Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler reacts after being tear gassed by Trump Storm Troopers on July 22.
Somehow Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler got hold of my bile duct and squeezed out all my personal feelings about Donald Trump like it was a very unfunny whoopee cushion.
After Saturday night’s Trump-encouraged unrest in Portland, Mayor Wheeler went on a righteous rant today — and he successfully diagnosed the disease currently afflicting us. Surprise! It’s Donald Trump and his followers!
But first, here’s The New York Times’ take on what went down in Portland last night:
A man affiliated with a right-wing group was shot and killed on Saturday as a large group of supporters of President Trump traveled in a caravan through downtown Portland, Ore., which has seen nightly protests for three consecutive months.
The pro-Trump rally drew hundreds of trucks full of supporters into the city. At times, Trump supporters and counterprotesters clashed on the streets, with people shooting paintball guns from the beds of pickup trucks and protesters throwing objects back at them.
And now Wheeler:
WHEELER: “President Trump, for four years we’ve had to live with you and your racist attacks on Black people. We learned early about your sexist attitudes towards women. We’ve had to endure clips of you mocking a disabled man. We’ve had to listen to your anti-democratic attacks on journalists. We’ve read your tweets slamming private citizens to the point of receiving death threats, and we’ve listened to your attacks on immigrants. We’ve listened to you label Mexicans ‘rapists.’ We’ve heard you say that John McCain wasn’t a hero because he was a prisoner of war. And now you’re attacking Democratic mayors and the very institutions of democracy that have served this nation well since its founding. Do you seriously wonder, Mr. President, why this is the first time in decades that America has seen this level of violence? It’s you who have created the hate and the division. It’s you who have not found a way to say the names of Black people killed by police officers even as people in law enforcement have, and it’s you who claimed that white supremacists are good people. Your campaign of fear is as anti-democratic as anything you’ve done to create hate and vitriol in our beautiful country. You’ve tried to divide us more than any other figure in modern history, and now you want me to stop the violence that you helped create. What America needs is for you to be stopped so we can come back together as one America while recognizing that we must demand that all people, Black, brown, white, every color from every political persuasion, pull together and hold all people accountable in stopping racism and violence.”
Yup, that about sums up Donald Trump’s life. Will this rant change him?
No, of course not. But it’s cathartic, and I needed that.
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