MSNBC made a direct pitch to Americans, asking them to decide if they wanted another 4 years of Donald Trump.
A TV news network aired a devastating 80-second montage of Donald Trump making racist comments and asked its viewers, "Are you for or against this?" MSNBC made no bones about which side they were on as they aired the video and asked voters to decide if they wanted a racist to continue as the President of the United States. The comments included his tirade against the five Black and Hispanic teens in the Central Park Five case, the birther controversy against Barack Obama, and his refusal to condemn the Ku Klux Klan. MSNBC's video speaks directly to Americans, asking them if they wanted a race-baiting President in office for another four years.
WATCH: @AriMelber has one question for voters - are you for or against this? pic.twitter.com/9T8ogQ4Zn3
— The Beat with Ari Melber on MSNBC 📺 (@TheBeatWithAri) October 28, 2020
The MSNBC video begins with Trump's comments on the Central Park Five case, where he called for the five teenagers to be hanged after they were accused of beating and raping a woman who was jogging in Central Park in 1989. Trump took out full-page ads in all four prominent New York newspapers, calling for them to be “executed” even before the trial had begun. They would be convicted of assault, robbery, rape, sodomy, and attempted murder in 1990. In 2002, a confession by another person supported by DNA evidence would exonerate the five. Trump responded by calling the settlement of $41m awarded to them “a disgrace.” Trump continued to claim the Central Park Five were guilty and even brought it up during his 2016 Presidential campaign.
This is the full-page advertisement Donald Trump took out calling for the execution of the Central Park Five.
— Scott Bixby (@scottbix) February 10, 2018
They were later exonerated by DNA evidence, although President Trump maintains that they are guilty. pic.twitter.com/vspZemnW93
The video also showed Trump pushing a birther controversy against former President Barack Obama. “Our current President came out of nowhere, came out of nowhere. The people who went to school with him—they never saw him," claimed Trump. After Obama released his birth certificate, Trump called the document a fraud. The video shows Trump implementing the Muslim ban and also him refusing to condemn David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan. He feigns ignorance about David Duke, who endorsed Trump for President. He did something very similar in the recent Presidential debate when he refused to condemn the Proud Boys but instead asking them to "stand by." The Proud Boys is a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as a hate group. The group is known to hold violent protests and describe themselves as "a pro-Western fraternal organization for men who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world; aka Western Chauvinists."
This. This is Donald Trump's America. https://t.co/wld2mmGTwe
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 30, 2020
The hate groups leaders "regularly spout white nationalist memes and maintain affiliations with known extremists. They are known for anti-Muslim and misogynistic rhetoric," reported SPLC. Instead of condemning them, Donald Trump issued a call of action to the hate group. "Proud Boys — stand back and stand by," said Trump, reported The Huffington Post. He also refused to condemn Neo-Nazis after a self-professed Neo-Nazi drove a car into the crowd of counter-protestors killing a woman and injuring 35 others at a far-right organized rally organized in 2017. Trump chose to not blame the far-right, his core supporter base, and instead, claimed there were "very fine people on both sides."
At one point in the MSNBC video, Trump is shown at a campaign rally pointing to someone in a crowd and saying "Look at my African American over here." There's also footage of Trump slamming immigrants asking "all these people from s***hole countries come here?" Trump would do well to remember that his grandfather arrived in North America from Germany and reportedly made his money running a brothel, according to CBC. He used similar racist statements to slam the four Congresswomen of color, including AOC, telling them to "go back where they came from." The video then cuts to an interview of the President's niece Mary Trump who's asked by MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow if she has heard her uncle use the n-word. "Yeah," she replies. The video ends with the clip from the Presidential debate where he told the hate group Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by."
This is racist, Biff.
— Chris Evans (@ChrisEvans) July 15, 2019
The only thing worse than actually being hateful and racist, is casually wielding hate and racism to activate your base in an unrelenting, painfully transparent, and crushingly on-brand effort to soothe your only true devotion: feeding your insatiable ego. https://t.co/WfU1uUp9Ya