Donald Trump breaks with precedent by not speaking out against racial violence.
Donald Trump breaks with precedent by not speaking out against racial violence.
By JAMELLE BOUIE
MARCH 30, 20185:32 PM
Donald Trump has been president for 14 months, and in that time, he has commented on virtually everything under the sun, from able news personalities and political rivals to professional football players and prominent black celebrities. Trump is so vocal about what he likes and dislikesso present in the national conversationthat his omissions are often more revealing than his comments. On the rare occasions when this president is silent, it is consistently when confronted with violence against nonwhites.
On Thursday, reporters asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders for comment on the shooting of Stephon Clark, an unarmed black man who was killed by the Sacramento, California, police while standing in his grandmothers backyard. According to a private autopsy, Clark was shot eight times in the back by police who claimed to have seen a gun. He was holding a phone. Certainly a terrible incident, said Sanders, before adding that this is something that is a local matter and thats something that we feel should be left up to the local authorities at this point in time.
Asked for further clarification, Sanders doubled down. Certainly, we want to make sure that all law enforcement is carrying out the letter of the law. The president is very supportive of law enforcement, but at the same time in these specific cases and these specific instances, those will be left up to the local authorities, she said.
Trumps silence around incidents of racial violence, and police violence in particular, is unusual for a president. Barack Obama regularly commented on the killings of unarmed black Americans, from Trayvon Martin during his first term to Alton Sterling and Philando Castile in his second. [The shootings] are symptomatic of the broader challenges within our criminal justice system, the racial disparities that appear across the system year after year, and the resulting lack of trust that exists between law enforcement and too many of the communities they serve, said Obama during extended remarks at a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, in 2016.
More:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/donald-trump-refuses-to-speak-out-against-racial-violence.html
Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)to see the Day that Donald Trump ever speaks out against this topic in any way shape or form.