Slate Compares Donald Trump to Racist Mass Murderer Dylann Roof

A Thursday article from Slate declared that president elect Donald Trump was “brothers in white resentment” with white supremacist Dylann Roof, who was recently convicted of murdering nine men and women in a traditionally African-American church.

“Trump wanted to ‘make America great again,’ where ‘America’ was a metonym for a traditional, industrial, and white America, set against a rising tide of racial threats, from Hispanic immigrants and black protesters, to Muslim refugees and the specter of ‘radical Islamic terrorism…’” wrote Jamelle Bouie. “Roof, in his own telling, wanted to awaken white America to the alleged threat of blacks and other nonwhites.”

“There’s no causal relationship between Trump and Roof, no tangible link between the two events. From a certain view, this means they’re unrelated,” Bouie admitted. “But that view is too narrow.”

“Roof’s depiction of black Americans as violent and dangerous is just a few steps away from Trump’s depiction of black communities as violent and dangerous hellscapes that threaten the safety of the entire nation,” he continued. “Trump did not cause Roof. But their temporal proximity reveals thematic connections between the two.”

Bouie’s stance is an interesting one, given that only a year ago he declared “Donald Trump is a moderate Republican: That’s why he’s winning.”

[Image via screengrab]

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