What we say is important no matter where we say it. Though once you say it live or on the internet it will be there forever. With the election coming up, there are a lot of quotes about one of our candidates that are highly controversial. Trump specifically has made some claims that have caused immense backlash in the past. 

One quote said during the first Presidential Debate of 2020 on September 29 was, “Stand back and stand by”.  This quote by Trump was referencing white supremacists and right-wing militias who he called “Proud boys”.  When asked to condemn white supremacists that is specifically what he said on live.  Now you might wonder, why a President who is essentially the symbol of our nation would not be able to condemn white supremacists. The reason would be how our President is widely supported by them. Trump has been known to have a racist past and for him to not be able to condemn white supremacists in front of thousands of people proves it.  An explanation why he said that would make sense but instead of explaining why, Trump decided to talk about Antifa and the “radical left”.  

First of all, Trump has deemed Antifa as a terrorist organization.  Antifa stands for anti-fascism and is known as being a left-winged movement that strongly opposes fascists, right-winged groups and authoritarians. They primarily protest and are made up activists who have the same political views since there are no officials who run the movement. The confusing part about this is that Trump has not called the KKK a terrorist organization yet but deemed Antifa as one. This does not add up since the KKK which stands for the Klu Klux Khan is a white supremacist group that has been responsible for various hate crimes against people of color.  Though it does make sense why Trump could not condemn white supremacists before.  He obviously has a soft spot for them which is why he has said “Stand back and stand by”.  Trump knows they support him and will vote for him so if he condemned them, he could lose their precious votes.  

This election is serious, this is valid reasoning that demonstrates our President’s stance on white supremacists.  This is not who should represent us.  A president should at the very least be able to condemn white supremacists because it should not even be up for debate in the first place.  We are in 2020 and these specific situations are ridiculous. White supremacy is already a major issue and for our own President to not care is disgusting.