Ocasio-Cortez accuses Trump of looking ‘other way’ on white supremacism

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) accused President Trump of signaling that he will “look the other way” on white supremacism, pointing to his remarks reacting to the killing of 50 people at two mosques in New Zealand last week.

The freshman lawmaker referenced Trump’s remarks last Friday, the day of the shooting, when Trump was asked if he thought white nationalism as a growing threat around the world.

{mosads}“I don’t really, I think it’s a small group of that have very serious problems,” Trump said. I guess, if you look at what happened in New Zealand, perhaps that’s the case I don’t know enough about it yet. We’re just learning about the person and the people involved. But it’s certainly a terrible thing.”

Ocasio-Cortez retweeted a tweet from the Southern Poverty Law Center that highlighted the question and the first part of Trump’s response to the question: “I don’t really.”

“What the President is saying here: ‘if you engage in violent acts of white supremacy, I will look the other way,’” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in her tweet. “Understand that this is deliberate. This is why we can’t afford to sit on the sidelines.”

White supremacists committed the largest # of extremist killings in 2017.

What the President is saying here: “if you engage in violent acts of white supremacy, I will look the other way.”

Understand that this is deliberate. This is why we can’t afford to sit on the sidelines. https://t.co/yUwUXzhBoE

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 18, 2019

Democrats have been raising alarm bells about the threat from white supremacism, which they have linked to Trump.

Democrats, joined by many Republicans, were particularly critical of Trump’s response to a march by neo-Nazis and other affirmed white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. After a woman was killed when a man attending the march drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one, Trump said there were good people on both sides of the fights in Charlottesville.

The Southern Poverty Law Center in the tweeted retweeted by Ocasio-Cortez pointed to a rise in white supremacist hate groups between 2017 and 2018.

On Monday, the House Judiciary Committee confirmed it will hold hearings on the threat of white nationalist violence in the wake of the killings in New Zealand.

The committee, chaired by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), intends to question officials with the Department of Homeland Security and FBI on current agency efforts to address the issue.

Separately, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) at a CNN town hall on Monday night said white supremacists “pose a threat to the United States like any other terrorist group.”