Marie Griffith, John C. Danforth Distinguished Professor in the Humanities and director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics
Since last week’s horrific massacre at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, much has been written about the global expansion of race- and religion-based hate.
President Trump’s three tweets of “warmest sympathy and best wishes” to New Zealand rang utterly hollow, interspersed as they were amid more than 50 tweets he sent between Friday morning and Sunday evening that included multiple retweets of himself on television, warnings about the “Jexodus” of Jews from the Democratic Party, still more criticisms of deceased Republican Senator John McCain, and conspiracy theories spread by “Pizzagate” enthusiast Jack Posobiec.
He also tweeted defenses of Fox personalities Tucker Carlson and Jeanine Pirro with an abhorrently ill-timed rallying cry, “Be strong & prosper, be weak & die!”
This is a man whose presidential campaign trafficked relentlessly in anti-Muslim rhetoric buttressed by fear-mongering lies, like his pronouncement that “Islam hates us.”
When, two days after the mosque attacks, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said hotly on national television, “The President is not a white supremacist; I’m not sure how many times we have to say that,” it was an insult to the intelligence of the human species, or at least those humans who have been paying even the slightest bit of attention.
Read the full piece at Religion & Politics.
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