Donald Trump Responds to Reports of Discriminatory Violence: ‘Stop It’
Donald Trump responded to post-election reports of racist, xenophobic and homophobic violence and harassment in a 60 Minutes interview Sunday. “I would say, ‘Don’t do it. That’s terrible,'” he told Lesley Stahl in his first televised sit-down as president-elect. “Because I’m going to bring this country together … I am so saddened to hear that, and I say, ‘Stop it.’ If it helps, I will say this, and I’ll say it directly into the camera: ‘Stop it.”
After Trump secured the presidency on Tuesday, social media exploded with traumatic, horrifying stories from women, people of color, Muslims and members of the LGBT community, many of which centered on people shouting or writing variants of “Trump.”
Genius Senior Editor Insanul Ahmed collected a series of such tweets, videos and Facebook screenshots in a disturbing Twitter Moment titled “Day 1 in Trump’s America.” The incidents ranged from a Muslim woman having a “knife pulled on her by a Trump supporter while on the bus” to white students chanting “cotton picker” and “heil Hitler.”
“After the election, I kept seeing more and more stories about racist incidents on social media but realized they were getting lost in the shuffle of post-election reaction,” Ahmed told Rolling Stone. “I also wanted to highlight that these are not isolated incidents in red states – they’re happening all over the country. People want to think racists are only uneducated, old white men living in the South. They’re not. They are your neighbors.”
After the election, protesters across the U.S. organized rallies denouncing Trump’s victory, filling the streets of Manhattan, Chicago, Hollywood, Philadelphia and more. The president-elect told 60 Minutes he thinks some of these outraged Americans are “professional protestors” – and that some simply “just don’t know [him].”
“I would tell them, ‘Don’t be afraid,'” he said. “I’m saying it. I’ve been saying it: Don’t be afraid.”