Trump on a Rampage

[Content Note: Racism; misogyny; violence; victim-blaming; Islamophobia; Neo-Nazism.]

So here are just a few things that have happened with Republican presidential front runner Donald Trump:

1. On Friday night, he did an interview with Barbara Walters, located in the gilded inner sanctum of his gold palace, in which he again spoke of the need to build a wall along the southern border of the US, deport migrant workers en masse, claimed that women like him because we know he's going to "protect" us, and denied the existence of privilege by asserting: "Winning is something innate. Maybe you have the winning gene." Says the fucking clown who thinks a million dollar loan from Daddy is NBD.

2. [Video may autoplay at first link; shows images of racist violence] On Saturday, at a Trump rally in Birmingham, Alabama, a black activist named Mercutio Southall Jr., shouted "Black lives matter!" and was subsequently overcome, pushed to the ground, punched and kicked by white attendees.

"Get him the hell out of here, will you, please?" Trump said... "Get him out of here. Throw him out!"

At one point, Southall fell to the ground and was surrounded by several white men who appeared to be kicking and punching him, according to video captured by CNN. A Washington Post reporter in the crowd watched as one of the men put his hands on Southall's neck and heard a female onlooker repeatedly shout: "Don't choke him!"

As security officers got Southall on his feet and led him out of the building, he was repeatedly pushed and shoved by people in the crowd. The crowd alternated between booing and cheering. There were chants of "All lives matter!"

Without a trace of fucking irony. On Sunday morning, during an interview with Fox News, Trump shrugged: "Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing. I have a lot of fans, and they were not happy about it. And this was a very obnoxious guy who was a trouble-maker who was looking to make trouble."

3. [Videos may autoplay at links] Also on Saturday, Trump made the outrageous claim that "he saw thousands of people in Jersey City, New Jersey cheering when the World Trade Center was destroyed on September 11, 2001." That was a rumor circulating at the time, but has since been thoroughly discredited and debunked. Nonetheless, Trump doubled-down on Sunday, during an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week, claiming he saw it with his own eyes:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, you made -- you raised some eyebrows yesterday with comments you made at -- at your latest rally -- and I want to show them, relating to 9/11.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Hey, I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, the police say that didn't happen and all those rumors have been on the Internet for some time. So did you meek -- misspeak yesterday?

TRUMP: It did happen. I saw it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You saw that...

TRUMP: It was on television. I saw it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: -- with your own eyes.

TRUMP: George, it did happen.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Police say it didn't happen.

TRUMP: There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down. I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down -- as those buildings came down. And that tells you something. It was well covered at the time, George. Now, I know they don't like to talk about it, but it was well covered at the time. There were people over in New Jersey that were watching it, a heavy Arab population, that were cheering as the buildings came down. Not good.

STEPHANOPOULOS: As I said, the police have said it didn't happen. But what I want to move on right now.

Lying fucking liar.

4. [Video may autoplay at link] During the same interview, Trump also said he would "absolutely" bring back waterboarding, because "I think waterboarding is peanuts compared to what they do to us." Apart from the fact that waterboarding has been definitively proved ineffective in yielding reliable intel, because it turns out human beings will say just about anything to get people to stop torturing them (go figure), and would be aggressively indecent even if it were effective, "our torture isn't as bad as their torture" isn't exactly the sort of thoughtful ethics I'd like and expect to see from a president.

5. Also yesterday, Trump tweeted some profoundly racist "crime statistics," which aren't even a little bit accurate: "These statistics are made up out of thin air, and the source—the 'Crime Statistics Bureau' in San Francisco—simply does not exist. ...Where did this graphic come from? My first thought was that it must have originated at a white supremacist website like Stormfront, because it really is that bad. But neither Google Image search nor tineye.com found it posted at any websites. Google Images did, however, find the earliest tweet in which this horrible racist image appeared." The account belongs to a Neo Nazi, whose bio says he's an admirer of Hitler and whose profile pic "is the symbol of the neo-Nazi German Faith Movement."

This is the front runner of the Republican primary. And he continues to lead in the polls by significant margins.

I see headline after headline about how "establishment Republicans" are freaking out. Welp. This is the inevitable result that decades of your cynical and contemptible politicking has wrought. The only people you have to blame for this grotesquery is yourselves. Assholes.