Harry Reid's Senate speech on Trump's election; Criticism of Harry Reid's words by Republicans
Senator Harry Reid on President-elect Trump's appointment of Steve Bannon (C-SPAN), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8VF6YdpItA, 12 min 46 secs, published on Nov. 15th 2016
Here's a full transcript of this speech, http://time.com/4572395/harry-reid-speech-donald-trump-stephen-bannon/
I have given below a few extracts (slightly edited) from that speech:
Democrats have a responsibility to improve the lives of Americans. All lives. But we also have other responsibilities.
We have a responsibility to be the voice of the millions of Americans sitting at home afraid that they are not welcome anymore in Donald Trump’s America.
We have a responsibility to prevent --snip-- bullying, aggressive behavior from becoming normalized in the eyes of Americans – especially the millions of young people who are watching and wondering, for example, if sexual assault is now a laughing matter.
We have a responsibility to say that it is not normal for the KKK – the Ku Klux Klan – to celebrate the election of a president they view as their champion with a victory parade. They have one scheduled.
In other words, we have a responsibility to lead.
...
My and my wife’s Nevada physician is a Pakistani-American of Muslim faith. We think so much of him. We’ve known each other for 35 years.
The day after the election, my friend was at a restaurant in Las Vegas having dinner when a Trump supporter approached his table in a threatening manner and asked where he was from.
My friend answered, “Where are you from?” The man said, “I’m local.” My doctor friend said, “So am I.”
That same night, another friend of mine, also a Pakistani-American doctor was having dinner. A man walked up to him in the same manner and asked “Where are you from?” My friend said he was from Pakistan. The other man said, “Why don’t you go back.”
One of my staffers has a daughter in middle school. I’ve known that little girl since she was a little baby. The day after the election, the principal addressed the entire student body on the school’s PA system because of two incidents that had occurred.
In one instance, a boy yelled at a Latina student, telling her that that he was glad she was going to be deported now that Trump was president.
Then, in another instance, a boy was sent home for yelling the most derogatory, hateful term at an African-American student. The boy justified himself by saying he could use that language now that Trump was president.
In Spokane, Washington, the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center was defaced with the same hateful word.
Those are only a few examples of what people close to me have related. But these kind of disturbing accounts have been heard across America.
I have here a compilation of these incidents. I also have an article here from NBC News which is headline: “Hundreds of Hate Crimes Reported Since Election.” I ask consent to enter them both into the record.
Those references made are awful. They are hateful. They’re frightening. They’re scary.
I invite any of my colleagues to read these horrible acts. I invite any senator – Democrat or Republican – to come to the floor of the Senate and defend any one of these examples of hate and prejudice.
I don’t believe anyone in this chamber wants to defend the hateful acts that are being committed in President-Elect Trump’s name.
They lead to one unavoidable conclusion: many of our fellow Americans believe that Trump’s election validates the kind of bullying, aggressive behavior Trump modeled on a daily basis.
...
Let me read you a letter. This was written by a seventh-grade student in Rhode Island, the day after the election:
“I’m extremely scared especially being a woman of color that the president of the country that I was born and live in, is making me feel unsafe when I usually don’t feel unsafe. It (is) even scarier because this man who is now the president of the United States of America has said such rude, ignorant and disrespectful things about women and all different types of people and is now in charge of our country. I want to feel safe in my country but I no longer can feel safe with someone like Donald Trump leading this country.”
Our president is supposed to make our children feel safe. But on Wednesday, a seventh-grade girl awoke feeling frightened to be a woman of color in America because Donald Trump was president-elect.
If we ignore her voice and other voices, this seventh grader will be left to conclude that we, as a nation, find her fear acceptable. How do we show her that she does not have to be afraid?
The first step is facing reality.
No matter how hard the rest of us work, the main responsibility lies with the man who inspired the fear. President-elect Trump must act immediately to make Americans – like that seventh-grade girl – feel that they are welcome in his America.
Healing the wounds he inflicted will take more than words. Talk is cheap and Tweets are cheaper. Healing the wounds is going to take action. But so far, rather than healing these wounds, Trump’s actions have deepened them.
In his first official act, Trump appointed a man who is seen as a champion of white supremacy as the #1 strategist in his White House. Number one – everybody else is under him.
According to CNN: “white nationalist leaders are praising Donald Trump’s decision to name [Stephen Bannon] as his chief strategist.”
