Since the terrible bombings in Paris things have been heating up among the Republican Presidential candidates. It’s been months since any of them stopped vying to be the best candidate to lead our country, preferring instead to focus on who among them could be the biggest asshole. Lately, almost all of you have put forth a stellar effort, and I think that everyone whose name isn’t John Katich should get a popsicle.

Today’s prize for biggest dick-schnozzle goes, once again, to Donald Trump, who had this to say during an earlier interview with George Stephanopoulos:

There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down. I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down, as those buildings came down, and that tells you something. It was well covered at the time. There were people over in New Jersey that were watching it, a heavy Arab population, that were cheering as the buildings came down. Not good.

From the standpoint of something as unimportant and silly as “the facts,” this simply isn’t true: there were no masses of people in Jersey City cheering while the towers fell and we all know that. What is true is that this quote was Donald clarifying his previous comments on the subject. But since repeating an untruth doesn’t magically make it true (not even if you say it real angrily to show how important it is to you to sound sincere), we’re left to conclude that this statement from Trump is intentionally untrue, which some sources, such as the dictionary, call a “lie” (the same dictionary also calls those who tell lies “liars”).

But Mr. Trump is correct about one thing—some people were very happy about 9/11 (though they weren’t dancing in the streets of Jersey). Here are a couple pictures of those people:

Westboro Nuts

Westboro Kooks

Now unfortunately for Mr. Trump, these people are not members of Al Queda or ISIL or Boko Haram; they are not Syrian refugees or Arab extremists; they’re also not Mexican rapists or members of Black Lives Matter; and sadly, they’re certainly not President Obama. So who are these folks insisting that God hates America while simultaneously thanking Him for 9/11??

The people in those photos are white American Christians, members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas.

It’s important to remember that Trump has suggested all of the following to protect us from the zealous hordes of American-hating ideologues waiting to descend upon us ravenous as jackals: deportation squads for illegal immigrants, the building of a wall along our borders, national databases to track Muslims, surveillance of mosques, and a return to “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as waterboarding. With that in mind I have to wonder: What’s your plan for these guys, Donald?

The facts, which we know, categorically, are not something you would prefer to observe, are that in the 14-years since 9/11 the huge majority of domestic terror attacks have been perpetrated by non-Muslim Americans, a huge number of whom have also been white and motivated by some sort of Christian-based ideology.

(In case you’re wondering where I pulled that statement from, Mr. Trump, it’s what’s called a fact, which is a truth about the world supported by objective research, which is what scientists do when they’re not scamming the rest of us with all that “global warming” nonsense…) [1]http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/us/tally-of-attacks-in-us-challenges-perceptions-of-top-terror-threat.html

So the question, Donald, becomes this: if you’re willing to do all of the above to keep us safe from “them”—the deportation squads and the databases and the torture and whatever else you’re dreaming up—what will you do to keep us safe from them?

References

References
1 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/us/tally-of-attacks-in-us-challenges-perceptions-of-top-terror-threat.html