Donald Trump is denying he mocked a reporter with a disability in a South Carolina speech, despite appearing to imitate mannerisms of the “poor guy” and make fun of him.
A statement posted on his Twitter account Thursday said Trump doesn’t know the reporter personally or what he looks like and was only mocking his journalism. The New York Times reporter, Serge Kovaleski, “should stop using his disability to grandstand,” the statement quoted Trump as saying.
Kovaleski has a congenital condition that affects joint movement. In a speech Tuesday in South Carolina, Trump said, “Poor guy, you oughta see this guy,” and gestured in a jerky fashion as if imitating Kovaleski’s movements.
Trump was challenging recollections by Kovaleski and many others about the 9/11 aftermath. Trump has made unsubstantiated claims that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey were seen celebrating the attacks.
In 2001, Kovaleski, then with The Washington Post, and another Post journalist wrote a week after the 9/11 attacks about authorities in New Jersey detaining and questioning “a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks.” The story did not suggest “thousands” were celebrating, as Trump claimed, and a story then by The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey, said the reports of such celebrations by Muslims proved unfounded.
Even so, Trump has pointed to the Post story as backing up his claim and took issue with Kovaleski’s recent statement that he did not remember anyone alleging that large numbers of Muslims were celebrating.
“Written by a nice reporter,” Trump said in the speech. “Now the poor guy, you oughta see this guy — uh, I don’t know what I said, uh, I don’t remember. He’s going like, I don’t remember.” His voice took a mocking tone, too.
The Times expressed outrage afterward that Trump would “ridicule the appearance of one of our reporters.”
Jay Ruderman of the Ruderman Family Foundation in Boston said Thursday the Republican presidential contender should apologize to Kovaleski and the public.
Ruderman said Trump would benefit from a “series of sensitivity training sessions” and offered to provide them.
“It is unacceptable for a child to mock another child’s disability on the playground, never mind a presidential candidate mocking someone’s disability as part of a national political discourse,” he said.
(AP)
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5 Responses
Don’t stick up for Trump! This guy is stirring up hatred throughout the country. No wonder the white supremacist movement is saying they have finally found someone who supports interests close to their heart. (David Duke, for example, said that other than the fact that Trump has so many connections with the Jews, he has finally found his man.)
His supporters are mostly white trash who don’t realize how unintelligent, boorish, egomaniacal, morally reprehensible, and vile he is. He wants to make the country “great” through kicking out immigrants (we all know he hates all immigrants, i.e., Latinos – not just illegals); he supports beating up black protesters at his events; he tweeted wildly false and inflammatory statistics about blacks killing whites – taken from a neo-Nazi site; he thinks it’s a good idea to make government databases of all Muslims (should they also be required to wear a star on their clothes?). He has mocked the disabled. His mouth sounds like a sewer. He lies constantly. He thinks the country needs to follow in his image. (Never mind that no one has a clue what he actually believes about any of the issues – he has not told us, even if he was capable of understanding them.)
There are starting to be creeping similarities between this guy and his crowd and 1920’s Germany. In the past week many are commenting on it. The anger stemming from his supporters and at his events is scary. It reminds me of what Jews or blacks must have felt like during the lynch era in the South. If he would be elected and the economy would turn bad I wonder who the Trumpists would blame it on and turn against?
Frum Jews: Don’t be taken in by this guy! Don’t help create a United States of Trump! As much as I detest the “all conservatives are anti-Semites and racists” mindset (I am a conservative and voted republican my whole life) this guy truly scares me. He is electrifying a mindset in this country that was mostly buried and should remain so.
Agree with Yosef. I wouldn’t necessarily go as far as to make comparisons with Nazi Germany, but I cannot imagine that this guy is good news for the Jews. With so much extremism in this country, we really need a moderate. Rubio, Bush, and Kasich are all respectable people who talk like real leaders and have normal and good ideas and good track records. Trump and Carson have absolutely no experience in politics, do not act or talk like leaders, and say extremist things. I don’t understand how they’re leading in the polls.
I had planned on voting in the presidential election by absentee ballot from Eretz Yisroel. However, if Donald Trump is nominated by the Republican Party, I will have some very serious qualms about voting and am thinking of sitting it out. Like #1, I am a frum Jew and politically conservative. But a Trump nomination will confirm liberal propaganda about conservatives being all about hatred and bigotry. I won’t vote for the Democrats because they play to the hate and bigotry they’ve created on the left. The job of the Republican party is to offer a positive, truly pro-American alternative to leftist hatreds. It is not to answer those hatreds with hatred and bigotry of our own. Donald Trump is not a decent human being, much less somebody who should be a viable candidate for president!
Thanks Mr Trump!
Don’t let the lamestream media get away with anything.
“Don’t let the lamestream media get away with anything.”
Is that another cheap shot at a reporter with a disability? Disgusting.