In the same article, white nationalist leaders say they see Bannon: “as an advocate for policies they favor.”
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Bannon: “was the main driver behind Breitbart becoming a white ethno-nationalist propaganda mill.”
When asked to comment on Bannon’s hiring, KKK leader David Duke told CNN, quote: “I think that’s excellent.”
A court filing stated that Bannon said: “that he doesn’t like Jews and that he doesn’t like the way they raise their kids to be ‘whiny brats’ and that he didn’t want [his] girls to go to school with Jews.”
By placing a champion of white supremacists a step away from the Oval Office, what message does Trump send to the young girl who woke up Wednesday afraid to be a woman of color in America?
It is not a message of healing.
If Trump is serious about seeking unity, the first thing he should do is rescind his appointment of Steve Bannon. Rescind it. Don’t do it. Think about this. Don’t do it. As long as a champion of racial division is a step away from the Oval Office, it will be impossible to take Trump’s efforts to heal the nation seriously.
So I say to Donald Trump: take responsibility. Rise to the dignity of the office – president of the United States – instead of hiding behind your Twitter account.
And show America that racism, bullying and bigotry have no place in the White House or in America.
--- end extracts from Senator Harry Reid's speech ---
Ravi: I tried to get articles repudiating this speech of Harry Reid from Mr. Trump's team. I could not get suitable results for this speech in particular from Mr. Trump's team.
But here is an article where a top aide of Mr. Trump, Ms. Kellyanne Conway, asks USA Senator Harry Reid to temper his criticism of Mr. Trump, http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/11/14/top_trump_aide_threatens_harry_reid_for_his_criticism_of_president_elect.html, Nov. 14th 2016.
The article quotes a Fox News interview where Ms. Conway says, "I find Harry Reid’s public comments and insults about Donald Trump and other Republicans to be beyond the pale".. "They're incredibly disappointing—talk about not wanting my children to listen to somebody—and he should be very careful about characterizing somebody in the legal sense. He thinks he’s just being some kind of political pundit there, but I would say be very careful about the way you characterize it."
Regarding some of the above words being construed as a legal threat, Ms. Conway clarified, "No, I’m not suggesting that at all. I’m suggesting—I’m calling for responsibility and maturity and decency for somebody who has held one of the highest positions in our government in a country of more than 300 million people."
Ms. Conway also said (in the same Fox news interview, according to the above article) of the protesters against Trump as follows:
I think that the president of the United States, Secretary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, perhaps others, can come forward and ask for calm and ask for a peaceful transition and ask their supporters—which are masquerading as protesters now, many of them professional, and paid by the way, I’m sure—ask them to give this man a chance. So that this country can flourish.
,,,
We have Harry Reid coming out and egging people on. I would put at his feet the fact that a lot of these protesters I walked right into the firestorm yesterday getting into Trump Tower, a lot of these protesters are not there peacefully, are not there just because they want to express themselves and make a point and make a difference. They’re there for nefarious reasons, they’re booing us, they’re spitting on us, they’re causing all kinds of havoc.
--- end Ms. Conway comments ---
Here's an article which mentions that Republican Representative in Congress, Steve King, defended Mr. Stephen Bannon in a television interview, https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/steve-king-defends-steve-bannon-liberal-dykes-comment, Nov. 16th 2016. Here's a video clip of the TV interview, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc_DwFsiMKE, around 1 min, 16th Nov. 2016
King said that he knows Bannon for years and that he was a dedicated patriot, "amazing historian" and said that a "lot of false accusations" were made against Bannon.
Here's an article where a reportedly famous American Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, defends Bannon in a letter to Mr. Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League, 'America's rabbi' rises to defend Steve Bannon, https://origin-nyi.thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/306035-letter-to-anti-defamation-leagues-jonathan, dated 15th Nov. 2016.
Boteach writes that while he does not know Bannon he does know Mr. Joel Pollak, who is an orthodox Jew and a senior editor at Breitbart News, which was run by Bannon for a few years, prior to him joining the Trump campaign in a senior position. Pollak was appreciative of Bannon's sensitivity towards him and other Jewish employees at Breitbart.
Boteach writes, "I don’t quite know what the alt-right is. I certainly despise white supremacists and racists. As a Jew they contradict the central teaching of the Bible: that every human being, from Jew to Arab to Christian to Muslim to atheist to LGBT to black and white and everything in between — is created in the image of God, equally and with infinite dignity. We are all brothers, we are all sisters.
