Hillary Clinton Calls Out Donald Trump On Hate Speech
Yesterday, Hillary Clinton penned an op-ed in which she called out President Donald Trump for his hate speech and unceasing attacks on “truth and reason.”
In The Atlantic piece called “The American Crisis,” the former Secretary of State let the current President of the United States know in no uncertain terms that his racist hate speech is not merely telling it like it is.
Clinton wrote, “Hate speech isn’t ‘telling it like it is.’ It’s just hate.” She pointed out how President Trump does not even attempt to keep up the pretense that he’s the president of all Americans. He so often disparages Americans who have immigrated or who have heritage from other countries like Africa, Haiti, or Mexico. Clinton accused Trump of intentionally using racially charged language to bring heightened racial tensions in the U.S.
“Democracies are rowdy by nature. We debate freely and disagree forcefully. It’s part of what distinguishes us from authoritarian societies, where dissent is forbidden. But we’re held together by deep ‘bonds of affection,’ as Abraham Lincoln said, and by the shared belief that out of our fractious melting pot comes a unified whole that’s stronger than the sum of our parts.”
Most recently, in this country, those “bonds of affection” appear to be missing, and the president plays into that further tearing apart those bonds that bind the citizens of the United States together.
In the op-ed Clinton laid out five things that Trump has done in his 21 months holding the highest office in the land. They include assaulting the rule of law, doubt about the legitimacy of U.S. elections, Trump’s “war on truth and reason,” corruption within his administration, and undermining national unity.
–> @HillaryClinton has adapted the new afterword to her book into an essay for @TheAtlantic titled "American Democracy Is in Crisis." Here it is… https://t.co/YPKf1jrgfl
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) September 17, 2018
Clinton said that Trump appears “uniquely hostile to the rule of law, ethics in public service, and a free press.” However, she offered an explanation that posits that Trump is merely a symptom of a much broader issue in the U.S. — the country is too vehemently partisan in recent years.
She pointed to a study from 1960 in which just four percent of Democrats and five percent of Republicans admitted they’d be unhappy if one of their children married a member of the opposite political party. However, in 2010, a similar study found 33 percent of Democrats and 49 percent of Republicans would dislike their children marrying somebody from the opposite party. That is a radical change in a relatively short period.
Clinton wrote, ‘The strength of partisan identity—and animosity—helps explain why so many Republicans continue to back a president so manifestly unfit for office and antithetical to many of the values and policies they once held dear. When you start seeing politics as a zero-sum game and view members of the other party as traitors, criminals, or otherwise illegitimate, then the normal give-and-take of politics turns into a blood sport.”
Of course, Clinton placed all the blame for the dramatic divide on Republicans in an attempt to galvanize Democrats to vote in November’s upcoming mid-term elections. The truth is rarely so one-sided. Both parties had a hand in putting the U.S. in this position of crisis.
