Former ESPN personality and ‘Atlantic’ writer Jemele Hill has affirmed that she thinks anyone who votes for President Donald Trump in 2020 a flat-out racist.
In a recent interview with Daily Beast, the woman who parted ways with ESPN due to her extreme rhetoric, was asked about her recent tweet where she said all Trump’s 2020 voters are racists. Hill did not waver on her accusation.
Hill insisted that Donald Trump and his administration has governed out of purposeful “cruelty” that she says is meant “purely to make the point known about who matters and who doesn’t in this country.” So, as far as she is concerned, even if you don’t consider yourself a racist, if you vote for Trump in 2020 you are a racist.
Hill added:
I said it not just because I believe it but also for effect, because I want people to take stock of what you’re actually voting for. In your mind, you might think: ‘Oh, I voted for a better tax law.’ But if it comes with having kids in cages, repealing or attacking legal protections for LGBTQ people, if it comes with all these other things that send a message that these people don’t matter and shouldn’t be heard and therefore shouldn’t be protected, then you really need to have a gut-check moment and ask, ‘What am I voting for? Is that tax cut worth destroying other people’s lives? Is that worth it?’
Hill went on to say that in all her conversations with anyone who voted for Trump in 2016, or who support him now, they all feel that Trump’s “bigotry” is “appealing.”
“[U]sually when I get in these conversations with people who voted for Trump, there was always some level of his bigotry that appealed to them,” she exclaimed. “Banning Muslims, building a wall, it was always something. And let’s be honest: it’s not like he had some dynamic policies that wowed everybody! His platform was nothing to write home about. People hate to admit it but it was the bigotry that stirred something in them, and that they liked.”
Hill also explained that she is not necessarily saying that everyone who voted for Trump in 2016 is a racist. But she does mean anyone who votes for Trump in 2020 is a racist. Hill felt it necessary to make that distinction because not long ago she was forced to admit that her own mother voted for Trump in 2016.
I said ‘if you vote’ not ‘if you did vote’ for a reason because I realize through the lens of my mother that even though I saw he was doing racist things as he was campaigning to be president, there were a lot of people who had this view of him that was partially crafted through his reality-TV image—of being somebody who was a very astute, no-nonsense businessman. There were a lot of people who, strangely enough, thought that because former President Barack Obama was more inclusive he was making America soft. Which is why I thought it was quite pointed for him to have a ‘Make America Great Again’ campaign.
She then hinted that she finds Christians to be hypocrites, saying, “When you talk to a lot of Christian evangelicals, they didn’t like that you had to respect LGBT rights or couldn’t discriminate against transgender people. They saw it as America “losing its way” and “not being godly,” and that’s why you see Trump has such high white-evangelical support.”
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