To the extent that any person or any publication, contradicts these teachings, it deserves to be condemned by the ADL."
Boteach argues that viewing Bannon as guilty of anti-semitism is not fair, just on the basis of association (with some articles published on Breitbart, I guess). Bannon should be viewed on the basis of words attributed to him, instead.
Boteach ends his letter to Mr. Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL as follows: "I thank you for reading this, Jonathan. I know that you and I both agree that we have to unite this great country of ours at home and do our utmost to combat increasing hatred and anti-Semitism around the world."
In the CBS interview here, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-the-nation-transcript-november-13-2016-gingrich-sanders/, Nov. 13th 2016, former USA speaker and Trump surrogate Newt Gingrich is asked about the reported rise of the alt-right with the election of Trump. The interviewer quotes Mr. Ian Tuttle in "The National Review", "His victory in the primaries gave unprecedented visibility to the alt-right, a small but vocal fringe of white supremacists and anti-Semites and self-proclaimed fascists. Supporting a President Trump cannot mean giving a pass to the ugly fringe that has risen with him." The interviewer then asks Gingrich about it.
Gingrich responds, "I just have to say that’s garbage."
Gingrich later adds, "Donald Trump is a mainstream conservative who wants to profoundly take on the left. The left is infuriated that anybody would challenge the legitimacy of their moral superiority. And so the left goes hysterical.
But the fact is -- and you get this .. all these smears of Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon was a naval officer. He was a managing partner of Goldman Sachs. He was a Hollywood movie producer. The idea that somehow he represents -- I had never heard of the alt-right until the nut cakes started writing about it."
Please note that I have a PUBLICLY NEUTRAL informal-student-observer role in these posts that I put up about the USA presidential elections. Of course, as I am an Indian citizen living in India, there is no question of me having voted in these elections.
[As this is a matter dealing with spreading awareness about hate speech and combating it, I have presumed that USA Senator Harry Reid (and time.com) would not mind my sharing the extracts from his Senate speech in this freely viewable post. I also thank USA Senator Harry Reid (and time.com). I thank Ms. Kellyanne Conway (and Fox News and slate.com), Rabbi Shmuley Boteach (and thehill.com) and Mr. Newt Gingrich (and cbsnews.com) and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above short quotes of theirs (and extracts from associated websites) on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]
Here's a full transcript of this speech, http://time.com/4572395/harry-reid-speech-donald-trump-stephen-bannon/
I have given below a few extracts (slightly edited) from that speech:
Democrats have a responsibility to improve the lives of Americans. All lives. But we also have other responsibilities.
We have a responsibility to be the voice of the millions of Americans sitting at home afraid that they are not welcome anymore in Donald Trump’s America.
We have a responsibility to prevent --snip-- bullying, aggressive behavior from becoming normalized in the eyes of Americans – especially the millions of young people who are watching and wondering, for example, if sexual assault is now a laughing matter.
We have a responsibility to say that it is not normal for the KKK – the Ku Klux Klan – to celebrate the election of a president they view as their champion with a victory parade. They have one scheduled.
In other words, we have a responsibility to lead.
...
My and my wife’s Nevada physician is a Pakistani-American of Muslim faith. We think so much of him. We’ve known each other for 35 years.
The day after the election, my friend was at a restaurant in Las Vegas having dinner when a Trump supporter approached his table in a threatening manner and asked where he was from.
My friend answered, “Where are you from?” The man said, “I’m local.” My doctor friend said, “So am I.”
That same night, another friend of mine, also a Pakistani-American doctor was having dinner. A man walked up to him in the same manner and asked “Where are you from?” My friend said he was from Pakistan. The other man said, “Why don’t you go back.”
One of my staffers has a daughter in middle school. I’ve known that little girl since she was a little baby. The day after the election, the principal addressed the entire student body on the school’s PA system because of two incidents that had occurred.
In one instance, a boy yelled at a Latina student, telling her that that he was glad she was going to be deported now that Trump was president.
Then, in another instance, a boy was sent home for yelling the most derogatory, hateful term at an African-American student. The boy justified himself by saying he could use that language now that Trump was president.
In Spokane, Washington, the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center was defaced with the same hateful word.
Those are only a few examples of what people close to me have related. But these kind of disturbing accounts have been heard across America.
