Donald Trump on Monday blamed President Barack Obama for heightened tensions between police and black communities in the U.S., repeatedly claiming “there’s something going on.”
In an interview on “Fox and Friends” addressing the fatal shootings of three police officers in Baton Rouge on Sunday, Trump even suggested that Obama was using his body language to implicitly signal support for Black Lives Matter protesters over police.
“I watched the president and sometimes the words are okay,” Trump said, a day after Obama condemned the “cowardly and reprehensible” attacks on law enforcement. “But you just look at the body language and there’s something going on. Look, there’s something going on.”
“What does that mean, there’s something going on?” host Brian Kilmeade asked.
“There’s just a bad feeling, a lot of bad feeling about him. I see it too. There’s a lot of bad feeling about him,” Trump replied.
Trump repeated the phrase “there’s something going on” five times during the interview, referring at different moments to the Baton Rouge shooter’s unconfirmed links to the Nation of Islam, Obama’s sympathy towards Black Lives Matter and the racial profiling endured by black Americans.
As Kilmeade pointed out, both Trump’s runner-up pick for vice president, Newt Gingrich, and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who is black, have spoken out about the unfair treatment minorities face at the hands of law enforcement.
“Is there something on the other side that needs to be addressed too?” Kilmeade asked.
“It’s probably something that we really don’t know and maybe we can’t feel it unless we’re black. It is a—it’s definitely something going on there also. That has to do with training and it has to do with something. But there is something going on that maybe, Brian, we can’t recognize or we can’t see it unless you’re black and it’s an experience. There’s no question about that.”
Kilmeade asked how Trump could address issues unique to black Americans as a white man.
“Well, you have to see and you have to put yourself in their position and you have to see what’s going on,” Trump said before launching into a defense of the police.
“Really, they’re under attack and now they’re under attack in the true sense of the word,” he said. “We have to bring law and order back to this country, whether we like it or not. We have to bring law and order back to this country. No games.”
“something going on”
This guy’s an idiot. He says nothing so many different ways. I am angry at myself for reading his comments.
That’s slimier than Joe McCarthy, which is saying something.
Roy Cohn taught Trump well.
I have renamed the mute button on my remote the Trump button.
I have this compelling urge to take a shower every time I hear him speak.
Yes, there’s most certainly a bad feeling – and something most certainly is going on: Donald J. Trump, the tax-evading, swindling, narcissist, rapist is repeating himself … over and over and over. Learn that from Mr. Cohn, did we? Repeat something long enough and loud enough … and it becomes “believed as reality.”
what i going on is that this fellow is brilliant at the intellectually vacant statement that corresponds to what the average, undereducated white American “feels.” The critical thinking skills of the average American are negligible. Trump is reaping the benefit of that limitation. AND, he milks it. This is classic BS, but it is BS that is directed at one thing only: “let’s take our country back from these people who do not look like us.”