By now you’ve likely heard that on Tuesday, a gunman killed eight people, six of whom were of Asian descent, at several Atlanta-area massage parlors. Less than a day after the murders, authorities have already suggested that the violence was not based on racial hatred and that instead, Robert Aaron Long allegedly gunned down his victims because (1) he was having a “really bad day” and (2) he suffers from some kind of “sexual addiction,” as though one can’t be a racist and a misogynist at the same time. (To say nothing of the fact that many people have had bad days but usually take out their feelings on, say, a king-size Hershey bar, rather than kill more than half a dozen people.)
The police have made these assumptions based on what Long has apparently told them, which is weirdly trusting given that, at this point, he’s a confessed murderer and people who are racist tend not to say things like, “You got me! I’m a big ole racist, through and through.” Of course, it’s extremely difficult, nay, nearly impossible to believe that race didn’t play a part here. Also not very believable: that the surge in hate crimes against Asian Americans isn’t connected to the racist rhetoric from the Trump administration over the last year, as the ex-president’s defenders would have people believe.
Apparently not buying it? The Biden White House. At Wednesday’s daily briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked why the president “thinks attacks on Asian Americans are increasing in this country.” Noting that Biden had refrained from making an assumption about the motivation in the Georgia killings “because there’s an ongoing FBI investigation,” Psaki added: “There’s no question that some of the damaging rhetoric that we saw during the prior administration—calling COVID ‘the Wuhan virus’ or other things—led to perceptions of the Asian American community that are inaccurate, unfair, have elevated threats against Asian Americans. And we’re seeing that around the country. That’s why even before the horrific events of last night he felt it was important to raise this issue, elevate it, during his first prime-time address, why he signed the executive order earlier in this presidency and he will continue to look for ways to elevate and talk about this issue moving forward.”
As a reminder, Donald Trump spent the entire last year of his presidency routinely using racist phrases to describe the coronavirus, calling it the “kung flu” and the “China virus,” the latter of which he used in a statement demanding credit for the COVID-19 vaccine, and again last night during an interview on Fox News:
And Trump wasn‘t the only member of the administration to trot out bigoted language when talking about the virus he allowed to gain a foothold in the United States. On numerous occasions, then secretary of state Mike Pompeo, i.e. the guy who was allegedly the country’s top diplomat, referred to the disease as the “Wuhan virus.” In June, senior adviser Kellyanne Conway insisted that it was not only acceptable for the president to use such terms but necessary, saying, “The president has made very clear he wants everybody to understand…that the virus originated in China.” Then press secretary Kayleigh McEnany similarly told reporters that Trump was simply “putting the onus back on China” and “linking [the virus] to its place of origin.” Meanwhile, in April, the administration hired Michael Caputo as the spokesperson for the Health and Human Services department, despite having tweeted in March 2020 that “millions of Chinese suck the blood out of rabid bats as an appetizer and eat the ass out of anteaters”; asking one user “Don’t you have a bat to eat”; and retweeting MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, who’d noted that the U.S. was doing the worst job of any country on earth handling the crisis, and writing, “Who knew @chrishayes is Chinese?” (Asked about these comments, Caputo told CNN’s KFILE, “I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me at all.”)
Over the course of the same period in which the then president of the United States was proudly using deeply racist terms to describe the virus he did little to nothing to stop, discrimination against Asians in the U.S. surged. Between March of 2020 and March of 2021, almost 3,800 instances of violence and harassment were reported. So yeah, it’s not that hard to link Donald Trump to the problem, or to see that race unquestionably played a role in the Georgia shootings, despite what the accused killer has claimed.
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Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz among Republicans voting not to honor Capitol Police for January 6 bravery
It’s almost like they like being dubbed the worst people in America.
Explaining his opposition to the bill—which will award Congressional Gold Medals to law enforcement agencies that protected the Capitol; praises Capitol Officer Eugene Goodman, who diverted rioters away from the Senate chamber; mourns the loss of Capitol Officer Brian Sicknick, who died of injuries sustained while attempting to fend off the mob, as well as Capitol Police officer Howard Liebengood and Metropolitan Police Department officer Jeffrey Smith, who both died by suicide following the attack—Representative Louie Gohmert took issue with the description of the attack as an “armed insurrection,” saying: “Because we found out, no one that came in the Capitol was armed.” In fact, many of the people who stormed the Capitol were armed, making Gohmert not just a shitty person but a liar, as well.
Major Biden’s approval rating unaffected by alleged “biting incident”
Which, according to the president, was more of an aggressive lick:
Elsewhere!