During his speech to a joint session of Congress this week, Donald Trump once again said that Islamic extremism is the greatest threat to the American public. However, statistics show that the REAL threat to American citizens is coming from right wing extremist American citizens who have murdered more people than terrorists in the last decade. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.
Transcript of the above video:
During Donald Trump’s first joint session of Congress address earlier this week, he told the crowd that people coming into the United States from other countries, mostly Muslim countries, they’re the ones responsible for more American deaths in the post 9/11 United States than any other group. Nobody, according to Donald Trump, has killed more American citizens than people of the Muslim faith coming into the United States from other countries. A statement that is demonstrably false.
According to information from a study in 2015, the majority of any kind of terror related death in the United States are actually coming from right-wing extremists born and raised right here in the United States. In terms of people from Muslim countries coming to the United States committing any kind of act of terror, 50 people have died in the United States since the 9/11 attacks. Two-hundred-fifty-four people have died since the 9/11 attacks from right-wing extremist violence and acts of terror here in the United States. Those are people born here, raised here, subscribing to a right-wing extremist ideology. They are killing five times more American citizens than anyone from any Muslim country around the world coming into the United States. What Donald Trump told that joint session of Congress, what he told the American public, was absolutely false and dangerous. By focusing on the wrong enemy, we’re allowing the real enemy to come in, commit acts of terror, and go unpunished, or unrecognized, or uninvestigated.
That’s what the right-wing wants us to do. They don’t want to focus on the fact that we have hateful right-wing Christians in this country killing American citizens based solely on ideological differences. Because that’s what it is. It’s the hardcore Christians that go and blow up an abortion clinic. It’s the hardcore right-wingers that walk into a church and kill African-Americans. It’s the hardcore right-winger that kills immigrants and tells them, “Get out of my country.” He says that as he’s shooting them. These are all things that have happened, and these are all things that are going to continue to happen until we take this issue seriously and admit to ourselves that the real terrorist, the real threat to our lives, are already right here in our borders. They’re inside this country. They’re citizens, and they’ve always been citizens. You’re pumping their heads full of hate. You, Donald Trump and Republicans, by insisting that Muslims are the enemy are putting it into the heads of these unhinged right-wingers that they need to go out and take care of this problem, and that’s what they’re trying to do.
People like David Duke, who spread hatred toward Jewish people and Black people. They’re inspiring violence against these groups of people. We’re seeing it right now with all the threats against Jewish centers. All over this country is hate, homegrown hate, normally brought by right-wing extremists. The FBI has said this, individual independent reports have said this. The only people not willing to say this are the Republicans who are telling us that we need to be afraid of Muslims, or we need to be afraid of immigrants, or we need to be afraid of dark-skinned people. Your the ones inspiring these hateful acts, and until you admit to yourselves that your followers are the real terrorists, this problem is never going to go away.
