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I've spent a lot of time over the last four years researching how @realDonaldTrump's rhetoric has grave consequences. 1/?
Having been in El Paso during the mass shooting, it's hard for me to comprehend why, as many outlets have pointed out, Trump supporters are not taken seriously and their threats are often dismissed. So, here's a rage-induced research dump:
This doesn't really scratch the surface, but it does highlight the big ones.
In August 2017, Trump called Charlottesville rioters "very fine people." That month, hate crimes nationally increased to 663 incidents--the second-highest tally in nearly a decade.
In the ten days after Trump called for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States," reported hate crimes against Muslims and Arabs nationwide spiked 23%.
In 2017, Trump signed an executive order barring immigration from 7 predominantly Muslim countries. The next day, a Texas man committed a hate crime--burning down a mosque in Victoria, Texas.
Trump claimed Democrats, and specifically Jewish Dems, were supporting migrant caravans and that migrants were coming to the US to vote in the midterms. 11 people were murdered at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. In 2017, Anti-semitic hate crimes rose by 37%.
Between May 2018 and August 2019, Trump ran 2,200 Facebook ads mentioning the word "invasion." In August 2019, 23 people were murdered in a Wal Mart in El Paso, Texas. The shooter's manifesto echoed Trump's language, calling immigrants "invaders."
In 2019, the Washington Post Reported that counties that hosted a Trump rally in 2016 saw a 226% increase in hate crimes.
In August 2019, ABC News reported 26 cases invoking Trump in connection with violence, threats, alleged assaults. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/blame-abc-news-finds-17-cases-invoking-trump/story?id=58912889&cid=social_twitter_abcnp
2020, Homeland Security Sec: “particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent targeted attacks in recent years...seek to force ideological change in the United States through violence, death, and destruction”
Two days later, the FBI arrested 13 rightwing extremists who had allegedly been plotting to carry out a range of attacks in Michigan, including the kidnapping of the Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer.
