Ironically, it is the insults that are likely to do more damage
than the scandals.
By Peter Dreier / AlterNet
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| Is there a tipping point for the wingnuts supporting Trump? |
Both the scandals and the insults pose liabilities for Trump’s
campaign, but perhaps ironically, it is the insults that are likely to do more
damage than the scandals.
Supporters of Hillary Clinton seem to believe that each Trump
scandal adds to voters’ negative assessment of his fitness to be president,
like a snowball that gets bigger and bigger as it rolls downhill. But that
doesn’t seem to be happening.
Instead, each day’s scandal seems to push the previous one out of
our collective memories.
There are so many of them—and the details are so complicated and
bizarre—that it is hard to keep track of them.
Each day, the Post seems to discover yet another
way that Trump has misused the foundation to feather his nest.
But no sooner have we started to understand the magnitude of
Trump’s misdeeds with his foundation than we are confronted with another
scandal—his illegal business dealings with Cuba during the U.S. embargo,
which Newsweek just uncovered.
Trying to remember the scandals surrounding the Trump Foundation
and Trump’s dealings with Cuba leaves us little room in our brains to recall
the U.S. Justice Department’s lawsuit against Trump for discriminating against
blacks in his apartment buildings.
Or the illegal con job he foisted on the unwitting “students” of
his bogus Trump University.
Or the many employees (waiters, dishwashers, and plumbers, among
others) and contractors he stiffed in his business dealings by failing to pay
them for services they rendered.
Or the several women who have charged Trump of raping them as well
as many others who have accused Trump of being a sexual predator.
Or the many stories that have linked Trump to the mafia in his
hotel and casino business activities.
Or his misuse of at least four business bankruptcies to avoid
paying his creditors and his taxes.
Or Trump’s failure to pay federal income taxes despite his wealth.
Or his hiring of undocumented workers for one of his real estate
projects and his failure, as a federal judge found, to pay them or to provide
safe working conditions, as required by law.
Or Trump’s repeated fines for breaking rules related to his
operation of his casinos.
Or the Federal Trade Commission’s $750,000 fine against Trump for
failing to disclose his purchases of stock in two rival casino companies, which
flouted the nation’s anti-trust laws.
Or Trump’s misuse of his $55,000 of campaign donations to purchase
copies of his book, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again,
from which he receives royalties—a violation of Federal Election Commission
rules.
Or the foreign models who worked for Trump Model Management in
this country without having proper visas and permits. And this is just a
partial list!
One might think that all these scandals would lead voters to view
Trump as a corrupt, irresponsible law-breaker unfit to be president. But there
are so many of them that it is difficult to keep Trump’s crimes and calumnies
straight. Most of us only have a big enough attention span to remember the most
recent scandal.
On the other hand, most Americans have a pretty good memory for
names and faces, so it is easier to remember at least some of the long list of
people whom Trump has insulted, in part because we can identify with these
individuals.
We are all aware of Trump’s steady use of mockery, bullying and
belittlement against people with whom he disagrees, who have criticized him, or
whose looks or handicaps he finds troubling.
So while Clinton’s supporters might not gain much ground reminding
voters about Trump’s multiple business and personal scandals, they are on
firmer ground calling attention to the people who have been targets of Trump’s
demeaning insults.
That’s why Hillary Clinton scored big in the first
debate Monday night when she brought up Trump’s history of calling
women “pigs,” “slobs,” and “dogs,” and, in particular, the insults he hurled at
former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, including calling her “Miss Housekeeping”
and “Miss Piggy.”
Unable to let Clinton’s comments pass, Trump has spent the last
few days continuing his defamation of Machado for having gained weight while
she was Miss Universe.
But voters might have some difficulty retrieving the specific
epithets that Trump has used against people over the years. So here is a very
partial list of the people he’s insulted and the words he’s used to attack
them.
Khizr and Ghazala Khan: After Khizr Khan—the father of Humayun, a
U.S. Army captain who was killed in Iraq and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal
and the Purple Heart—gave a speech at the Democratic convention condemning
Trump for his comments about Muslims and pulled out a pocket-sized copy of the
Constitution to asked if Trump knew about the right to equal protection, Trump
struck back.
