Trump, The Racist Looter-In-Chief, Defends His Threat To Murder Americans For Looting

Cleanup on aisle racist.

— Chris Jackson (@ChrisCJackson) May 29, 2020

Donald Trump is a proud long-time racist.

On Friday morning, he defended his tweet threatening to have the US military massacre Americans who are protesting the murder of an unarmed black man by a Minnesota police officer.

Looting leads to shooting, and that's why a man was shot and killed in Minneapolis on Wednesday night - or look at what just happened in Louisville with 7 people shot. I don't want this to happen, and that's what the expression put out last night means....

....It was spoken as a fact, not as a statement. It's very simple, nobody should have any problem with this other than the haters, and those looking to cause trouble on social media. Honor the memory of George Floyd!

Those tweets are too coherent for Trump to have written. One of his quislings must be the author.

As many people have pointed out, the looting/shooting quote has been used by racists before.

Walter Headley, Miami Police Chief, December 1967 (quoted by UPI):

I've let the word filter down that when the looting starts, the shooting starts.

The Miami Herald also reported that Headley's officers had been assured that "any force, up to and including death, is proper when apprehending a felon".

George Wallace, presidential candidate, October 1968:

When the looting starts, the shooting starts.

Wallace was a strong opponent of desegregation who famously announced in his 1963 inaugural address as Governor of Alabama: "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." In 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. called Wallace "perhaps the most dangerous racist in America today".

Meanwhile, the liberal [sic] media is reporting things like "Twitter has marked another of the President's tweets for violating its policy of not glorifying violence". What they should be reporting is: "The President has threatened to murder American citizens".

What has to happen before it becomes obvious to a majority of Americans that Donald Trump is a severely mentally ill man who must be removed from office immediately? Seriously. What atrocities, and how many deaths, will occur beforehand?

Only a few days ago, Trump retweeted a video from a Texas group ("Cowboys For Trump") stating

The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat. ... You get to pick your poison: you either go before a firing squad, or you get the end of the rope.

In Trump's not-so-distant past:

He has described white conservatives threatening state officials with automatic weapons as "very good people". He has called Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, North Carolina, "very fine people". And he was heartily endorsed by the Klu Klux Klan and its former grand wizard, David Duke, in 2016.

In America, some forms of looting are more acceptable than others.

While 41 million Americans lost their jobs in only the last two months, the wealth of American billionaires grew by 15% ($434 billion) during the same time period. The richest five billionaires -- Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, and Larry Ellison -- saw their combined wealth increase by $76 billion.

Elon Musk's net worth increased by 48%, to $36 billion. Zuckerberg's net worth increased by 46%, to $80 billion. Bezos's net worth increased by 31%, to $147 billion. Bezos's ex-wife, MacKenzie Bezos, saw her wealth increase by 33%, to $48 billion.

When Trump announced financial relief, ostensibly for American workers, during the pandemic, he met with a group of oil and gas executives and promised to "make funds available to these very important companies". It's one promise he has kept.

First: Tommy Fisher, a Trump ally, was given a $400 million Army Corps of Engineers contract last year to build a mere 31 miles of border wall in Arizona. Last month, despite being the subject of a Pentagon watchdog investigation into allegations of favoritism, Fisher received another $7 million from the Army.

And:

Big oil corporations have spent nearly $377 million on federal lobbying since the start of the Trump administration and have showered Trump's campaign with $9.7 million in donations. It's already paid off. Seventeen oil and gas corporations reported $25 billion in direct, one-time benefits from Trump's 2017 tax cuts.

Accountable.US Action released updated information on TrumpBailouts.org about small business awards under the Small Business Administration's PPP. ... [It] has identified PPP bailouts totaling over $100 million that have gone to big oil, gas, coal, mining, and related industries.

Filings compiled by The Washington Post found that publicly traded corporations have received more than $1 billion in funds meant for small businesses. Nearly 300 public corporations, including 43 with more than 500 workers and several that pay top executives millions in compensation, have reported receiving bailouts through Trump's Small Business Administration.

And:

The Trump administration has been blatantly bailing out the oil and gas industry during the coronavirus pandemic. In just the first two weeks of the Small Business Administration's Payroll Protection Program (PPP), oil, gas and mining companies got a whopping $3.9 billion in PPP funding, even though the program was designed to help small businesses, not publicly traded corporations.

In its bailing out of extractive resource corporations, the administration has given PPP funding to a foreign-owned uranium mining corporation with ties to the Trump administration [and] a Indiana-based coal corporation with a former Trump official as its lobbyist ...

And:

At least two oil and gas firms that boosted investors' portfolios by buying back stock in 2019 received $15.5 million this year from a program designed to rescue small businesses gutted by the coronavirus pandemic.

And:

Corporations with close ties to Trump administration officials are among 10 companies being permitted to delay payments of millions of dollars in fines for pollution they caused, according to The Guardian and government watchdog Accountable.US.

The companies had agreed to pay a collective total of $56 million in civil penalties for contributing to pollution in communities across the country, but they were informed in April by the Department of Justice that they can pause their payments during the pandemic.

And:

Some of the wealthiest hospital groups in the United States have received huge infusions of federal rescue funds even as they sat on billions of dollars in cash reserves and poorer hospitals and clinics struggle to maintain bare-minimum levels of service.

According to the New York Times, a disproportionate amount of the $72 billion approved by Congress to bolster hospitals amid the coronavirus outbreak is flowing "to hospitals that had already built up deep financial reserves to help them withstand an economic storm. Smaller, poorer hospitals are receiving tiny amounts of federal aid by comparison."

And:

In a display of loyalty to what Greenpeace called "the most polluting industry in history," the Trump administration is allowing dozens of oil and gas companies to set their own rates for royalties they're required to pay on revenue generated from drilling on public lands. ...

In addition to suspending lease payments, BLM told states to allow companies to apply for relief from royalties, the mandatory taxes on the revenue the fossil fuel industry earns, which are used to support public schools, higher education, and healthcare in Western states.

According to High Country News, BLM instructed state offices to allow oil and gas companies to decide how much they want to pay in royalties for the duration of the pandemic, suggesting that the standard rate of 12.5% be reduced to as low as 0.5%.

At Least 9 Million US Households With Children Are 'Not At All Confident' They'll Be Able To Afford Food Next Month:

A poll released by the U.S. Census Bureau this week revealed that at least nine million American households that include children are unsure whether they'll be able to access enough food in the next four weeks and millions more are experiencing housing insecurity during the coronavirus pandemic.

The bureau's weekly Household Pulse Survey, taken between May 14 and 19, asked respondents about their loss of employment, food security, overall health, and other issues they are facing during the pandemic.

According to the data, more than nine million households are "not at all confident" that they will be able to afford food in the next month, and more than 18 million are only "somewhat confident" about their food security.