Trump’s lack of humanity means he sees opportunities to attack minorities where most people’s hearts would bleed for the families’ loss, says Mirror columnist Darren Lewis
I WAS proud to work for the Daily Mirror last week. I was proud of our front page splash calling out President Donald Trump.
I was proud as we stood alone, shining a light on his appalling rhetoric, using the heartbreaking plane crash over the Potomac River in Washington DC to attack programmes designed to help more women and people of different races into the aviation industry.
I was proud as we stood alone in not just condemning the comments, but saying it with passion when other media outlets tiptoed around yet another example of the inherent danger facing our society.
It concerned me most that, in some high-profile quarters, Trump’s language was being treated as legitimate political discourse. Some TV channels and radio stations had reporters and correspondents trying to ‘both sides it’.
We’d never seek to understand the opposing view on issues of domestic violence or sexualimpropriety. Why do we do it around people’s right to exist and progress within their jobs?
For the record, 67 people were killed in that Washington collision, including three pilots in a helicopter. One of them was female. Imagine how devastated her family and friends must have been at Trump’s crass comments with her body not even cold.
Her identity was initially withheld after the crash. Presumably because of the fear that her memory might have been desecrated by those buying into Trump’s rants.
But eventually, Captain Rebecca M Lobach, 28, was eventually confirmed as one of the three soldiers on board the military chopper which collided with an American Airlines jet.
Her family described her in a statement as “a warrior [who] would not hesitate to defend her country in battle”.
The trouble is, Trump’s lack of humanity means he sees a political agenda where you and I see people. He sees opportunities to attack minorities where your heart and mine would bleed, grieving for the families’ loss.
Any demographic other than white men is anathema to him. There to be shot at, demeaned, degraded, grabbed in the private area.
Last week in a memo sent to the Defence Intelligence Agency, Trump ended all events designed to celebrate Black History Month.
Also no observations of Martin Luther King Day, Juneteenth, National Hispanic Heritage Month, Women’s Equality Day, National Disability Awareness month and more. All groups designed to promote women’s empowerment have been disbanded within the Federal government.
But it was another Republican president, Ronald Reagan, who officially created Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a federal holiday in 1983.
In 1976, President Gerald Ford was the first to urge all Americans to celebrate the contributions of their Black fellow citizens to the nation’s culture. Trump wants to rip that all up.
And here in the UK, it is the kind of thing the Tory government had been moving towards before they were deposed last year.
We had a snapshot of their positioning when Home Secretary Priti Patel and then-PM Boris Johnson defended the right of people to boo the taking of the knee in pursuit of racial justice during the European Championship football tournament.
The attempts to round people up, regardless of their immigration status, and fly them out to Rwanda has thankfully been shot to pieces by this Labour government.
But both the Tories and Reform UK would go down exactly the same route as Trump and his acolytes attempting to burn America to the ground, if they get the chance.
While the Daily Mirror has a voice, it will be used in this country. Because our readers actually do want harmony. Don’t you?
