Where in the world did that butler get those crazy ideas?
by digby
My first thought when I read about this fellow was that he’s such an elderly person that going after him is probably unfair. Some people in their 90s aren’t always completely together. I was going to leave it alone. However, after hearing what he said to MSNBC, I’ve changed my mind and not because he seems to be pretty lucid, although he does, but because his attitude actually tracks in many ways with his former boss’s.
First, he’s a birther and we know how Trump feels about that. He’s the guy who mainstreamed that inane controversy from the wingnut fever swamps.
The threats against Obama and Clinton are what’s grabbed everyone’s attention and for good reason. They’re violent and horrible. I was struck by the language he used, however:
There’s more than some issues with [President Obama] — he’s a goddamn traitor, T-R-A-I-T-O-R. I think he should be hung. I think he should be hung next to Hillary Clinton, and I think it should be public, I think it should be televised.”
Here’s Trump on the stump:
“We’re tired of Sgt. Bergdahl, who’s a traitor, a no-good traitor, who should have been executed. Thirty years ago he would have been shot… You know, in the old days ……bing – bong. When we were strong, when we were strong.””
Granted, he wasn’t talking about the president, but his support for summary execution for people he considers “traitors” gets big cheers. I would not be surprised if he got big cheers if he said what his butler said either.
The butler said this about Muslims:
“I do not like them, any of them … I don’t trust them.” He added that the few American Muslims he knows are “nice people,” though he had harsh words for Muslim immigrants.
“But the boatloads they’re bringing in here, I have no use for,” he said. “I think they ought to be shot at the shore.”
Now why would he think such a thing?
Trump:
“I think Islam hates us. There’s a tremendous hatred there, we have to get to the bottom of it. There’s an unbelievable hatred of us. We have to be very vigilant, we have to be very careful and we can’t allow people coming into this country who have hatred of the United States.”
“As far as other people like in the migration, where they’re going, tens of thousands of people having cell phones with ISIS flags on them? I don’t think so, Wolf. They’re not coming to this country. And if I’m president and if Obama has brought some to this country, they are leaving. They’re going. They’re gone.”
“You have the radical Islamic extremists, their pouring in, they’re coming in, we have a lot of them here, we have to be careful.”
“I have been called by more Muslims saying what you are doing is a great thing, not a bad thing…
The butler on bombing Muslims:
Muslims have “just totally disgraced” some cities in the U.S., naming Detroit and Milwaukee as examples, and suggested the U.S. “designate those as nuclear bomb sites.”
“We need to bomb em out,” he said. “I could care less if they’re in the U.S. — I don’t want em in the U.S., they don’t belong here. They belong in the sand dunes where they came from.”
Trump:
“With the terrorists, you have to take out their families. They, they care about their lives. Don’t kid yourself. But they say they don’t care about their lives. You have to take out their families.”
“You look at the attack in California the other day — numerous people, including the mother that knew what was going on. They saw a pipe bomb sitting all over the floor. They saw ammunition all over the place. They knew exactly what was going on.”
“It’s very interesting what happens with the Geneva Conventions. Everybody believes in the Geneva Conventions until they start losing and then, okay, let’s take out the bomb when they start losing.”
Trump has not ruled out using tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. Just saying …
These are all obscene comments. And it’s true that the butler believes that Trump’s more violent terrorist strategy should be used in America, which Trump has not suggested. He merely wants to round up Muslims and Latinos and deport them rather than shooting them on sight or unleashing nuclear weapons on US cities.
But the underlying premise isn’t all that different and you can certainly see the line from Trump’s rhetoric to the butler’s hyperbole.
The butler isn’t the only one. Bobby Knight, the infamous basketball coach said this the other day:
“Harry Truman, with what he did in dropping and having the guts to drop the bomb in 1944, saved, saved millions of American lives. And that’s what Harry Truman did and he became one of the three great presidents of the United States. And here’s a man who would do the same thing because he’s going to become one of the four great presidents of the United States.”
Now that Trump is mainstream, this is the standard right wing blowhard line.