The Man in the High Tower
by digby
Congressman Sean Duffy on the White Supremacists celebrating Trump’s victory with Nazi salutes and chants of “Hail Trump!”
DUFFY: [Trump] did condemn them and that’s a good thing. Someone who says, ‘they maybe endorse me, but I don’t endorse their viewpoint of the world.’ Again, I think it’s important that a leader step forward and make the right move, which is what he did.
My concern is that Barack Obama, when he had a chance, didn’t condemn the riots across America that were in protest of Donald Trump’s victory in the election or didn’t condemn ‘Black Lives Matter.’ It might have taken him time in your viewpoint or in another’s viewpoint, but he did the right thing.
SCIUTTO: You’re equating Americans protesting a politician with outright hate and bigotry from a group that was using the Hitler salute to celebrate Donald Trump’s victory and are nothing more than white supremacists? I mean, that’s not a fair comparison.
DUFFY: No, no, no. Both are disgusting, for different ways.
SCIUTTO: You’re putting them on equal footing? You’re putting political protests on a footing with white supremacists?
DUFFY: Let me explain. I think this is a horrible group, don’t share their values or their viewpoint. But you have people taking to the streets and damaging property, pulling people out of cars and beating them up, little girls getting beaten up in schools for supporting Donald Trump. This was violence on American streets. So they’re different kind of activity by each group, but both groups need to be condemned.
It’s one thing if you stand on the sidewalk and hold a sign in protest. That’s the American 1st Amendment right to protest. But when you get violent and you damage property and you hurt people, that’s something completely different.
This is the right’s bizarroworld alternate reality. Here is reality:
After Trump won the election in early November, “Black Lives Matters” and anti-Trump protesters did not riot to the extent that the Republican congressman suggested. There were mostly peaceful demonstrations across the country for several days. There were a few isolated instances of more destructive protests led by a “smaller segment” of “anarchist-types,” according to a police department official in Portland, Oregon.
Meanwhile, there have been hundreds of incidents of hate crimes committed against people of color, blacks, Muslims, immigrants, and women since Trump’s win.
There have been a couple of incidents of people beating up people who claim to be Trump supporters. Literally a handful. There have been hundreds of incidents reported of Trump supporters committing crimes against people of color, Muslims, Jews, immigrants and women. There are probably many more.
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