Top Trump staffers have been posting some incredibly racist, anti-Mexican things online
A recent BuzzFeed report suggested that Donald Trump was seeking new ways to curry favor with Latinos. He could use a boost. A July Pew poll found that Latino voters favor Hillary Clinton over Trump by a whopping 66% to 24%. Maybe that’s because Trump has previously called Mexican immigrants drug dealers, criminals and rapists, and insulted a judge’s Mexican heritage. It’s no wonder that even Latina Republicans are calling him racist.
So…it’s probably not great that his staffers are sharing racist memes of Mexicans on social media. But, according to a new report in the Associated Press, that’s exactly what’s happening.
The wire service looked at the social media accounts of 50 current and former Trump campaign employees and found a cornucopia of badness.
For instance, Craig Bachler, Trump’s statewide director of coalitions shared this offensive meme showing an overweight Mexican man wearing a sombrero that made fun of his English.
The AP found other extremely bad posts from many different corners of the Trump campaign. One graphic designer for Trump’s advance team posted video of a black man eating fried chicken and criticizing fellow blacks for ignorance, irresponsibility and having too many children. A state field director shared a post June 30 calling Islam “a barbaric cult.” And one suggested Edible Arrangements was funneling money to Hamas. (That is an old, false rumor that has been thoroughly debunked.)
This is hardly Trump’s first time having to deal with staffers who stray into deeply racist territory. Last August, the campaign fired a staffer for allegedly writing racially charged and disparaging posts dating back to 2007. One called civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton’s daughter the n-word, and another called President Barack Obama a “Socialist Marxist Islamo Fascist Nazi Appeaser,” CNN reported.
Bachler and the Trump campaign did not respond to emailed requests for comment.
Rob covers business, economics and the environment for Fusion. He previously worked at Business Insider. He grew up in Chicago.