Trump's attacks on Somali refugees shows he is a "racist"
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Media Matters
- Posted On 19-10-2019, 11:32AM
President Donald Trump’s racist attacks on Somali refugees during a campaign rally garnered scant television news coverage, indicating that the president’s racism has become normalized.
According to a Media Matters review, Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC spent around seven minutes covering the attacks, while broadcast news ignored the story entirely.
During an October 10 campaign rally held in Minneapolis, Minnesota -- home to the largest Somali population in the U.S. -- Trump attacked the local Somali community, telling the crowd, “For many years, leaders in Washington brought large numbers of refugees to your state from Somalia without considering the impact on schools and communities and taxpayers.” Trump supporters jeered in response.
The crowd then broke out into applause and cheers when Trump bragged that as president he has “reduced refugee resettlement by 85%” and taken executive action to allow cities to refuse to accept refugees. In effect, Trump was saying that Somali refugees in Minnesota should be treated as unwelcome in their own communities.
As HuffPost’s Ryan Reilly noted on Twitter, Trump’s attacks come as three of his supporters are in prison for plotting to bomb an apartment complex where many Somali refugees live:
During the rally, Trump also attacked Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who is a refugee from Somalia, calling her an “America-hating socialist” and a “disgrace.”
Between October 10, the day of the rally, and October 16, the three major broadcast news channels, ABC, NBC, and CBS, completely ignored Trump’s attacks. There was no discussion of the attacks during the nightly news broadcasts or during Sunday political talk shows on October 13.
On cable news, there was scant coverage. In total, the attacks were covered for around seven minutes between October 10 and 16, with all of the coverage occurring the first two days. On CNN and MSNBC, the coverage of the attacks was roundly negative. On Fox, the attacks were mentioned twice as pushback against praise of Trump’s rally performance.
