Last Saturday, a homemade explosive device detonated in a Mosque in Minnesota, but, thankfully, no one was badly injured. Following the blatant hate crime, the Minnesota governor condemned the attack and rightfully labeled it an “act of terrorism”. However, the apparent President of the United States has yet to condemn nor speak on the attack.
Although Trump has remained silent, the rest of the White House has not, with Trump’s deputy assistant Sebastian Gorka attempting to defend Trump’s silence by insinuating that this a fake hate crime committed by a left wing individual who is framing someone on the right, as he states, “We’ve had a series of crimes committed — alleged hate crimes — by right wing individuals, in the last six months, that turned out to actually have been propagated by the left”.
Then, when one of MSNBC’s reporters pointed out how quickly Trump responded to the recent attacks in London despite the lack of information at the time, Gorka responded by stating, “Well sometimes an attack is unequivocally clear for what it is. When somebody shouts ‘Allahu Akbar’ as they’re stabbing a police officer, it’s pretty clear it’s not a case of the Mafia robbing a bank.” Yet, isn’t it unequivocally clear that an explosive placed in an Islamic place of worship is indeed a hate crime and terrorist attack? Or does that logic not apply when the possible victims are Muslims?
Furthermore, it just seems bizarre that Trump, the man who literally blasts his opinion about everything on his twitter account and the man who criticized the Mayor of London for claiming “there is no reason to be alarmed” after terror attacks in London, is remaining mute on what the Minnesota governor believes to be a terrorist attack. And, as his silence in response to these attacks continues to empower islamophobes and ostracise American Muslims even more, he still manages to find the time to tweet about the “NYTimes” and the “Fake News Media” but doesn’t feel the need to denounce this hate crime or act of terror against Muslims.
In conclusion, Trump’s silence in response to this horrendous hate crime and attack just further proves that he is not our president. He is the president of a certain group of people but that group doesn’t include Muslims, anyone from the LGBTQ community, people of colour or women, as his presidency just makes us feel more vulnerable and susceptible to hate crimes, especially considering he’ll ignore they even occurred most of the time.