I have here a compilation of these incidents. I also have an article here from NBC News which is headline: “Hundreds of Hate Crimes Reported Since Election.” I ask consent to enter them both into the record.
Those references made are awful. They are hateful. They’re frightening. They’re scary.
I invite any of my colleagues to read these horrible acts. I invite any senator – Democrat or Republican – to come to the floor of the Senate and defend any one of these examples of hate and prejudice.
I don’t believe anyone in this chamber wants to defend the hateful acts that are being committed in President-Elect Trump’s name.
They lead to one unavoidable conclusion: many of our fellow Americans believe that Trump’s election validates the kind of bullying, aggressive behavior Trump modeled on a daily basis.
...
Let me read you a letter. This was written by a seventh-grade student in Rhode Island, the day after the election:
“I’m extremely scared especially being a woman of color that the president of the country that I was born and live in, is making me feel unsafe when I usually don’t feel unsafe. It (is) even scarier because this man who is now the president of the United States of America has said such rude, ignorant and disrespectful things about women and all different types of people and is now in charge of our country. I want to feel safe in my country but I no longer can feel safe with someone like Donald Trump leading this country.”
Our president is supposed to make our children feel safe. But on Wednesday, a seventh-grade girl awoke feeling frightened to be a woman of color in America because Donald Trump was president-elect.
If we ignore her voice and other voices, this seventh grader will be left to conclude that we, as a nation, find her fear acceptable. How do we show her that she does not have to be afraid?
The first step is facing reality.
No matter how hard the rest of us work, the main responsibility lies with the man who inspired the fear. President-elect Trump must act immediately to make Americans – like that seventh-grade girl – feel that they are welcome in his America.
Healing the wounds he inflicted will take more than words. Talk is cheap and Tweets are cheaper. Healing the wounds is going to take action. But so far, rather than healing these wounds, Trump’s actions have deepened them.
In his first official act, Trump appointed a man who is seen as a champion of white supremacy as the #1 strategist in his White House. Number one – everybody else is under him.
According to CNN: “white nationalist leaders are praising Donald Trump’s decision to name [Stephen Bannon] as his chief strategist.”
In the same article, white nationalist leaders say they see Bannon: “as an advocate for policies they favor.”
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Bannon: “was the main driver behind Breitbart becoming a white ethno-nationalist propaganda mill.”
When asked to comment on Bannon’s hiring, KKK leader David Duke told CNN, quote: “I think that’s excellent.”
A court filing stated that Bannon said: “that he doesn’t like Jews and that he doesn’t like the way they raise their kids to be ‘whiny brats’ and that he didn’t want [his] girls to go to school with Jews.”
By placing a champion of white supremacists a step away from the Oval Office, what message does Trump send to the young girl who woke up Wednesday afraid to be a woman of color in America?
It is not a message of healing.
If Trump is serious about seeking unity, the first thing he should do is rescind his appointment of Steve Bannon. Rescind it. Don’t do it. Think about this. Don’t do it. As long as a champion of racial division is a step away from the Oval Office, it will be impossible to take Trump’s efforts to heal the nation seriously.
So I say to Donald Trump: take responsibility. Rise to the dignity of the office – president of the United States – instead of hiding behind your Twitter account.
And show America that racism, bullying and bigotry have no place in the White House or in America.
--- end extracts from Senator Harry Reid's speech ---
Ravi: I tried to get articles repudiating this speech of Harry Reid from Mr. Trump's team. I could not get suitable results for this speech in particular from Mr. Trump's team.
But here is an article where a top aide of Mr. Trump, Ms. Kellyanne Conway, asks USA Senator Harry Reid to temper his criticism of Mr. Trump, http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/11/14/top_trump_aide_threatens_harry_reid_for_his_criticism_of_president_elect.html, Nov. 14th 2016.
The article quotes a Fox News interview where Ms. Conway says, "I find Harry Reid’s public comments and insults about Donald Trump and other Republicans to be beyond the pale".. "They're incredibly disappointing—talk about not wanting my children to listen to somebody—and he should be very careful about characterizing somebody in the legal sense. He thinks he’s just being some kind of political pundit there, but I would say be very careful about the way you characterize it."
Regarding some of the above words being construed as a legal threat, Ms. Conway clarified, "No, I’m not suggesting that at all. I’m suggesting—I’m calling for responsibility and maturity and decency for somebody who has held one of the highest positions in our government in a country of more than 300 million people."
