OPINION: Trump is talking tough about Jussie Smollet, but where’s the smoke for the violence committed by some of his supporters?
Trump seems to have so much time and energy for the Jussie Smollett situation. Writer Dustin Seibert wonders why Trump is silent on important matters.
Anyone with a brain and a social media password expected that the right-wing racist trolls would experience Black-Greek-prospect-levels of pain over the news that all charges related to Jussie Smollett’s alleged hate-crime fabrication were dropped March 26th. Some folks are behaving as if this relatively insignificant event is a miscarriage of justice to the degree that Jesus and the National Guard need to be brought in to intervene.
But it’s different when the purported leader of the free world has to throw his two spray tan-stained cents in on the issue. That’s just what your president did when he tweeted that the FBI and Department of Justice are taking a look at why Smollett’s charges were dropped.
READ MORE: President Trump slams ‘Empire’s’ Jussie Smollett dismissal
FBI & DOJ to review the outrageous Jussie Smollett case in Chicago. It is an embarrassment to our Nation!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2019
It isn’t the first time that Donald Trump has used Twitter to come after the Empire actor.
.@JussieSmollett – what about MAGA and the tens of millions of people you insulted with your racist and dangerous comments!? #MAGA
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 21, 2019
The president of the United States directing any energy toward Smollett is like crushing a spider running through your living room while your kitchen is on fire: The veracity of Smollett’s story and the “fairness” of his dropped charges is immaterial – Trump’s concerns are so much greater by so many degrees of magnitude that he shouldn’t even have time to tweet about all the shit that actually matters.
READ MORE: Cook County prosecutor Kim Foxx defends decision to drop charges in Jussie Smollett case
Condoning Violence
It’s even more frustrating when you consider that Trump is condemning a man who potentially beat his own ass when Trump has routinely and shamelessly encouraged violence through his own bully pulpit.
He suggested in a speech that police shouldn’t worry too much about harming suspects during drug stops.
He actually condoned the physical attack of hecklers at his own campaign rallies (and clearly survived to get elected).
He shouted out a congressman for body-slamming a reporter.
Dude actually suggested that “Second-Amendment people” could strike down Hillary Clinton in a hail of bullets if she were elected and got to appoint anti-gun judges to the U.S. Supreme Court. Once again, he was still elected.
Far Right Foolery
Additionally, America has become a much friendlier, easier place in which to commit violence and hate crimes under Trump’s aegis. The Anti-Defamation League released a report early this year that found right wing extremists killed at least 50 people in 2018…the fourth-deadliest year for such attacks since 1970. This shit isn’t a coincidence: Several experts have suggested that Trump’s divisive rhetoric is to blame.
I have zero doubt that Trump is the reason why the Charlottesville, Va. racist protest in 2017 even happened. It was a purge of sorts for socially (and probably sexually) frustrated white men who were emboldened by one of their own in the White House. They were undoubtedly emboldened even further by Trump’s insistence that there were “some good people” among the racists and that “both sides” were to blame for the protest getting out of control and ultimately claiming a life.
The alleged Christchurch killer shouted Trump out in his manifesto as “a symbol of renewed white identity”; possibly the first time a mass killer named a sitting president as a positive motivation for his actions. It might be the only instance of its kind in which Trump basically had no choice but to public condemn the bad guy.
That one tweet doesn’t come close to making up for the culture of violence, racism and separatism Trump’s presidency has beget. The sheer recklessness with which he approaches Twitter makes me wish the whole damn service catches an irreparable virus before he rattles off something that will get us all killed.
What did Trump have to say about the dude who waved a gun at Black kids during an MLK Day holiday in Florida? What did he have to say about the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre last October that wasn’t about how he was treated? Flint, Mich. still doesn’t have clean water after five years, which is one of the most egregious ongoing examples of social and systemic violence against Black people in the 21st century.
While he’s bitching about Jamal Lyons, find me one f—ing Trump statement substantively addressing any of that. I’ll wait.
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Dustin J. Seibert is a native Detroiter living in Chicago. Miraculously, people have paid him to be aggressively light-skinned via a computer keyboard for nearly two decades. He loves his own mama slightly more than he loves music and exercises every day only so his French fry intake doesn’t catch up to him. Find him at his own site, wafflecolored.com.
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