates people for senior-level positions in his administration who also echo that hateful rhetoric. We're going to see more and more people openly embracing it.
End.
