Trump Wades Into Race Debate With Tweeted Videos

They show assaults by black men on white victims, and he asks, 'Where are the protesters?'
By Newser Editors,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 23, 2020 11:10 AM CDT
Trump Retweets Videos of Assaults by Black Men
President Trump speaks with reporters before departing on Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House Tuesday.   (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Trump retweeted a pair of videos Tuesday showing assaults by African American men on white victims. "Looks what's going on here," he wrote on one, which shows an assault on an employee inside a Macy's store in Flint, Mich., per Yahoo News. "Where are the protesters? Was this man arrested?" The other video shows a man shoving a woman into the side of a subway car in New York City. "So terrible!" Trump wrote, and the original tweet asked, "Where are the protests for this?" Critics quickly responded, saying Trump was trying to equate individual cases with systemic racism. He is "seizing on and amplifying random, (anomalous) instances of interracial violence, needlessly inflaming racial tensions at a moment of polarization and social upheaval," tweeted Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic.

The Washington Post provides context that Trump would surely disagree with. It notes that a 2018 study by the Southern Poverty Law Center calls exaggerations of black-on-white crime a common theme of websites that push white supremacy. It's "the biggest lie in the white supremacist propaganda handbook," declares the headline on the SPLC study, which notes that church shooter Dylann Roof mentioned such crimes in his manifesto. But conservative blogger Matt Walsh had this to say on the Macy's attack: "This is a horrific hate crime and if the races were reversed it would be the only thing we talk about for days." A man was arrested in the subway incident (the victim wasn't hurt), and police in Michigan were still investigating the Macy's incident, reports the Detroit Free Press. (More President Trump stories.)

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