5 Years of Trump Campaigning Leaves America More Divided Than Ever
WA GOP Following Trump Down Golden Escalator Into Depths of Racist Rhetoric
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | June 16, 2020
SEATTLE — Five years ago today, Donald Trump announced his campaign for president and kicked off an era of bitter, divisive, and racist politics that has consumed the Republican Party at every level of government. After the GOP failed to unite in opposition to Trump and his inflammatory rhetoric in 2016, the Party has completely abandoned any shred of principles and fully embraced Trump’s racist ideology — and the American people are paying the price. Trump’s obsession with stirring up controversy in an attempt to distract from his wanton incompetence has left Americans less safe, less prosperous, and less confident in our very democracy.
Since kicking off his campaign five years ago, Trump has:
- Enacted the Muslim ban as part of a racially discriminatory immigration policy to reduce legal immigration from predominantly non-white countries
- Enacted policies to separate children fleeing violence in Central America from their parents at the border, lock them in cages, and failed to maintain adequate documentation to reunite them with their parents
- Called white supremacists “very fine people” after the Charlottesville protests surrounding the city’s decision to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee resulted in the death of an anti-racist counter-protester, Heather Heyer, at the hands of a white supremacist
- Rolled back numerous protections for LGBTQ Americans enacted by the Obama administration and promulgated new regulations attacking LGBTQ people in the workplace and serving in the military
- Denied the seriousness of the coronavirus outbreak and bungled our country’s response to the pandemic, while attempting to distract from his failures with racist rhetoric calling the virus the “Wuhan virus” and “Chinese Virus” — resulting in a spike in hate crimes against Asian-Americans and disproportionately high fatality rates among communities of color
- Approved of a lawsuit to rip health care away from millions of Americans by eliminating the ACA, and then continued supporting that lawsuit in the middle of a pandemic
- Tear-gassed peaceful protesters just to get a photo op
- Scheduled his first campaign rally since the coronavirus pandemic in Tulsa, Oklahoma in a blatantly racist and inflammatory decision to stoke division during the weekend of Juneteenth
Despite the calamitous leadership coming from the White House, the WA GOP has made it clear they are all-in for Trump and have embraced his racist rhetoric:
- Every GOP candidate for Governor pledged loyalty to the President
- Republican legislators in Olympia backed mass infection, herd immunity plans to respond to the pandemic that would result in the deaths of thousands of Washingtonians – following Trump’s anti-science rhetoric
- Washington Republicans failed to condemn Trump’s moves to suppress the guidance of CDC scientists or deny the official coronavirus death statistics
- Leading GOP candidate for Governor Tim Eyman compared the killing of Geroge Floyd to Governor Inslee’s actions to keep Washington safe from COVID-19.
- Eyman’s lawyer claimed Eyman was a victim of “lynching.”
- Eyman claimed Kitsap county asking him to change his voter pamphlet statement was a “poll tax.”
- Washington state GOP chair Caleb Heimlich has refused to condemn Eyman or his lawyer’s comments.
“It will take a generation to heal the damage Donald Trump and his racist rhetoric have done to our democracy, our reputation in the world, and countless families who have lost loved ones during this pandemic because of his rank incompetence,” said Tina Podlodowski, Chair of the Washington State Democratic Party. “But we’ve known since he kicked off his campaign that Trump was a racist; what we’ve learned in the last five years is that there is no price the WA GOP will refuse to pay to support him and his policies — no amount of death, destruction of our economy, or damage to our values will keep them from standing behind Trump.”
