April Ryan: I'm a black woman. Trump loves insulting people like me.

Source: Washington Post

April Ryan: I’m a black woman. Trump loves insulting people like me.

The type of comments he makes, over and over, leaves little doubt about what he really thinks of us.

By April Ryan
April Ryan is White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks. She is the author, most recently, of "Under Fire: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Trump White House."
November 10 at 9:00 AM

Wednesday, when PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor asked President Trump if his campaign rhetoric was “emboldening white nationalists,” the president (who has, in recent weeks, railed against “power-hungry globalists,” a distant immigrant “Caravan,” and called African American Tallahassee mayor and Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum a “stone-cold thief”) tried to turn the tables by saying: “That’s such a racist question.”

Friday, when CNN’s Abby Phillip asked Trump if he wanted newly-designated acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker to “rein in” Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Trump tried to dismiss her by saying: “What a stupid question that is. What a stupid question. But I watch you a lot, you ask a lot of stupid questions.” Wednesday at the White House, he told me to “sit down.” In Friday’s press gaggle, he called me “nasty” and a “loser,” never mind my 21 years, covering four presidents as a reporter for American Urban Radio Networks.

It’s not hard to find the common denominator: Though there’s hardly anyone — from his predecessors to senators in his own party — he won’t try to shout down with ad hominem insults, Trump relishes, and injects venom into, verbal attacks against women of color.

He leaves little doubt about what he really thinks of us.

In rally after rally, when Trump says Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) has a “low I.Q.” he’s showing contempt for the idea that a black woman, who has sworn an oath to uphold the same Constitution as he, should be able to speak her mind if she in any way challenges his authority. When he feuded with Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) over his response to the death of her constituent, LaDavid Johnson, an African American Army sergeant killed in action, he failed to live up to his role as commander in chief. When he says Stacey Abrams, a Yale Law School graduate and former Democratic leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, is “not qualified” to be her state’s governor, he’s applying a double standard. When he feuded, via Twitter, with Jemele Hill, the National Association of Black Journalists’ 2018 journalist of the year (an award I was honored with in 2017) Trump telegraphed that there’s something about being questioned by a black woman that he can’t abide. One or two of these instances might only leave you scratching your head. But we’ve reached the point where it’s an unmistakable pattern.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/11/10/im-black-woman-white-house-reporter-trump-loves-insulting-people-like-me/