July 20, 2019

Trump Promotes Activist Who Called for “Final Solution” for Muslims

And he praises the “patriotic crowd” that started racist chant.

Trump

Olivier Douliery/CNP via ZUMA Wire

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On Saturday morning, President Donald Trump offered yet another defense of the racist chants that broke out at his recent rally in North Carolina, by promoting a video of the event from the British political commentator Katie Hopkins:

There’s a lot that’s wrong about Trump’s tweet. The crowd was following Trump’s cues—he really did tell Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to leave the country, and he paused for 13 seconds to let the chanting build. And perhaps more importantly, a mob of people chanting for a refugee-turned-American-citizen-turned-member-of-Congress to be deported to Somalia does not really love America that much. Trump wants credit for distancing himself from the crowd at the same time he’s enveloping them in the highest praise.

But wait a second, who’s Katie Hopkins? Per Todd Schulte, the president of the immigration advocacy group FWD.US, she’s an anti-Muslim pundit who called for a “final solution” for Muslims in her country following a 2017 terrorist attack:

Per that Guardian piece, Hopkins also “wrote a column for the Sun in which she compared migrants to cockroaches and suggested Europe should use gunboats to stop them crossing the Mediterranean.” Back in 2016, after a truck drove into a crowd in Nice killing dozens, Hopkins said, “I am not Islamophobic. Islam disgusts me. This is entirely rational.”

Oh.

Amplifying Hopkins’ voice is significant because Trump’s criticism of Omar is ostensibly that he believes she’s anti-semitic (because of her criticism of the Israeli government). But it was Hopkins who blamed last year’s mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on Jewish leaders’ support for migrants.

So where does Trump even find these people? Per the BBC, “Katie Hopkins first came under the public gaze when she was a contestant on the BBC TV series The Apprentice in 2007.” Of course.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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