Donald Trump went to South Carolina this weekend and said something gross again. And then he won the Republican primary!
The New York Times has a report on Trump’s comments during a rally to the effect of him praising an American general who, per unsubstantiated Internet rumor, executed a group of Muslim terrorists by shooting them with bullets dipped in pigs’ blood.
The story, which has circulated online for years, has been dismissed as unsupported by historical documentation. Mr. Trump used it to illustrate his call to push back with brutal force against both Islamic terrorism and political correctness.
“This is something you can read in the history books,” Mr. Trump told his supporters, adding, “Not a lot of history books, because they don’t like teaching it.”
According to Mr. Trump’s telling, Gen. Pershing brought an end to terrorism after he captured fifty terrorists and executed forty-nine of them with blood-soaked bullets. The general told the sole survivor, “‘You go back to your people and you tell them what happened,’” Mr. Trump said.
Gen. Pershing used pigs’ blood, Mr. Trump said, because Muslims have “a whole thing with swine and animals and pigs, and you know the story — they don’t like them.”
Well, Muslim Americans and generally decent people everywhere were horrified. Suzanne Barakat—the sister of Deah Barakat, one of the students killed in Chapel Hill a little over a year ago by a deranged neighbor—challenged Trump on Twitter:
Here’s what Barakat, a physician who lives in San Francisco, told the NYT:
Ms. Barakat, 28, said the comments and other anti-Muslim rhetoric from Mr. Trump, including a proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country, have contributed to an atmosphere of intolerance that she fears could have deadly consequences.
“It allows for the Average Joe to see Muslims the way Craig Hicks saw my brother and his wife of six weeks and her sister,” she said, referring to the man who killed her relatives last February. “As ‘The Other,’ as subhuman, because of their faith.”
Mr. Trump has not responded to Ms. Barakat’s invitation for a face-to-face meeting, she said. It was delivered on Saturday via Twitter, a platform the Republican presidential candidate has frequently used to telegraph his views and to attack people, places and things that he dislikes.
“Trump speaks as if he is the authority on American Muslims,” said Ms. Barakat. “Well, if you mean it then call me up and meet with me and let’s have a chat.”
Here is video of Trump’s comments.