The Trump administration ushered in record low unemployment among minorities and women, coupled with record high income, unprecedented growth, the return of manufacturing to the United States, along with peace in the Mideast.
But it also brought with it a string of hate crimes allegedly targeting minorities that, in the end, turned out to be hoaxes.
They were based on the assumption that Trump’s anti-illegal immigration, "America First" agenda was somehow racist and anti-minority. Apparently when that assumption turned out to be false, it was as though Trump’s detractors had to invent hate crimes.
Here’s Newsmax’s list of the top five, in chronological order.
November 13, 2016: "HEIL TRUMP": Someone had defaced the central Indiana-based St. David’s Episcopal Church with spray-painted graffiti that included homophobic slurs, swastikas, and in large block letters, "HEIL TRUMP."
George Nathaniel Stang, a 26-year-old church organist, reported the damage to Rev. Kelsey Hutto, the church’s pastor. She said at the time, "At first I was a little disheartened. Saint David’s has been very active in our community and to find that is hurtful."
The disappointment must have deepened when, six months later, the Brown County Prosecutor’s Office charged Stang, the organist who’d "reported" the crime, with institutional criminal mischief.
November 14, 2016: Trump-inspired Hate Notes: Chicago’s North Park University student Taylor Volk, who is openly bisexual, claimed that shortly after Trump’s election she began receiving a number of harassing, threatening notes and emails, some with references to then-President-elect Trump.
The first note, taped to her door, said, "Back to hell," and "#Trump" along with homophobic insults.
"This is a countrywide epidemic all of a sudden," Volk told NBC News, adding, "I just want them to stop."
The same NBC News affiliate reported eight days later that the university had determined that Volk had "fabricated" the messages and she was no longer enrolled in the school.
December 1, 2016, "Donald Trump!": Yasmin Seweid, an 18-year-old Muslim and Baruch College student, claimed three white men attacked her, called her a terrorist, and screamed "Donald Trump!" at her in a New York subway station.
She wrote about the alleged incident on Facebook, claiming, "I was harassed on the subway last night. And it was just so dehumanizing I can’t speak about it without getting emotional."
Seweid later admitted to police that "Nothing happened, and there was no victim." Authorities then arrested her for her for making false statements to the police. It turned out that she made the story up to escape punishment from her parents for missing curfew and drinking with friends.
January 18, 2019: The Nicolas Sandmann-Nathan Phillips confrontation: This hoax was promoted by Native American activist Phillips — and corporate media ran with it.
Sandmann and fellow students at Kentucky’s Covington Catholic High School were in Washington, D.C. for the March for Life. Phillips was there for the Indigenous Peoples March, and the two came together at the Lincoln Memorial.
Phillips claimed that the high schoolers — mostly white, some, like Sandmann, wearing MAGA caps, swarmed around him in a threatening manner, making him feel uneasy.
"It was getting ugly, and I was thinking: 'I’ve got to find myself an exit out of this situation and finish my song at the Lincoln Memorial,'" Phillips told The Washington Post the following day. "I started going that way, and that guy in the hat [Sandmann] stood in my way, and we were at an impasse. He just blocked my way and wouldn’t allow me to retreat."
He also claimed that the students chanted "build that wall."
It turned out, however, that Phillips confronted Sandmann — not the other way around. And had media sources engaged in even a minimum investigation, they would have discovered that fact.
Afterwards Sandmann sued The Post, CNN, and NBCUniversal.
The first two outlets settled for an undisclosed amount.
The third lawsuit is still pending.
January 29, 2019: Jussie Smollett-"MAFA Country": This one directly targeted Trump supporters, when former "Empire" actor Smollett staged a racist and homophobic attack on himself by two white Trump supporters wearing "Make America Great Again" caps.
Smollett alleged to police that the pair approached him on a Chicago street in the early morning hours, claiming that he was in the wrong part of town — he was in "MAGA country."
He alleged the pair slipped a noose around his neck and poured an unknown substance, possibly bleach, on his head as they shouted racist and homophobic insults at him.
After Chicago police officers interviewed two Nigerian brothers — one of whom worked as Smollett’s personal trainer — his story, which lacked credibility from the beginning, began really falling apart.
A grand jury subsequently charged Smollett with filing a false police report, a class 4 felony, and he was indicted in March.
The prosecutor’s office later dismissed all charges against him, an act that the Illinois Prosecutors Bar Association (IPBA) called "highly unusual" and a judge ordered that the records be sealed.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to BizPac Review and Liberty Unyielding. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter, who can often be found honing his skills at the range. Read Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.
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