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Comment by st3v3r | Hacker News Reader

"For months and months, they'd been unfairly denigrating Trump supporters"

If you support a candidate who espouses racist, sexist, xenophobic, and general bigoted views, a candidate who was caught on tape as bragging about sexual assault, then it is not unfair to paint you as supporting those things.

To me, anyone who supports Trump has declared their support for those things. And it is on them to prove that they are not those things. They may not have been in the "basket of deplorables", but they definitely carried it.

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Show me where Trump is racist. Show me just one example.

Lost federal racial discrimination lawsuit.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/855553

He settled the case, not lost. He also was never accused of discrimination himself, by anybody. Others were. He was the new President of his father's business in an era of witchhunts, and he got dragged into it, but if you look at his actions since then, like desegregating Mar-A-Lago, and hear testimonies from minorities who worked closely with him, like Lynne Patton, you don't see a record of a racist.

Correction: Settled a federal racial discrimination lawsuit.

I guess Trump didn't have a strong case. I wonder why?

The counterparty was the Department of Justice.

I googled "trump racist comments" - and got a slew of articles. Here is but one from Fortune:

http://fortune.com/2016/06/07/donald-trump-racism-quotes/

"A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage"

"Black guys counting my money! I hate it"

"Least racist person on earth"

There's three. You can find more. As far as the last one, one might argue "How is that racist?"

Guess what - when you aren't racist, you don't need to declare it. Plus - that comment technically suggests that at a minimum, he admits that he's possibly just "a little" racist...

> "A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage"

How is that racist? Isn't that the point of affirmative action?

> "Black guys counting my money! I hate it"

Says a guy that Trump fired. I'm skeptical, to say the least.

> "Least racist person on earth"

Doesn't sound very racist to me.

> Guess what - when you aren't racist, you don't need to declare it.

When you're constantly called a racist, then yes, you do need to declare it.

> Plus - that comment technically suggests that at a minimum, he admits that he's possibly just "a little" racist...

It doesn't, and this is playing word games. His communication style is to talk in extremes, and I'm sure he would have said "I'm the hugest non-racist there is" if it had the same ring to it.

Any more examples?

His entire spiel about Mexicans being drug dealers and rapists.

And you are clearly not interested in any kind of discussion. You are simply trying to justify to yourself that, despite supporting someone who is clearly an abhorrent person, you are not an abhorrent person. And I'm not buying it.

> His entire spiel about Mexicans being drug dealers and rapists.

His entire spiel was spun up by the media. If you go back to what he actually said, in context, it's hard to find anything wrong. Show me an example.

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." [0]

There's a whole lot of bigotry to unpack in that, but the biggest is the implied conspiracy in which undocumented immigrants are sent by Mexico.

In fact, when Mexico is sending their people, it's quite different. [1]

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/06...

[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mexico-sends-first-ever-aid-nort...

I don't know if it's a conspiracy or not, but it's happened before. Castro sent criminals and mentally-ill to the US. Mexico is also our biggest supplier of drugs, and 80% of the women who cross the border are raped. Of course there are good people, but you can't ignore the huge criminal element too, and that's the point.

The entire statement. Yes, I have seen it in context, and it was not "spun up". It is exactly what he said, and it is extremely abhorrent.

It should be easy to quote it then. What exactly was extremely abhorrent?

How about stating very publicly that a judge could not be impartial because he's Mexican. That's kinda textbook right there.

Not really. It's 100% standard to dismiss a judge for having a bias. You can't look at her being Mexican in isolation. When you consider how the media spun his statements on Mexicans, how the judge is a member of La Rasa, and how he wants to build a wall, bias is a very valid concern.

> It's 100% standard to dismiss a judge for having a bias.

This is where the dialogue breaks down. It's not normal to dismiss a judge based on ethnicity. It's normal for a judge to recuse themselves if they have a financial interest in the outcome, etc...

Trump's supporters and his detractors have very different ideas of conflicts of interest. I would say making Mar a Lago the "Winter Whitehouse" is an unacceptable conflict because we the people pay Trump rent every time he takes a trip there. I just don't understand how one can defend that sort of self dealing.

> You can't look at her being Mexican in isolation

Trump's comments on the judge (who is not female, and also is American, not Mexican) did, though after-the-fact rationalizations of the comments by the campaign and other apologists added other considerations.

> you need to consider how the media spun his statements on Mexicans

They didn't: they reported exactly what he said, and they took it at face value.

> how he wants to build a wall

So?

> and how the judge is a member of pro-Latino group La Rasa

"La Raza" is not the name of a pro-Latino group, it's a phrase that is used in the name of many different groups with no organizational relationship. (It is a reference to the post-traditional-race blended identity laid out in Vasconcelos' La Raza Cósmica.)

And, assuming that the Wall is not an anti-Latino policy, why would being a member of a pro-Latino group be a source of bias?

The nit-picks are irrelevant. La Raza has a record of supporting illegal immigrants. Trump wants to build a wall. My broader point that the judge had a reasonable chance of bias stands, and Trump was right to point this out.

> They didn't: they reported exactly what he said, and they took it at face value.

They didn't. They took his statements out of context and then "fact checked" the misinterpretation time and time again. Find me one example where he spoke bad about Mexicans.

"La Raza has a record of [...]"

No, it doesn't, because, again, "La Raza" isn't an organization. It's a name fragement used by literally thousands of different unrelated organizations.

It's like saying, to use a similar name fragment common in a different ethnic community, "Fil-Am has a record of..."

The San Diego La Raza Lawyer's Association, the group the judge belonged to, gave scholarships to illegal immigrants. You're nit-picking to detract from my point, that the judge had a reasonable chance of bias, and Trump was right to point it out.

1. Trump said the judge was not qualified because of his race not affiliations. This is ex-post-facto reasoning and it's intellectually dishonest.

2. It's also fake news:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/06/...

I see comments like yours and want to give up on dialogue. Why should I play into your game?

1. Trump defended is statements in follow-ups. It's not post-facto reasoning. The media jumped immediately to racism though, just like the other day when they claimed Trump lied about a supposed Sweden terrorist attack, when he was talking about a TV segment. Real journalists would state the facts instead of narrativizing and follow-up to ask what he means.

2. I strongly encourage you question your own beliefs a little. That article has a lot of spin. "La Raza" is not just some innocent phrase. La Raza is dog whistle term for hispanic racism. Somewhere, in another universe, Deshaun Trump in on trial by a judge from the San Diego Klan Lawyer's Association, as people claim "it has no relation with the KKK!" (despite having a link to the parent organization on its own website). Go look up Reconquista [1]. The goal of the Reconquista is to “reconquer” these “lost” or “stolen” territories for “La Raza”—the race indigenous to Mexico. The SDLRLA has a very questionable history, and at the very least, it raises reasonable concern of bias in the case.

[1] http://humanevents.com/2006/07/27/the-emreconquistaem-moveme...

I'll believe Trump is brining back coal mining jobs before I believe the he is the victim in this Trump University embarrassment.

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