Mr. Trumpanzee And Steve Israel Should Debate-- On Long Island-- Who's Been The Worst Racist

Hillary, her campaign and her surrogates, backed by the media and by prominent African Americans played the race card against Mr. Trumpanzee last week. It was an effective attack. Hillary's speech was one of the best I've ever heard her give. (Listen to it on the video above.) The NY Times went into more depth about Trumpanzee family racism going all the way back to when his father was a street-brawling KKK thug and Donald was a snot-nosed, spoiled teenager discriminating against would-be African American renters (the theme of a new, rediscovered Woody Guthrie song you can listen to here). Trumpanzee, Sr. was grooming his 17 year old heir who "would soon enroll at Fordham University in the Bronx, living at his parents’ home in Queens and spending much of his free time touring construction sites in his father’s Cadillac, driven by a black chauffeur."

Over the next decade, as Donald J. Trump assumed an increasingly prominent role in the business, the company’s practice of turning away potential black tenants was painstakingly documented by activists and organizations that viewed equal housing as the next frontier in the civil rights struggle.

The Justice Department undertook its own investigation and, in 1973, sued Trump Management for discriminating against blacks. Both Fred Trump, the company’s chairman, and Donald Trump, its president, were named as defendants. It was front-page news, and for Donald, amounted to his debut in the public eye.

“Absolutely ridiculous,” he was quoted as saying of the government’s allegations.

Looking back, Mr. Trump’s response to the lawsuit can be seen as presaging his handling of subsequent challenges, in business and in politics. Rather than quietly trying to settle-- as another New York developer had done a couple of years earlier-- he turned the lawsuit into a protracted battle, complete with angry denials, character assassination, charges that the government was trying to force him to rent to “welfare recipients” and a $100 million countersuit accusing the Justice Department of defamation.

When it was over, Mr. Trump declared victory, emphasizing that the consent decree he ultimately signed did not include an admission of guilt.

But an investigation by the New York Times-- drawing on decades-old files from the New York City Commission on Human Rights, internal Justice Department records, court documents and interviews with tenants, civil rights activists and prosecutors-- uncovered a long history of racial bias at his family’s properties, in New York and beyond.

The Times successfully lays out the case proving the Trumpanzees-- Fred and Donald-- were vicious racists and acted on that racism again and again over the course of decades, basically telling qualified black and Hispanic families that there were no vacancies in their buildings and then renting them to white families instead. Horrible and intolerable. AND, the Democratic Party hypocrites who are self-righteously denouncing Trump could look a little closer to home if they want to denounce a vile and disgusting racist.

I don't know for sure whether Pelosi knew Steve Israel is a virulent racist when she appointed him DCCC chair. I'm told the appointment was just about 3 things: Israel could raise a lot of dirty Wall Street money without any feelings of guilt; Israel's only rival for the job was Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who Pelosi detests and doesn't trust; and Pelosi knew Israel would be loyal. Why should she have suspected Israel was a racist at the time? He was one of the only Democrats in the northeast to join the largely Southern, totally racist Blue Dogs. And as a low-end political hack back on Long Island, he always catered to the same kind of bigots the Trumpanzee family was catering to with their racist housing policies.

As DCCC chair Israel didn't cotton to the idea of black politicians running in non-black majority districts. We started looking into that after Israel's and the DCCC's disastrous performance during the 2014 midterms. One unexpected loss for the Democrats came in Cliven Bundy country-- NV-04, a blue district that includes the Vegas suburbs with a PVI of D+4 and where Obama beat McCain 56-41% and beat Romney 54-44%. GOP nut-case Cresent Hardy beat freshman Steven Horsford 63,435 (48.5%) to 59,800 (45.8%). Horsford spent $1,251,106 to Hardy's $266,412. But it was a massive and unanswered $1,072,596 smear campaign by Rove's Crossroads GPS that did Horsford in. (All in the DCCC and its House Majority PAC was too busy wasting tens of millions of dollars on hopeless Blue Dogs like Barrow and Rahall to help Horsford; they only spent an inadequate $478,691 on his race.) The Crew of 42, which blogs about the Congressional Black Caucus, posted an interesting twist on how Steve Israel and the DCCC pushed Horsford into a loss.

Several sources close to the situation reveal that Rep. Horsford was asked to match a DCCC contribution of $80,000 to assist his campaign in closing weeks before November 4th. Horsford’s fellow Black Caucus members were particularly incensed by this tidbit of information because they say Horsford was asked to match while other Dems were being funded by DCCC in a big way.

As a freshman member in a swing district, many believe Horsford should have been selected for the “frontline” list as so many other freshman in challenging districts are. Now that members find Horsford was asked to match funds in late October-- the outrage has swung into a new phase.

