I watched the interview with Donald Trump on Sixty Minutes last night. Leslie Stahl asked the President Elect about the black, gays, and women being harassed by Trump supporters. Trump said he was unaware of the attacks but told his supporters to "stop it".
That got me thinking. I've seen stories and videos of Trump supporters being attacked by angry protesters. I've seen coverage of Democrats rioting in a number of cities across this country. What I haven't seen are stories of anyone actually being harassed by Trump supporters. The only stories that I have been able to find involved graffiti. At a school in Manhattan someone spray painted a swastika and the word Trump on a wall. That is being investigated by the NY authorities as a "hate crime", although to me it seems more like an attack on Trump than on his opponents, especially since this happened in Manhattan where there are essentially no Trump supporters. There were also two instances of swastikas being painted on buildings in upstate New York. At least in those locations, there are Trump supporters, but there is nothing that links the graffiti to them.
I looked further. I found reports of students at the University of Pennsylvania getting nasty text messages from a student from the University of Oklahoma. There was also a claim that a group of white students knocked down a black woman at Villanova University while chanting Trump's name. There were no witnesses to this alleged attack. Meanwhile, the SCLC has said that there have been over 200 reported attacks across the nation, but the SCLC also said that it had not verified any of them.
So what do we really know? Were there any of these attacks? Could these claims be real? Or are these stories like the violence at the Trump rallies that we learned through Wikileaks was actually arranged by Democrats so that they could then condemn Trump? I truly doubt that many of these things actually happened. That is not to say that it would be acceptable were this actually happening; it would be completely unacceptable. Nevertheless, there is too much of this that just rings untrue.
At the same time, it is hard to equate a nasty text message to a crowd of protesters rioting in Portland. One is clearly worse.
That got me thinking. I've seen stories and videos of Trump supporters being attacked by angry protesters. I've seen coverage of Democrats rioting in a number of cities across this country. What I haven't seen are stories of anyone actually being harassed by Trump supporters. The only stories that I have been able to find involved graffiti. At a school in Manhattan someone spray painted a swastika and the word Trump on a wall. That is being investigated by the NY authorities as a "hate crime", although to me it seems more like an attack on Trump than on his opponents, especially since this happened in Manhattan where there are essentially no Trump supporters. There were also two instances of swastikas being painted on buildings in upstate New York. At least in those locations, there are Trump supporters, but there is nothing that links the graffiti to them.
I looked further. I found reports of students at the University of Pennsylvania getting nasty text messages from a student from the University of Oklahoma. There was also a claim that a group of white students knocked down a black woman at Villanova University while chanting Trump's name. There were no witnesses to this alleged attack. Meanwhile, the SCLC has said that there have been over 200 reported attacks across the nation, but the SCLC also said that it had not verified any of them.
So what do we really know? Were there any of these attacks? Could these claims be real? Or are these stories like the violence at the Trump rallies that we learned through Wikileaks was actually arranged by Democrats so that they could then condemn Trump? I truly doubt that many of these things actually happened. That is not to say that it would be acceptable were this actually happening; it would be completely unacceptable. Nevertheless, there is too much of this that just rings untrue.
At the same time, it is hard to equate a nasty text message to a crowd of protesters rioting in Portland. One is clearly worse.
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