Donald Trump, Racist-in-Chief: Here Are the 10 Most Racist Things He’s Done So Far
We know that President-elect Trump is a racist—or, at the very least, racist-adjacent. Like no other before him, Trump won the 2016 presidential election because much of white America underestimated the level of white supremacy on which this country was founded.
It is this supremacy that allowed Trump to claim that he didn’t know David Duke, American white nationalist and former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, despite evidence to the contrary. And it is this same racism that permitted Trump to go weeks without denouncing the former leader of the terroristic KKK, who had endorsed him to be this country’s next president. Like America, Trump’s candidacy survived off racism, both theoretically and practically.
But believe it or not, this hasn’t been the most terrifying moment emanating from Trump’s campaign and eventual win. So, from disparaging Mexicans to highlighting black crime to dismissing white violence against black lives, we ask: What are the 10 most racist things Trump has done so far?
1. Trump nominated Sen. Jeff Sessions to be the next U.S. attorney general.
For the past eight years, the U.S. attorney general—the head of the U.S. Department of Justice—has been a black person. In 2008, President Barack Obama nominated Eric Holder, who was approved by Senate confirmation in 2009, to the esteemed position. Then, six years later, in 2014, Obama nominated Loretta Lynch to become the first black woman to head the DOJ. This year, Trump’s nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) proved just how racist the Trump-Pence administration will be.
If confirmed, Sessions will push for many right-wing policies that harm black people, including crime, drugs, terrorism and immigration. Unlike Holder and Lynch, Sessions could drastically lessen civil rights programs and change police accountability to be more pro-law enforcement.