Thursday, July 16, 2020

What did Donald Trump do today?

He equated fair housing regulations with bringing crime to the "beautiful suburbs."

Trump held another campaign rally disguised as an official event at the White House today. He used the occasion to accuse his political opponents of wanting to "destroy" the country's suburbs:

The Democrats in D.C. have been and want to, at a much higher level, abolish our beautiful and successful suburbs by placing far-left Washington bureaucrats in charge of local zoning decisions. They are absolutely determined to eliminate single-family zoning, destroy the value of houses and communities already built, just as they have in Minneapolis and other locations that you read about today. Your home will go down in value and crime rates will rapidly rise. 
Joe Biden and his bosses from the radical left want to significantly multiply what they’re doing now. And what will be the end result is you will totally destroy the beautiful suburbs. Suburbia will be no longer as we know it. So they wanted to defund and abolish your police and law enforcement while at the same time destroying our great suburbs. 
The suburb destruction will end with us. Next week, I will be discussing the AFFH rule — AFFH rule, a disaster — and our plans to protect the suburbs from being obliterated by Washington Democrats, by people on the far left that want to see the suburbs destroyed, that don’t care. People have worked all their lives to get into a community, and now they’re going to watch it go to hell. Not going to happen, not while I’m here.

The regulation he cited is an anti-discrimination rule that requires cities to take

meaningful actions, in addition to combating discrimination, that overcome patterns of segregation and foster inclusive communities free from barriers that restrict access to opportunity based on protected characteristics
Specifically, affirmatively furthering fair housing means taking meaningful actions that, taken together, address significant disparities in housing needs and in access to opportunity, replacing segregated living patterns with truly integrated and balanced living patterns, transforming racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty into areas of opportunity, and fostering and maintaining compliance with civil rights and fair housing laws. 

In other words, Trump is saying that desegregation will cause neighborhoods to "go to hell" with rising crime rates that will "totally destroy" the "communities" that people in segregated areas wanted to be in.

Trump's own history with housing discrimination goes all the way back to his very first appearance on the public stage, when he was sued for discriminating against African-American tenants in his rental properties. (Trump's employees were ordered to tell Black applicants that there were no vacancies.)

Trump has made no secret of his belief that predominantly Black neighborhoods, Congressional districts, or countries are "crime-infested." He famously pitched himself to African-American voters in 2016 by saying, "You're living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs... What the hell do you have to lose?"

Why should I care about this?

  • Even by Trump's standards, this is pretty racist.