Eddie Glaude Jr. Argues El Paso Shooting is Tied to Trump Trying to Keep America ‘A White Nation’

During a Monday morning appearance on MSNBC, Princeton professor Eddie Glaude Jr. accused President Donald Trump of viewing America as a white country and seeking to keep it that way in light of Saturday’s mass shooting in El Paso, Texas.

“Donald Trump … didn’t pull the trigger, but he embraces along with, a whole bunch of others, he embraces a view of America that some scholars will call inherent vote democracy,” the MSNBC guest said after calling out the “carnage” and “evil” in Texas, which resulted in 20 deaths after a gunman opened fire in a crowded shopping center. “[Trump] thinks that this is, in fact, a white nation. He’s worried about the demographic shifts … He’s appealing to the darker side of the country to put forward this view that this country must be and must remain a white nation.”

The suspect in the El Paso shooting published a racist manifesto prior to the attack that outlined his anti-immigrant views. The manifesto notes that the shooter’s motivation was to curb “the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

Glaude Jr. went on to argue that whenever movements arise to defend white supremacy arise in America, they happen “in a moment when the country is experiencing profound shifts.”

“At each historical pivotal moment when we are about to change, there is an escalation of violence and an escalation of defense in the way we expect our world to be,” he continued. “Instead of us trying to ebb it, we are allowing it to flow. We have to be honest and tell ourselves the truth. Our history suggests we are not very good in these moments.”

Earlier in the segment, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said Trump’s violent or racist rhetoric “will lead to violence” and added that the motivations behind El Paso shooting are “connected directly to the hate speech of Donald Trump.”

Watch above, via MSNBC.