All the Times Hillary Clinton Called Out Donald Trump's Racism in Her Nevada Speech

Prachi Gupta
Updated

From Cosmopolitan

Hillary Clinton all but called Donald Trump racist in a blistering speech delivered in Reno, Nevada, on Thursday where she outlined many of the things Trump and his advisers have said to malign people of color and embolden white nationalists.

"From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia," she said in her most critical speech of the election cycle. "He's taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over one of America's two major political parties." She drove the point home in this ad, released Thursday morning:

In her speech, Clinton laid into Trump simply by recounting things he and his allies have actually said and done. When Trump's record of bigotry and its effects are laid out before him, the portrait that emerges is staggering.

She called out his rhetoric from the past week, in which Trump attempted to pander to black men and women in rallies attended mostly by whites:

In just the past week, under the guise of "outreach" to African Americans, Trump has stood up in front of largely white audiences and described black communities in insulting and ignorant terms: "Poverty. Rejection. Horrible education. No housing. No homes. No ownership. Crime at levels nobody has seen … Right now, you walk down the street, you get shot." Those are his words.

She brought up discriminatory practices he employed as a landlord:

When Trump was getting his start in business, he was sued by the Justice Department for refusing to rent apartments to black and Latino tenants. Their applications would be marked with a "C" - "C" for "colored" - and then rejected. Three years later, the Justice Department took Trump back to court because he hadn't changed. The pattern continued through the decades. State regulators fined one of Trump's casinos for repeatedly removing black dealers from the floor. No wonder the turnover rate for his minority employees was way above average.

And that birther fiasco, in which Trump refused to believe that President Barack Obama is an American citizen:

And let's not forget Trump first gained political prominence leading the charge for the so-called "birthers." He promoted the racist lie that President Obama isn't really an American citizen - part of a sustained effort to delegitimize America's first black president.

And that's just what Trump did before the election. Here's a recap of recent months, including his attacks on Mexicans and Mexican-Americans:

In 2015, Trump launched his own campaign for President with another racist lie. He described Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals. And he accused the Mexican government of actively sending them across the border. None of that is true.Oh, and by the way, Mexico's not paying for his wall either. If it ever gets built, you can be sure that American taxpayers will be stuck with the bill.Since then, there's been a steady stream of bigotry. We all remember when Trump said a distinguished federal judge born in Indiana couldn't be trusted to do his job because, quote, "He's a Mexican." Think about that. The man who today is the standard bearer of the Republican Party said a federal judge was incapable of doing his job solely because of his heritage. Even the Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, described that as "the textbook definition of a racist comment." To this day, he's never apologized to Judge Curiel.

And of course, his attacks on Muslims:

Through it all, he has continued pushing discredited conspiracy theories with racist undertones. Trump said thousands of American Muslims in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 attacks. They didn't.

And on Ted Cruz's father, a Cuban immigrant:

He suggested that Ted Cruz's father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. Perhaps in Trump's mind, because he was a Cuban immigrant, he must have had something to do with it. Of course there's absolutely no evidence of that.Just recently, Trump claimed President Obama founded ISIS. And then he repeated that nonsense over and over

She highlighted his disturbing coziness with white supremacists:

This is someone who retweets white supremacists online, like the user who goes by the name "white-genocide-TM." Trump took this fringe bigot with a few dozen followers and spread his message to 11 million people.His campaign famously posted an anti-Semitic image - a Star of David imposed over a sea of dollar bills - that first appeared on a white supremacist website.The Trump campaign also selected a prominent white nationalist leader as a delegate in California. They only dropped him under pressure.When asked in a nationally televised interview whether he would disavow the support of David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, Trump wouldn't do it. Only later, again under mounting pressure, did he backtrack.And when Trump was asked about anti-Semitic slurs and death threats coming from his supporters, he refused to condemn them.

She laid out how racist his policy proposals are:

He would form a deportation force to round up millions of immigrants and kick them out of the country. He'd abolish the bedrock constitutional principle that says if you're born in the United States, you're an American citizen. He says that children born in America to undocumented parents are, quote, "anchor babies" and should be deported. Millions of them. And he'd ban Muslims around the world - 1.5 billion men, women, and children - from entering our country just because of their religion.Think about that for a minute. How would it actually work? People landing in U.S. airports would line up to get their passports stamped, just like they do now. But in Trump's America, when they step up to the counter, the immigration officer would ask every single person, "What is your religion?"

And compared Trump's policies to ISIS:

Under Donald Trump, America would distinguish itself as the only country in the world to impose a religious test at the border. Come to think of it, there actually may be one place that does that. It's the so-called Islamic State. The territory ISIS controls. It would be a cruel irony if America followed its lead.

His advisors include Stephen Bannon, former head of conservative news outlet Breitbart...

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, Breitbart embraces "ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right. Racist ideas. Race-baiting ideas. Anti-Muslim and anti-Immigrant ideas –– all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the "Alt-Right." Alt-Right is short for "Alternative Right." The Wall Street Journal describes it as a loosely organized movement, mostly online, that "rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity." The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for the "Alt-Right." A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party.

...and U.K. politician Nigel Farage:

Just yesterday, one of Britain's most prominent right-wing leaders, Nigel Farage, who stoked anti-immigrant sentiments to win the referendum on leaving the European Union, campaigned with Donald Trump in Mississippi. Farage has called for a ban on the children of legal immigrants from public schools and health services, has said women are quote "worth less" than men, and supports scrapping laws that prevent employers from discriminating based on race - that's who Trump wants by his side.

Oh, and the KKK is happy about him too:

On David Duke's radio show the other day, the mood was jubilant."We appear to have taken over the Republican Party," one white supremacist said.Duke laughed. There's still more work to do, he said.

Clinton also noted what all of this is doing to the future generation of Americans:

Bullying and harassment are on the rise in our schools, especially targeting students of color, Muslims, and immigrants. At a recent high school basketball game in Indiana, white students held up Trump signs and taunted Latino players on the opposing team with chants of "Build the wall!" and "Speak English." After a similar incident in Iowa, one frustrated school principal said, "They see it in a presidential campaign and now it's OK for everyone to say this." We wouldn't tolerate that kind of behavior in our own homes. How can we stand for it from a candidate for president?

Read her full speech here.

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