by JAY WILDER – March 18, 2019
After the massacre in New Zealand, here were the tweets sent out by the President and his daughter:
Notice the subtle difference between them – Ivanka uses the word “Muslim,” but the President did not. Am I just nit-picking, or is this part of a pattern? For example, does he think his hard-core base is OK with the word “mosque,” but expressing support for Muslims specifically is going too far? There’s an interesting parallel here – when he was on the campaign trail, he mocked Hillary and Obama for refusing to use the phrase “Islamic terrorism.” Does Trump have the opposite problem, where he cannot express support for Islam or Muslims, even in times of tragedy?
I went back through Trump’s tweets since he first announced his presidential candidacy in 2015, and found all 66 instances where he has used the words “Muslim,” “Muslims,” Islam,” or “Islamic” (you can read the full list here). I categorized them by whether they were positive/supportive, neutral/descriptive, or negative. Results are shown below.
So there you have it – not one supportive tweet in all that time. Plenty of references to Obama being a possible Muslim, Muslims celebrating 9/11, creating a Muslim database, the U.K. Muslim problem, Islamic terrorists, and preventing Muslim immigration.
If Trump truly cares about whether he’s perceived as a racist, he missed a golden opportunity. Here’s hoping he’ll learn something from his daughter about