Chiraag Bains, who served for about seven years in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, told the NewsHour that there are many ways these radical ideologies can be normalized.
One of the ways is when violence occurs and the government and high-ranking officials don’t do enough to condemn those acts, said Bains, who served under former President Barack Obama.
Trump did condemn the Pittsburgh shooting as a “wicked act of mass murder.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions, too, said the killings were “reprehensible and utterly repugnant,” adding that the DOJ intended to file hate crime charges against the suspect.
Following the Pittsburgh shooting, Sessions and Trump “said the right thing,” Bains said, “but those remarks are ineffectual in the broader context of what the president has been saying and doing.”
Bains said Trump and his administration has “failed to consistently condemn bigotry.” Hate crimes, he said, are not just attacks on individuals, they’re attacks on communities.