A dozen members and staffers with decades of experience who were asked if they ever heard of a member having to match funds with DCCC in late October say they’ve never heard of such a thing happening before. That, mixed with Horsford not being included on a list of “frontline candidates” announced by DCCC Chair Steve Israel in March 2013 has members mad. The anger is connected to the fact that Horsford, the former Majority Leader or the Nevada Senate, is viewed as exactly the type of young member House Democrats should fiercely protect. Horsford’s district is majority white and his rise to Congress represents a winning moment over the new demographics that is rarely seen in the House: A Black member winning in a non-majority white district in a red state. Horsford has been seen at meetings this week and his colleague are confident they will see him again in 2017. But to be sure, he’s taking the loss way better than they are.

The "frontline" candidate list for 2014 included several freshman Democrats in swing districts including Reps. Ron Barber, Ami Bera, Elizabeth Esty, Cheri Bustos, Ann Kuster and Bill Enyart. Being part of the DCCC’s frontline effort is a way of “protecting nearly every vulnerable incumbent who was not affected by redistricting,” according to the DCCC. Those candidates were very well funded by DCCC this cycle.

...One of the more interesting late October money drops from DCCC went to Domenic Recchia, who lost to Rep. Michael Grimm 55-42%-- even though Grimm was indicted on 2o counts by federal prosecutors for fraud, obstruction and perjury in April 2014.

After two candidates declined to take Grimm on, DCCC Chair Steve Israel’s third recruiting choice was Recchia. Though he proved to be less than an inspiring candidate, DCCC spent $1,570,059 to assist his campaign. On October 16, the DCCC spent $127,000 on opposition ads on Grimm. On October 23, the DCCC spent $129,000 on another media buy to assist Recchia. House Majority PAC also dropped $1.1 million to assist Recchia on October 29.

The sanctimonious Israel defended himself in-- of course-- Politico, telling them that "I will accept full responsibility for not doing all we should have, or for doing things we shouldn’t have, [but-- finishing the sentence by rejecting any sense of responsibility whatsoever] this criticism is misplaced. We had been talking to Steve for a very long time, knowing how tough that district was. I am not going to get into private conversations, but there was a consensus with his team and our team that he should not have Frontline status." The CBC-- and chairwoman Marcia Fudge in particular, could barely contain their rage at Israel's racism. And Israel's role in letting Horsford lose the seat wasn't the first time he pulled that kind of a stunt. Two years earlier, Pelosi should have been alerted to what he was up to in regard to a House seat in Omaha. The same folks at Crew of 42 who told us about the Horsford news, went back into history and saw the DCCC doing the same thing in 2012 to an African-American candidate in Omaha, Nebraska. This cycle, the DCCC spent $1,432,187 on white Blue Dog Brad Ashford and managed to defeat GOP incumbent Lee Terry, one of only two Republican incumbents defeated this cycle. In 2012, when John Ewing ran, the DCCC spent nothing, although Pelosi's own House Majority PAC threw in an ineffective $164,736... and Ewing lost by less than 6,000 votes-- 127,119 (51%) to 121,165 (49%). It's "one of the many reasons why there is a continuing schism between the Black Caucus and the DCCC. The simple fact is that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has shown little interest in recruiting and funding Black candidates for Congress-- even at a time when African Americans are winning in congressional districts that are not even close to being majority Black (see: Reps. Waters, Rangel, Cleaver, Bass, Green, Ellison, Lee, Carson, Horsford, Hurd, Coleman, Veasey, Moore, Love…)." Steve Israel's resignation from the DCCC may help fix this problem-- but not this cycle.

As we explained earlier, Long Island's 2nd congressional district-- the South Shore, stretching from Levittown, Seaford and Massapequa in Nassau through Lindenhurst and Babylon deep into some of the bluest parts of Suffolk County like Islip, Brentwood and Ronkonkoma to the outskirts of Patchogue-- has it's best candidate in living memory against Trumpist Peter King. That candidate is DuWayne Gregory, a military vet and the well-respected presiding officer of the Suffolk County legislature. With Trump tanking in the Long Island suburbs and Hillary (and Schumer) expected to run up massive wins in Nassau and Suffolk, the Democrats have never had such a great opportunity to win NY-02. Unfortunately, in Israel's eyes, Gregory is African-American and shouldn't be running in a white district. He's persuaded the DCCC to ignore the election and just let King walk away with it again without a fight. That's Steve Israel-- and that'sNancy Pelosi and, I'm afraid, that's the Democratic Party-- denouncing Trump's racism out of one side of it's mouth, while enabling a racist pig like Steve Israel to destroy the careers of promising African-American politicians.

Despite Steve Israel and Nancy Pelosi, DuWayne Gregory can still win the seat, but he'll need some grassroots help. So... if you can, please consider contributing to his campaign by tapping on the thermometer: