This Saturday’s episode will be told in four parts…
Our first guest will be Gregory A. Fournier, author of Terror in Ypsilanti, the new book on EMU student turned serial killer John Norman Collins. Collins, for those of you who weren’t around in the late ’60s, is thought to have murdered seven young women in and around Ypsilanti, beginning the evening of July 9, 1967, when 19-year-old Eastern Michigan University accounting student Mary Terese Fleszar was last seen alive by friends, and continuing until 18-year-old EMU student Karen Sue Beineman was murdered by Collins July 23, 1969. Collins, who came to be known in the press as the Michigan Murderer, was sentenced to life in prison in 1970 for the murder of Beineman, and is currently serving his sentence in the Marquette Branch Prison. Reached for a comment about Fournier’s book by the Detroit News, Collins said, “I haven’t been cooperative with Greg in the past and I believe that upset him. I may be wrong, but, I do not see how someone can write a book about anyone with only HERESAY & SPECULATION and wants to call it nonfiction.” I’m sure, among other things, Fournier and I will be discussing that review, as well as what it was like living in Ypsilanti at the time. [Fournier, as I understand it, not only lived near Collins, but claims to have once had an unpleasant run-in with him.] So, if you’d like to find out more about this particular chapter in Ypsilanti’s history, which you won’t see mentioned at the local historical museum, be sure to tune in at 5:00.
[Above, by way of Wikipedia: “Police diagram released to the news media June 10, 1969, depicting the locations of the first five victims linked to the Michigan Murderer.“]
Here, to give you some idea for what we might be in for, is a relatively recent interview with Moss explaining Limited Fork Theory – the theory which has, in recent years, guided her work.
And, in our third segment, we’ll be welcoming D’Real Graham back into the studio. Graham, a co-founder of Radical Washtenaw – a collective of artists and activists in Washtenaw County – will be talking with us about his write-in campaign for the office of County Prosecutor against incumbent Brian Mackie, who has come under fire over the last year for his handling of the Aura Rosser case. Among other things, I imagine Graham and I will discuss his four-point plan for what he would do as County Prosecutor, which reads as follows.
Once elected, D’Real R. Graham will:
1) take the lead in implementing a completely revisioned first-responder protocol
2) steer everyone accused of a non-violent offense into appropriate rehabilitative programs or transformational spaces, rather than jail
3) deconstruct and reimagine—from the ground up, with community direction and concensus—the mission and responsibilities of the Prosecutor’s office
4) prosecute all forms of police misconduct, and require all investigations into police misconduct to be handled by investigators who are in no way associated with or representative of any law enforcement system
And, lastly, we’ll wrap up the show with Erin Anderson-Ruddon and Jen Mumford, the curators of this year’s big Zine Show, which kicks off while we’re on the air at Ypsi’s 22 North Gallery. We’ll be picking up our conversation about zines where we left off last year, and then heading over to the exhibit together after the show… And we expect to see you there too.
FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE NEVER TUNED IN TO THE SIX PACK BEFORE, HERE ARE THE DETAILS ON HOW TO LISTEN:
Unless you live inside the AM 1700 studio, chances are you won’t be able to pick the show up on your radio. As that’s the case, I’d recommend streaming the show online, which you can do either on the AM1700 website or by way of TuneIn.com.
Oh, and if you’d like to tell your friends and neighbors about this, our 50th anniversary broadcast, feel free to share the Facebook event listing.
And, here, thanks to AM 1700 senior graphic designer Kate de Fuccio, is this week’s poster, in case any of you want to print copies and leave them at one of the highway rest areas that you frequent.
And do call us if you have a chance. We love phone calls. So please copy down this number and slide it into your sock – 734.217.8624 – and call us between 6:00 and 8:00 this Saturday evening. The show, as you know if you listen, gets exponentially better with each phone call.
Last night, our friends at the League of Women Voters of the Ann Arbor Area hosted a televised event featuring the eight individuals running for the three open seats on the Ann Arbor School Board. While I’ve been unable to watch the archived Community Television Network stream, a friend just directed me toward the Annarbivore site, where Monet Tiedemann live-blogged as each of the eight candidates responded in turn to questions posed by moderator, John Chamberlin. Well, as it turns out, a few of the questions pertained to Ypsilanti. One had to do with so-called “school of choice” initiatives, which, locally, have resulted in several hundred Ypsilanti students leaving our district for Ann Arbor’s. Another had to do with the possibility of a merger between the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti districts. As both of these issues have been discussed at length here in the past, I thought that I’d share a few short clips taken from Tiedemann’s notes.
Here is the first Ypsilanti-related question which was posed to the eight candidates, who were introduced and questioned in groups of four.
“AAPS recruits and accepts students from outside the district through its Schools of Choice program. While this generates revenue for AAPS, it draws students from neighboring districts, including Ypsilanti Community Schools (YCS), and thus undermines the quality and sustainability of that district. What will you do as a member of the board to ensure that AAPS is not actively increasing inequity and segregation in our county?”
The first group of four to respond includes Jeremy Glick, Simone Lightfoot (an incumbent), Jeff Gaynor, and Rebecca Lazarus.
The second group of four to respond includes Harmony Mitchell, Deb Mexicotte (an incumbent), Don Wilkerson, Hunter Van Valkenburg.
[For our most recent conversation on how Ann Arbor’s school of choice program is impacting Ypsilanti, click here.]
Interestingly, it appears as though the second Ypsilanti related question was only posed to the first group of four… Here’s the question, followed by their responses, as recorded by Tiedemann.
“A recent analysis of the growing problem associated with the lack of affordable housing and inequity called for school district consolidation as one avenue for rebalancing equity across the county’s urban core, and adding to the long-term sustainability of the region. What is your position on AAPS merging with or annexing neighboring school districts, including YCS, as was considered with Whitmore Lake Schools.”
[For our most recent conversations on the possibility of a merger between our two districts, click here and here.]
Having not watched the forum myself, I’m hesitant to jump in and start making comments one way or the other based on the secondhand notes I’ve just shared. I am, however, encouraged to know that these things are starting to be talked about in a more substantive way in Ann Arbor. Hopefully something good comes of it. God knows, our kids deserve better.
When my friend David Blair, the much loved Detroit poet, passed away unexpectedly about five years ago, I said here on the site that I thought it was likely, given the kind of man that David was, and the poetry that he’d produced during his lifetime, that we’d continue to be reminded of him through the lives and work of others. Well, I saw evidence of that very ting this afternoon, as I was making my way through Liberty Square Park, checking out the pavilions in this year’s Pop-X festival. There, in front of me, completely unexpected, was a pavilion inspired by my old high school friend… Here, for those of you who were lucky enough to know him, are a few photos that I snapped. If you’d like to check it out in person, the exhibition will be up until October 1.
“Five years ago…” There are unique milestones for every Detroiter to find their own way to track the changes of the city around them. 2011 was significant for myself and many others in the art, music, and poetry scenes marked by the unexpected death of David Blair, commonly known as Blair, who passed only at the age of 43. “Five years ago…” Philip Levine was named the United States Poet Laureate at age 83. These two poets were known for their extensive writing about their experiences working on factory floors in Detroit. Levine worked in factories until he was 25, when he moved away from Detroit, about the same age Blair was when he arrived in Detroit and worked manufacturing jobs while writing and performing his music and poetry.
I am asking friends and colleagues who have recently moved to Detroit to transcribe the two poems “Detroit (While I was Away)” by Blair and Philip Levine’s “What Work Is” in their own handwriting. The physical act of re-writing the poems is a process of taking the words of the poet and moving them through ones own mind and body. Resaying the words as if they were your own, if only temporarily, embodies the poet’s language within the scribe. These transcriptions will be collaged together and scaled up and transferred onto the exterior of the pavilion.
The visitors to POP-X are invited to transcribe the poems within their own handwriting, sign the transcriptions, and pin them to the interior walls of the pavilion.
One last thing. Here’s video of David performing the poem “Detroit (While I Was Away).”
[If you do go to POP-X, be sure to also check out the pavilion inspired by Marie Tharp, the Ypsilanti-born oceanographic cartographer credited with first mapping the ocean floor, put together by the folks at Fly Children’s Art Center. And, after that, check out the pavilions designed by my friends Lisa Waud, and Donald Harrison and Martin Thoburn, which are also really cool… And, if you’d like more information about POP-X, and you don’t feel like going to their site, or visiting in person, you can check out the interview I did with festival director Omari Rush last year on The Saturday Six Pack.]
OK, I’ve decided to open a bottle of whiskey and watch tonight’s presidential debate between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and reality television personality Donald Trump. And I’m going to try, to the best of my ability, to blog throughout. If you’d like to join me in the conversation, feel free to post comments to this thread… Here, if, like me, you don’t have access to a working television, is a link to the live Youtube stream.
Before we get to the debate, though, I wanted to share one thought with you…
Regardless of what happens on the stage tonight, or on election day this November, this is not going to be over. This isn’t just about Trump. This is about what comes next. Even if Trump is defeated, you can be sure there will be another to take his place, and that’s the truly troubling thing. Now that we’ve started down the slippery slope from Sarah Palin to Donal Trump, I think we should all be concerned about what comes next. It’s hard to imagine that something worse is looming, but I don’t see much reason to be optimistic. With the temperatures rising and the demographic makeup of America shifting, I don’t see how we can avoid it. Simply put, fearful people with short attention spans do not make good decisions. And I’m not sure we can escape that reality, no matter how hard we try. We have to try, though. And, if we win this fight, and defeat Trump, we can’t let up. We don’t just need to vote the right president into office, we need to actively support her as we work together to invest in public education and start rebuilding a world where the very suggestion of a candidate like Donald Trump would be met with ridicule and scorn. We can’t just say, “we really dodged a bullet that time” and go on with our lives after this. We need to fight. We need to educate. And we need to support politicians that will put us back on the right track, investing at home, getting the corporate money out of politics, and ensuring that everyone, no matter who their parents are, has the opportunity to reach their fullest potential. That’s the only way, over the long term, that we can stop this from happening again, and again, and again.
As for our chances of winning this presidential race, according to Nate Silver and the folks FiveTHirtyEight.com, the race is pretty much even. As of right now, based on their analysis of credible polling data gathered in each state, Hillary Clinton has a 54.1% chance of winning the election, but Trump is gaining fast.
8:30 If you haven’t seen it yet, the Clinton campaign issued a statement a few days ago, in the wake of Matt Laurer’s disastrous town hall meeting, urging future debate moderators to actually do their jobs and call Trump on it when he lies. [Follow that link for 19 pages of lies told by Trump over the course of the last few months.] Also, it’s just been announced that Bloomberg TV will be fact checking the debate in real time. Personally, I don’t know how much good it will do, as Trump’s supporters already know that he lies, and don’t seem to care, but I suppose it’s possible that he could lie so egregiously about something that it’ll make a difference to someone.
8:40 For those of you looking for a window into the mind of a typical Trump supporter, one of our anonymous, local commenters on this site, a fellow who calls himself EOS, had the following to say about the debate earlier today.
…It will be interesting to see if Hillary can stand for 90 minutes tonight without having any coughing fits or neurological spasms. There won’t be any neurologists standing by her side. She will probably dose up to avoid medical symptoms and could possibly end up with slurred speech and muddled thinking. She is not charismatic and if she tries to impress us with details of obscure policies she will lose the audience. Meanwhile, Trump will get in some good jabs about her emails. He will be entertaining. He could be a gentleman and offer her a seat for the long debate. Maybe even ask her to reveal the pseudonym Obama used and find out if there are any details about her time at the State department that she can still remember. Tonight could very well be the end of her run.
The first time I read through it, I was focusing on the conspiracy theories, the nonsense about Clinton’s neurological issues and her email server. The more I look at it, though, the more I’m struck by this line. “He will be entertaining.” Clinton, he says, will likely bore us “obscure policies,” but Trump will win because he’s entertaining. And that’s really what it all comes down to, isn’t it? Trump just needs to be entertaining to “win” the debate. And that fucking terrifies me. It’s not about facts or policy positions. It’s about our insatiable need to be entertained.
8:51 I’ve decided to donate $1 to the Hillary Clinton campaign for ever minute that she doesn’t have a “neurological spasm.” (Thanks, EOS, for firing me up and getting me to open my checkbook.) If you’d like to join me, you can donate here. [Speaking of hidden health concerns, I wonder if the blogosphere will blow up tomorrow with theories about how Trump is dying, given the insane amount of sniffling we saw from him tonight. My favorite line about the sniffling came later from Stephen Colbert, who said that it looked as though “(Trump) was fighting off a cold… with cocaine.”]
9:02 Tom Brokaw says 100 million people are watching… Debate is starting… Here we go.
9:10 Trump is the first to mention Michigan, stating that Ford is moving jobs abroad. “They think they’re going to get away with this, and they fire all their employees in the United States, and move to Mexico,” he said of the automotive manufacturer. Trump says he’ll fix things by dropping corporate taxes by half. [Shortly after the debate, Ford put out a statement saying that Trump was lying when he said that it was their intention to eliminated jobs in the United States. No jobs would be lost, the company said, as a result of their operations in Mexico.]
9:12 Clinton gets first catch phrase, referring to economic policies as “Trumped Up Trickle Down.” She says that Trump is selling the same failed trickle down economic policies of the past. She then works in the fact that Trump got his start in business with $14 million from his father. Trump describes it was a “small” loan from his father.
9:15 Trump says he’ll tell companies taking jobs abroad that they can do it, but they’ll pay big taxes on the products that they import into the United States.
9:16 Our recession was because we took “our eyes off of Wall Street” and stopped investing in our middle class, Clinton says. Clinton quotes Trump from 2006, when he said that he wanted a collapse, so that he could buy up more property. “That’s called business, by the way,” Trump responds. Clinton reminds him that thousands of Americans lost their jobs during the recession.
9:19 Climate change. Hillary says Trump thinks it’s a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. He says that’s not true. [Trump later, however, does say that he doesn’t believe global warning is a threat. And, by the end of the debate, people would be sharing the following quote from Trump on social media, saying exactly what Clinton had said that he’d said.]
Trump mentions Michigan and Ohio again, which makes me think that we might actually be important. [I believe he’s also coming back to Michigan at the end of the week.]
Trump says to Clinton that she’s been at this for 30 years, and still hasn’t fixed the economy and created jobs. She responds and says that people did pretty well under her husband in the ’90s.
9:21 NAFTA, Trump says, is the worst trade deal ever. Clinton responds, “That’s your opinion.” [I suspect this will hurt her. As she said it, I could see it playing in my head as a Trump ad.]
9:23 Discussing trade deals, Clinton says, “I know you live in your own reality, Donald.”
9:23 “Secretary, you have no plan,” Trump says. Clinton tells him to buy her book, in which all of her plans are outlined.
9:25 Trump says Clinton will raise taxes. Clinton says it’s not true. She says she only wants to raise taxes on the very wealthy, who are benefiting the most from the American economy. She encourages people to go to her site, as her people will be fact-checking Trump in real time.
9:26 Trump attacks Clinton for giving away her plans to fight ISIS on her website. “At least I have a plan,” Clinton says. Trump responds by saying, “You’ve been fighting ISIS (unsuccessfully) for your entire adult life.” [ISIS was formed in about 2006, I believe.]
9:29 Clinton says that, by the end of the night, she’ll be blamed for everything. Trump responds, “Why not?”
9:30 Trickle down economics did not work, says Clinton. Cutting taxes on the wealthy did not work. Top down doesn’t work, says Clinton. We need to invest in the middle class. [The man who got his start in business with a “modest” $14 million loan from his father disagrees.]
9:32 “We are in a big, fat ugly bubble,” Trump says of the economy, which he warns will tank if Clinton is elected. [Clinton, if she were smart, would repeat this phrase and say that he’s living in “a big, fat, ugly bubble.” She doesn’t.]
9:33 Trump says he’d like to release his tax records but he can’t… Lester Holt, the moderator, says he’s able to release his taxes now according to IRS rules… Trump deflects… “I will release my tax records when she releases her 30,000 emails,” he finally says. This line gets a lot of applause from Trump supporters. Clinton asks, “Why won’t he release his tax returns?” She then goes on to speculate as to what he may be hiding. Maybe he’s not as rich as he says he is, she says. Maybe he’s not as charitable as he says he is. Maybe he owes millions to foreign banks. Or, she says, maybe he doesn’t pay any income tax at all. “That makes me smart,” Trump says. “There’s something he’s hiding,” Clinton concludes. Then she mentions that there could be conflicts of interest related to the foreigners he’s in debt to… Here’s the video.
9:37 Trump goes at Clinton over her use of a private email server as Secretary of State, saying it’s “disgraceful.” Then, referring to his debt, he says he’s “under leveraged.” Sure, he says, he owes a lot, but it’s not much considering what his assets are worth.
9:40 Trump: “We’ve become a third world country.” We should invest here, not in the Middle East. We could have fixed everything in America twice over for what we spent there, he says. “Maybe it’s because you haven’t paid any income tax,” Clinton says. [This, I think, was one of Clinton’s best retorts of the evening.] He says that, if he had, it just would have been squandered too.
9:41 Clinton talks of all the workers Trump has stiffed over the years. She says an architect that Trump refused to pay is in the audience. “Maybe he didn’t do a good job,” Trump says. “I’m relieved my father never did work for you,” Clinton says of her father who was in the drapery business.
9:42 Trump explains his several bankruptcies by saying that he was just taking advantage of the laws of the nation. If you don’t like it, he says, change the laws.
9:44 Lester Holt raises the issue of race… I wonder if Trump will mention that he now has both Ormarosa and Don King on his team.
9:45 Clinton talks of “gun epidemic” that kills more young black men than the next nine causes of death combined… Trump says Clinton won’t talk about “law and order.” He mentions the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police… Lester Hold says “stop and frisk” was proven unconstitutional. Trump says that wasn’t the case. Lester says it was racial profiling. Trump disagrees. He says we need more “stop and frisk” in Chicago, and elsewhere… “We need law and order in the inner cities,” Trump says. Clinton says it’s terrible that Trump keeps talking about how awful black communities are. She says “stop and frisk” was not only found unconstitutional, but also didn’t work. Property crime, she says, is down by 40% over the past several years. Clinton then goes on to say that you’re more likely to be arrested, charged and convicted if you’re a man of color. We need to fix that, she adds. We need to divert people, get rid of mandatory minimums, get rid of private prisons, she says. And, she says, we need common sense gun laws to cut down military type weapons. We also need to keep terrorists from buying guns. (Trump, breaking with the NRA on this one point, says he agrees that people on the terrorist watch list shouldn’t be able to buy guns.)
9:55 Clinton talks about “implicit bias” training. She says federal government should help pay for it.
9:56 Trump brings up the fact that Clinton once used the term “super predator” to describe young black men. He says that he thinks that Clinton would agree with him on “stop and frisk” if she was being honest. Trump says the African American community has been used and abused by Democrats to get votes.
9:59 Trump makes a comment about the time Clinton just took away from the campaign trail. She responds by saying that she was preparing for the debate. “I took time,” she said. “I prepared to be President. And that’s a good thing.” Clinton gets applause. [As the evening wore on, it became more and more obvious that Trump had was not sufficiently prepared. Some conservative commentators are now condemning Clinton for “over preparing.”]
10:02 What made you change your mind and say a few days ago and state that you’re now of the opinion that Obama was born in the United States, Holt asked Trump. Trump says that we should move on and focus on defeating ISIS and having a strong border. Holt stays on him, asking why he kept suggesting that Obama wasn’t born in America until recently, when the his birth certificate was made public five years ago, in 2011. What changed your mind now, Holt asked again. “No one was caring much about it,” Trump said. He took credit for getting the birth certificate out… He should have produced his birth certificate earlier… Clinton says Trump knew we’d be talking about this. He wants to put it to bed. His political career was built on this lie, with no evidence… Donald was sued in 1973 by the Justice Department for not renting to African Americans. “He has a long record of engaging in racist behavior.” Trump says that she was disrespectful to Obama during their campaign eight years ago. He explains his the lawsuit from ’73. Says there was no admission of guilt in that case. I settled that lawsuit with no admission of guilt.” Trump ends the segment with a bizarre statement about how he recently opened a new business where there was no racism.
10:07 Clinton brings up Russia in response to a question about cyber attacks. She references Trump’s admiration for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. They’re testing us, she says, and they need to know that we’ll fight back. And, she adds, when Trump encourages foreign government to hack us, as he did not too long ago, it’s serious business. And that’s why, she says, 50 Republican national security officials recently signed a letter stating that Trump would be a dangerous president. Trump responds that 200 generals support him, and he’d rather have them. Trump then goes on to say that we learned from the DNC hack just how badly the Democratic Party had “taken advantage of” Bernie Sanders. He then added that, “Obama has lost control of the internet.” ISIS and others are beating us at our own game, Trump says.
10:10 Trump says that Obama and Clinton created a vacuum in Iraq when they pulled our troops out, giving rise to ISIS. We should have left 10,000 or more troops behind, he said. And, he adds, “We should have taken the oil,” as that’s what funds their activities. Clinton responds by saying that Trump supported the war in Iraq. She also said that our troops left the country according to the terms set by George Bush, prior to the Obama administration.
10:14 A discussion on how to stop homegrown terrorist attacks turns to NATO and our allies. Trump has insulted these people, Clinton says. And we need their cooperation. They have information that we need. He’s alienating them, she says, with his take of potentially disbanding NATO. Trump questions how effective NATO has been, saying that we’ve been working with these same people for years without any success. Trump then says that he’s “all for Nato,” but we need to figure out a different structure. We cannot afford to pay over 70%, he says, and the organization needs to focus more on things that matter to us, like ISIS and terrorism.
10:20 “I did not support the war in Iraq,” Trump repeats. Yes, he says, he did an interview with Howard Stern where he said he wasn’t sure. The rest of this, he says, is fiction being peddled by the Clinton campaign. He says that, if we really want the truth, reporters should talk with Fox News personality Sean Hannity, who can confirm that he was against the war in Iraq from the very beginning. I hadn’t expected to hear anyone say, If you don’t believe me, call Sean Hannity, but that’s pretty much what happened. We are living in surreal times. [Politifact, by the way, says Trump is lying when he says he didn’t support the invasion of Iraq.]
10:23 Trump says, “I have better judgment and temperament than she does.” He goes on to say, “I have a winning temperament.” Clinton responds by saying that he’s never had to negotiate a deal with the Russians and the Chinese, and resolve international disputes without firing a shot. She then mentions something that Trump said a month or so ago, after an incident where Iranian attack boats began circling an American destroyer in the Persian Gulf. Tump told the press at that, if he were president, the Iranian ship would have been “blown out of the water.” That kind of temperament, Clinton says, could be extremely dangerous. And, she adds, this “cavalier attitude” of his extends to nuclear weapons. We’re trying to decrease proliferation, she says, and Trump is on the campaign trail saying that he wouldn’t rule out using nuclear weapons, or try to stop other nations from acquiring them. “A man who can be provoked by a tweet should not be near the nuclear codes,” Clinton says. Trump says that’s an old line. Clinton responds by saying that it’s still appropriate.
10:27 Back to NATO, Trump says we can’t afford to defend Japan while, at the same time, they’re making so much money from us as a trade partner. “They might need to do it themselves,” he says. Later he adds, “We cannot be the policemen of the world.”
10:28 When asked if he’d ever use nukes first, Trump says, “I certainly would not do a first strike.” But, he then adds, “I can’t take anything off the table,” totally contradicting what he’d said just previously.
10:29 Clinton says that world leaders who she knows are concerned about what Trump would do in office. “Words matter when you run for president,” says Clinton, “and they really matter when you are president.” She then explains to all of our allies who are listening that, if elected, she will honor our obligations. “Our word is good,” she says. She then adds that she would govern with “strength in accordance with our values,” if elected President.
10:31 Trump goes back to saying that Clinton is wrong to announce her plan for taking on ISIS. This, he implies, is why he’s not coming forward with any plans on how to combat terrorism. “It’s a secret plan,” Clinton says.
10:33 Trump says that Clinton had years and years to fix these problems that face us and didn’t do it. This, he says, is why he should be elected president… because, in her thirty plus years of public service, she did not deliver lasting world peace.
10:34 Lester Holt asked Trump what he meant a few weeks ago when he said of his opponent, “She doesn’t have a presidential look.” Trump says he meant that she didn’t have the “stamina” for the job. Clinton responds by saying that she knows a thing or two about stamina, having traveled to 112 countries, negotiated cease fires, brokered trade deals, etc. Talk to me about stamina, she says to Trump, a full day of congressional questioning. It’s noted by both Holt and Clinton that he’s not answering the question as to what he meant by his female opponent not having a “presidential look.” Here’s the full exchange.
10:35 Trump agrees that she has experience. “But it’s bad experience,” he adds. And, he says, “We can’t affording anther four years of that kind of experience.”
10:36 The subject of sexism comes up again, and the fact that Trump has called women pigs, dogs and slobs. Clinton mentions that, during a Miss Universe pageant several years ago, Trump referred to a Latina participant as “Miss Housekeeping” because of her nationality. He also, she says, called her “Miss Piggy” because of her weight. Clinton mentions her by name, says she’s now an American citizen, and tells Trump that she’ll be voting. [Former Miss Universe Alicia Machado just became an american citizen last week so that she could vote against Trump.]
10:38 Trump says that the ads Clinton is running against him aren’t “nice.” He says he doesn’t deserve that. He also says that, if he’d wanted to, he could say very bad things about her and her family. [After the debate, appearing on Fox News, Trump says he could have mentioned her husband’s infidelities.]
Speaking the day after the debate, Vice President Biden had the following to say in response to Trump’s comment about how he was “smart” for not paying taxes.
I’ve yet to see a high-res version of either, but, according to what I’re read, the flyer on the left is making the case to white women that they should not date black men. The other flyer, according to the Detroit News, “tells ‘Euro-Americans’ to stop ‘apologizing,’ ‘living in fear,’ and ‘denying (their) heritage.'” Across the bottom of this flier are the words “Alt Right,” and “Be White.”
One wonders if this would be happening right now if Trump weren’t the Republican candidate?
Had Trump, through his words and actions, not given his racist supporters the permission they needed to step out from the shadows, would we be seeing these kinds of things happening across America right now? Had Trump disavowed the support of David Duke and and any number of other white supremacists early in this campaign, is it likely that we’d be taking about this tonight, just as the first presidential debate is about to air? What are the chances that, without candidate Trump talking about Mexican rapists, black inner city crime zones, and the like, we would have seen the evolution of the Alt Right into an entity that people aren’t ashamed to be a part of? I know that people are fearful and frustrated, but, if the Republican candidate had been Jeb Bush, would we have seen this movement grow like it has? Without Trump, would we be seeing Nazi flags being sold in the open at our state fairs and black girls being shoved at political rallies? My guess is, no.
