Donald Trump is the ‘most racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted president in history,’ says Bernie Sanders
Sanders was outspoken in his criticism of Trump (Ethan Miller/Getty)
Bernie Sanders has called Donald Trump “the most racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted president in history.”
The independent Vermont senator, who lost the Democratic nomination for president to Hillary Clinton in 2016, made the comments to supporters at a campaign event for Maryland gubernatorial candidate Ben Jealous on Tuesday (October 30), a week before the November 6 midterms.
Sanders said that after visiting nine states, “I can tell you that there are candidates and supporters working hour after hour to make sure that we end one-party control of the United States government.”
“They are working to make certain that the agenda of the most racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted president in history will go nowhere because Democrats will control the House and the Senate,” added the 77-year-old, who is expected to be re-elected in Vermont next week.
Sanders’ condemnation was a world away from his remarks a month after Trump’s victory in 2016, when he said he didn’t believe that “most or many” Trump supporters were “sexists or racists or homophobes.”
He said instead that people were “tired of status quo politics” and that the newly elected president “broke through that.”
Sanders is expected to be re-elected next week (Lisa Lake/Getty)
Trump sparked outrage last week with his response to the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, in which 11 people were killed, when he told reporters: “If there was an armed guard inside the temple, they would have been able to stop him.”
It was revealed earlier this week that a transgender suicide hotline received four times as many calls after it was revealed that the Trump administration is considering a proposal to legally erase trans people.
Trump has confirmed that his administration is “looking into” a new trans policy (ALEX EDELMAN/AFP/Getty)
Trans Lifeline, which is the only organisation of its kind to hire exclusively trans operators, said on Instagram that it had also handled twice as many first-time callers as normal.
The leaked Department of Health and Human Services’ memo published in The New York Times on October 21 proposed defining a person’s sex as unchangeably male or female from birth, barring official recognition of trans people.
Activists protested the proposal outside the White House (Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
Trump later confirmed that the White House was “looking at” imposing a new transgender policy.
The leaked memo led trans activists to hold “We Will Not Be Erased” protests outside the White House and in New York and Washington State, among other locations, and around 1,500 parents of trans children to write an open letter to “bullies” Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
They said that the proposal was “the latest cruel attempt in a long line of attacks to diminish the existence and humanity of our children and to dismantle their basic human and civil rights.”
