[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 13541-13542]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              DONALD TRUMP

  Mr. REID. Madam President, virtually every time Donald Trump says or 
does something discriminatory--and that is often--the media relies upon 
a catalog of buzzwords to describe his actions. The press uses words 
like hateful, intolerant, bigot, extremist, prejudice, to name but a 
few. Yet there is always one word that many of the press conspicuously 
avoid: Racist. They never label Trump as a racist, but he is a racist. 
Donald Trump is a racist. ``Racist'' is a term I don't really like.
  We have all, with rare exception--I don't know who it would be--said 
things that are not politically correct, but I don't know of anyone, 
when that happens, who doesn't acknowledge it and, if necessary, 
apologizes quickly, but Donald Trump doesn't believe the racist things 
he does and says are wrong. He says them with the full intent to demean 
and to denigrate. That is who he is.
  Each time Trump is given a chance to apologize and make amends, he 
refuses, and then he doubles down on what he said before. The media is 
not holding Donald Trump accountable at all. He is not being held 
accountable.
  So why do reporters and pundits abstain from calling Trump what he 
is--a racist? It is not as if Trump's racism is new. His bigotry has 
been on display since the early days of his business career.
  When Donald Trump was still working at his father's side as second in 
command, the Department of Justice slapped their company with a civil 
rights lawsuit. Why? Because they deserved it. Undercover Federal 
officers in New York found that the Trumps discriminated against 
potential tenants by rejecting applications for housing from African 
Americans and Puerto Ricans.
  Trump has even had a secret system for discriminatory practices. As 
the Washington Post reported:

       Trump employees have secretly marked the applications of 
     minorities with codes, such as `No. 9' and `C' for colored. . 
     . . The employees allegedly directed blacks and Puerto Ricans 
     away from buildings with mostly white tenants and steered 
     them toward properties that had many minorities.

  In the 1980s, Trump took his racism to Atlantic City. This is Donald 
Trump at his best. He cheated, coerced, filed bankruptcy, did anything 
he could to cheat people out of money. In the process, his racism came 
to the forefront in Atlantic City. Trump was accused of making his 
African-American employees move off the casino floor when he didn't 
want to see them, which was any time he came to the casino. One 
employee, Kip Brown, said:

       When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would 
     order all the black people off the floor. It was the 
     eighties, I was a teenager, but I remember it: they put us 
     all in the back.

  Trump was later fined $200,000 by the New Jersey Casino Control 
Commission for that act of disgusting racism.
  In the 1990s, John O'Donnell, the former president of Trump Plaza 
Hotel and Casino, wrote a book about his time working with Donald 
Trump. O'Donnell reported that Trump frequently denigrated African 
Americans. He remembers a lot, but he specifically remembers Trump 
saying of his accountants:

       I've got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. 
     Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of 
     people I want counting my money are short guys that wear 
     yarmulkes every day.

  How about that?

     I've got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. 
     Black guys counting my money! I hate it.

  Those are words from Donald Trump's mouth.

     The only kind of people I want counting my money are short 
     guys that wear yarmulkes every day.

  That is what he said.
  Speaking of another African-American employee, Trump told O'Donnell:

       I think the guy is lazy. And it's probably not his fault 
     because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is. I 
     believe that.

  That is Donald Trump. He thinks that Blacks are lazy and that they 
can't help it because it is one of their traits. Trump didn't deny it. 
He later admitted: ``The stuff O'Donnell wrote about me is probably 
true.''
  But since Donald Trump became involved in Presidential politics, his 
racism has reached even new heights. Trump led the so-called birther 
movement to delegitimize our first African-American President. Last 
year, announcing his candidacy for President, Trump denounced Mexican 
immigrants as ``criminals, drug dealers, rapists.''
  Consider all of the despicable racist things he has done this year 
alone. He has repeatedly called for a ban on Muslims entering the 
United States. Trump attacked a Gold Star dad and a Gold Star mother. 
They are Muslims. Their son, CPT Humayun Khan, was killed in battle, 
but Donald Trump didn't only question Mr. Khan, he questioned Mrs. 
Khan. She was sitting there, and he said: I guess she is not talking 
because she is forbidden to speak by Islam.

[[Page 13542]]

  Donald Trump refused to condemn former KKK grand wizard David Duke, 
who is still in politics.
  Donald Trump has retweeted messages from Nazi sympathizers and White 
supremacists.
  Donald Trump launched a racist attack on U.S. District Court Judge 
Curiel, a man born in Indiana, but Trump didn't like that because his 
mom and dad were of Mexican heritage. He said he should be disqualified 
from hearing the case. Speaker Ryan called Trump's offensive attack ``a 
textbook definition of a racist comment.'' This is the U.S. House of 
Representatives Speaker, who acknowledges that his Republican 
Presidential nominee is a racist. Yet here we are, 7 weeks from 
election day, and the Speaker of the House and the Senate Republican 
leader are both endorsing this racist man.
  Republicans should not support a man for President who by their 
Speaker's own admission is the textbook definition of a racist. Think 
of the example Republicans are setting for our Nation's youth. 
Republicans are normalizing this racist behavior. This will be their 
legacy--one of them. They have plenty to add to that. Those who refuse 
to denounce Donald Trump's actions as racism are complicit in 
propagating and normalizing his hate.
  It is time for reporters and journalists to be honest with the 
American people. They owe Americans the truth: Through his words and 
deeds, Donald Trump is a racist.

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