Trump not only said that Khan had “viciously attacked” him but
also erroneously claimed that Khan’s wife Ghazala was not allowed to speak because
she was Muslim. “She probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to
say,” Trump said on ABC News.
Judge Gonzalo Curiel: Trump attacked Curiel, a judge who is
presiding over a trial brought by people who were scammed by Trump University.
Trump accused Curiel of having “an absolute conflict” that should prevent him
from presiding over the Trump University case because Curiel, a United States
citizen who was born in Indiana to immigrants from Mexico, is “of Mexican
heritage.”
Trump said that Curiel could not be fair because “I’m building a
wall” on the U.S.-Mexican border. At a campaign rally, Trump claimed that “I
have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He’s a hater,” despite
the fact that Curiel has ruled in favor of Trump on most of his lawyer’s
requests.
The Central Park Five: In 1989 five teenage men, four African
Americans and one Latino, were wrongfully convicted of raping a 28-year-old
white woman who was jogging in New York City. The media quickly labeled them
the “Central Park Five.”
As soon as they were arrested, Trump led the charge
against them. He paid a reported $85,000 to take out advertising space in four
of the city’s newspapers, including the New York Times, under the
headline “Bring Back The Death Penalty. Bring Back The Police!” In those ads,
Trump wrote: “I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced
to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes. They
must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing
a crime or an act of violence.”
Trump’s words were hardly subtle—he was calling
for the boys to die. All five boys pleaded not guilty at the trial but despite
the lack of DNA evidence linking any of them to the crime scene, the jury found
all five boys guilty. The judge sentenced them to serve five to 15 years in
prison. Michael Warren, a respected New York civil rights lawyer who later
represented the Central Park Five, said that Trump’s ads “poisoned the minds of
many people who lived in New York and who, rightfully, had a natural affinity
for the victim.
Notwithstanding the jurors’ assertions that they could be fair
and impartial, some of them or their families, who naturally have influence,
had to be affected by the inflammatory rhetoric in the ads.” In 2002, Matias
Reyes, a violent serial rapist and murderer serving a life sentence, confessed
to the Central Park rape, stating that he had acted by himself. When the DNA
evidence was re-examined, it showed that Reyes’ semen alone was found on the
rape victim’s body.
That year, New York’s Supreme Court vacated the convictions
against each member of the Central Park Five, whose lives had been shattered by
their prison terms and who, had Trump had his way, would have been given the
death sentence for a crime they did not commit.
Serge Kovaleski: At a campaign rally, Trump flailed his arms
and mocked Kovaleski, a New York Times reporter
who suffers from a chronic condition that limits the movement of his arms.
Kovaleski had challenged Trump’s claim that after 9/11 Muslims in New Jersey
had celebrated the attacks.
Megyn Kelly: After the Fox News anchor asked Trump about his many
anti-women comments over the years, Trump said: “You could see there was blood
coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”
Senator John McCain: At a candidate forum in Ohio, Trump
mocked McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner in North Vietnam.
“He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured,
OK? I hate to tell you. He’s a war hero because he was captured, OK?”
Carly Fiorina: “Look at that face!” Trump told a Rolling Stone
reporter on his private plane when Fiorina, then his Republican rival for
president, appeared on a television screen. “Would anyone vote for that? Can you
imagine that, the face of our next president?
Pope Francis: After the pope criticized Trump’s proposal to build
a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border, Trump said that the pope’s comments were
“really not very nice.” But then he went further, claiming that that the
Islamic State (ISIS) viewed the Vatican as its “ultimate trophy” and
that the pope would “would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would
have been president because this would not have happened.”
This list doesn’t even include Trump’s wholesale insults against
Muslims, Mexicans, and Jews, or his nasty and misinformed comments about rivals
Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and
others.
Trump has spread his insults so far and wide that there are few
Americans who are unaware of his penchant for impulsive rants and invective
against powerless and innocent people as well as against his competitors in
business and politics.
Peter Dreier is professor of politics and chair of the Urban &
Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College. His most recent book is The
100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame (Nation
Books).
