White America is still clutching its pearls in response to ESPN host Jemele Hill’s Twitter rant calling Donald Trump a white supremacist. The fallout from the incident has sparked a lively debate in journalistic circles: Is it appropriate for a company’s employee to spout his or her political beliefs on a personal social media account? Does a public figure’s responsibility to the employer outweigh personal values or opinions?
In all of the subsequent hullabaloo, very few people have addressed one salient point: Was Hill correct?
Hill has worked as a sports reporter for nearly 20 years. She is in the business of looking at comparative history, statistics, film breakdown and in-game performance to judge athletes. Instead of dropping another opinion piece on the Not-So-Great Pumpkin, we decided that the best way to determine whether or not Trump fit the position of “white supremacist” was to examine him through the objective lens of sports analytics.
We know Trump is already deeply entrenched in #TeamWypipo, but we decided to look at his overall career to see if he was really worthy of the No. 1 overall pick in the 2016 racial draft election by racists around the country. Is Donald Trump really a white supremacist?
Career Highlights
May 1927: Many athletes who go on to great careers come from athletic families or have parents who instill the value of hard work and practice. Donald Trump was no different. Although we do not know whether he played in the Pop Warner Nazi Youth League or participated in the young KKKub Skouts, we do know that Fred Trump, Donald Trump’s father, was once arrested at a 1927 Ku Klux Klan rally that made Charlottesville, Va., look like a church picnic.
You know what they say: “Like racist father, like racist son.”
1973: Trump Management was sued by the U.S. Justice Department for refusing to rent to minorities. Trump’s employees said under oath that they were told to rent only to “Jews and executives” and used racial coding to indicate whether prospective applicants were black. Donald Trump settled the case and agreed to stop “discriminating against any person in the terms, conditions or privileges of sale or rental of a dwelling.” The federal government renewed the case five years later when it determined he was still discriminating.
Trump would later move into a Washington, D.C., house at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. whose previous occupants were black.
1989: Trump paid $85,000 to take out ads in four New York City newspapers calling for the deaths of one Hispanic and four black teenagers accused of raping a white woman in New York’s Central Park. The Central Park Five spent between six and 13 years in prison before they were exonerated.
Trump still refuses to admit they were not guilty.
1991: In a 1991 book, author John O’Donnell quoted the General Tso’s President as saying: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys wearing yarmulkes. ... Those are the only kind of people I want counting my money. Nobody else. ... Besides that, I tell you something else. I think that’s guy’s lazy. And it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks.”
A year later, the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino was sued for pulling a black casino worker off a table at the behest of a white supremacist customer.
The hotel and casino lost the case. Twice.
2011: The Birther thing.
2015: Trump began his presidential campaign by calling Mexicans “rapists.” To be fair, some of them, he so benevolently supposed, were “good people.” He also alleged that a judge wasn’t equipped to hear how Trump University conned thousands of people because the judge was Mexican.
2017: The travel-ban thing. The rounding-up-of-immigrants thing. The refusal-to-call-out-white-supremacist-terrorism thing.
Analytics
Let’s just look at the raw numbers:
Racial lawsuits filed against Donald Trump (claiming discrimination or racial bias, including suits against the Trump administration): 10
Number of those lawsuits Trump has won: 0
List of white supremacists who have praised Donald Trump: David Duke, Chris Cantwell, Andrew Anglin (founder of the biggest white supremacist internet site), Jason Kessler (organizer of the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally, KKK leader Thomas Robb, Richard Spencer (creator of the term “alt-right”), Jeff Shoep (leader of the National Socialist movement—the largest neo-Nazi organization in the U.S.), August Invictus (leader of the white Christian Identity movement) and Tom Metzger (head of the White Aryan Resistance)
List of white supremacists Donald Trump has condemned: David Duke
List of policies enacted by Trump administration to further white supremacy: Travel-ban executive order; border-protection executive order; Presidential Voter Integrity Commission executive order; repealed federal regulations against reporting pay discrimination; law-enforcement protection executive order; reinstated mandatory minimums; repealed Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA; created commission to investigate affirmative action lawsuits; pardoned former Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio for violating constitutional rights of minorities
List of policies enacted by Trump administration to end white supremacy: 0
Known White Supremacist Affiliations
Sheriff Joe Arpaio: A federal judge found that Arpaio violated the rights of Hispanic citizens, and instructed him to stop unconstitutionally detaining people based on their ethnicity. Arpaio wouldn’t stop, so another judge found him in criminal contempt. Donald Trump pardoned him.
Steve Bannon (former chief adviser): “We’re the platform for the alt-right.”
Stephen Miller (presidential adviser): Longtime low-key white nationalist advocate who once criticized his university for allowing Maya Angelou to speak.
Jeff Sessions (attorney general): Who thought the KKK was OK until he learned they smoked pot; who told a black lawyer to “be careful how you talk to white folks”; who called a white civil rights lawyer a “traitor to his race.”
Sebastian Gorka (former foreign policy adviser): Who denies membership in the Nazi group Vitézi Rand (the group swears he is a member), even though he wore a Vitézi Rand medal to Trump’s inauguration.
Kris Kobach (Presidential Advisory Commission on Voter Integrity): Called the “most racist politician in America” and the “king of voter suppression”
Rudy Giuliani: The man who instituted stop and frisk, called Black Lives Matter “racist and anti-American,” and said of black people, “The white police officers wouldn’t be there if you weren’t killing each other.”
Our Ruling
Is Donald Trump a white supremacist? We can say he is affiliated with white supremacists. He has enacted white supremacist policies. He has excused white supremacy. He has pardoned a white supremacist for practicing white supremacy. Federal judges have found him guilty of practicing white supremacy. He comes from a white supremacist family.
If Donald Trump isn’t a white supremacist, then white supremacy does not exist. After breaking down the tape, taking him through the drills at the white supremacy combine and looking at his stats, we can say that not only is Donald Trump a white supremacist ...
He might be the GOAT.