Ms. Conway also said (in the same Fox news interview, according to the above article) of the protesters against Trump as follows:
I think that the president of the United States, Secretary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, perhaps others, can come forward and ask for calm and ask for a peaceful transition and ask their supporters—which are masquerading as protesters now, many of them professional, and paid by the way, I’m sure—ask them to give this man a chance. So that this country can flourish.
,,,
We have Harry Reid coming out and egging people on. I would put at his feet the fact that a lot of these protesters I walked right into the firestorm yesterday getting into Trump Tower, a lot of these protesters are not there peacefully, are not there just because they want to express themselves and make a point and make a difference. They’re there for nefarious reasons, they’re booing us, they’re spitting on us, they’re causing all kinds of havoc.
--- end Ms. Conway comments ---
Here's an article which mentions that Republican Representative in Congress, Steve King, defended Mr. Stephen Bannon in a television interview, https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/steve-king-defends-steve-bannon-liberal-dykes-comment, Nov. 16th 2016. Here's a video clip of the TV interview, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc_DwFsiMKE, around 1 min, 16th Nov. 2016
King said that he knows Bannon for years and that he was a dedicated patriot, "amazing historian" and said that a "lot of false accusations" were made against Bannon.
Here's an article where a reportedly famous American Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, defends Bannon in a letter to Mr. Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League, 'America's rabbi' rises to defend Steve Bannon, https://origin-nyi.thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/306035-letter-to-anti-defamation-leagues-jonathan, dated 15th Nov. 2016.
Boteach writes that while he does not know Bannon he does know Mr. Joel Pollak, who is an orthodox Jew and a senior editor at Breitbart News, which was run by Bannon for a few years, prior to him joining the Trump campaign in a senior position. Pollak was appreciative of Bannon's sensitivity towards him and other Jewish employees at Breitbart.
Boteach writes, "I don’t quite know what the alt-right is. I certainly despise white supremacists and racists. As a Jew they contradict the central teaching of the Bible: that every human being, from Jew to Arab to Christian to Muslim to atheist to LGBT to black and white and everything in between — is created in the image of God, equally and with infinite dignity. We are all brothers, we are all sisters.
To the extent that any person or any publication, contradicts these teachings, it deserves to be condemned by the ADL."
Boteach argues that viewing Bannon as guilty of anti-semitism is not fair, just on the basis of association (with some articles published on Breitbart, I guess). Bannon should be viewed on the basis of words attributed to him, instead.
Boteach ends his letter to Mr. Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL as follows: "I thank you for reading this, Jonathan. I know that you and I both agree that we have to unite this great country of ours at home and do our utmost to combat increasing hatred and anti-Semitism around the world."
In the CBS interview here, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-the-nation-transcript-november-13-2016-gingrich-sanders/, Nov. 13th 2016, former USA speaker and Trump surrogate Newt Gingrich is asked about the reported rise of the alt-right with the election of Trump. The interviewer quotes Mr. Ian Tuttle in "The National Review", "His victory in the primaries gave unprecedented visibility to the alt-right, a small but vocal fringe of white supremacists and anti-Semites and self-proclaimed fascists. Supporting a President Trump cannot mean giving a pass to the ugly fringe that has risen with him." The interviewer then asks Gingrich about it.
Gingrich responds, "I just have to say that’s garbage."
Gingrich later adds, "Donald Trump is a mainstream conservative who wants to profoundly take on the left. The left is infuriated that anybody would challenge the legitimacy of their moral superiority. And so the left goes hysterical.
But the fact is -- and you get this .. all these smears of Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon was a naval officer. He was a managing partner of Goldman Sachs. He was a Hollywood movie producer. The idea that somehow he represents -- I had never heard of the alt-right until the nut cakes started writing about it."
Please note that I have a PUBLICLY NEUTRAL informal-student-observer role in these posts that I put up about the USA presidential elections. Of course, as I am an Indian citizen living in India, there is no question of me having voted in these elections.
[As this is a matter dealing with spreading awareness about hate speech and combating it, I have presumed that USA Senator Harry Reid (and time.com) would not mind my sharing the extracts from his Senate speech in this freely viewable post. I also thank USA Senator Harry Reid (and time.com). I thank Ms. Kellyanne Conway (and Fox News and slate.com), Rabbi Shmuley Boteach (and thehill.com) and Mr. Newt Gingrich (and cbsnews.com) and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above short quotes of theirs (and extracts from associated websites) on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]
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