Monday, MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes said President Donald Trump has “disqualified” himself from the support of decent people by using the “dark sorcery of racial hatred.”
In the wake of the El Paso mass shooting, Hayes said, “Even if there were no blood, it would still be vile. If there were no body count, no deaths to mourn, no grieving families, no young parents ripped apart by bullets while shielding their babies, even if none of that happened, it would still be an existential threat to the America we can and should be.”
After playing a clip of Trump calling immigrants an “invasion,” he continued, “Even if not one drop of blood were ever shed in pursuit of it, it would still be anathema. It will still be a force to be conquered and banished.”
After playing a clip of a Trump rally crowd chanting “send her back,” Hayes said, “What is the ‘it’ I’m speaking of? Well, to quote a phrase, ‘You know it and I know it.’ It’s the well of evil from which our president draws and has drawn from the first day when he said Mexico was sending rapists to the U.S., presumably with the explicit intent to defile America’s women, the dark sorcery of racial hatred that conjures invasions and infestations out of desperate fellow human beings seeking refuge. An exultant hatred, a hatred wrapped in a joking, not-joking smile and a cowardly irony, in a pause at the podium that let the crowd hurl its bile. Hatred echoed in the refrain of death squads and war criminals and fascist mobs throughout history as they wield the club and the pistol and the machete: ‘You’re invaders. You are animals. You are a disease. You are a threat to us, and you will not replace us.’”
He added, “Donald Trump knows what he’s doing. Everyone hears the president loud and clearly when he speaks. He tells his followers they alone are the heroes of this country’s history. They’re threatened by their fellow countrymen and women who live in cities, by the desperate mothers and babies in flip-flops that he separates in pens, by those who call their God by a different name. Time and again, time and again, this nation must answer the question: ‘Who is it for? Who is America for?’ And the simple answer time and again must be it is for all of us. We welcome the stranger. We pursue justice. We act as equals in the collective enterprise of democracy. The president and his party stand on the wrong side of that question right now. They have long since disqualified themselves from the support of decent people by doing so.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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