Comedy Central host Trevor Noah said that while he doesn’t directly blame President Donald Trump for the mass shooting in New Zealand, he thinks that the shooter and Trump are “inspired by the same things,” namely “white supremacy.”
“One of the things that got me about this whole thing was people trying to blame Trump for it,” Trevor Noah said about the mass shooting last week in mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
“And I know this is controversial, but I don’t blame Trump. I think in many ways, Trump is similar to climate change, in that I don’t think you can pin any one storm directly on climate change, but you’ve got to admit that climate change has an effect on increasing the probability of these storms, and I feel like Trump is the same thing, I don’t think he’s the cause of any of these things but he does in some way raise the temperature enough that we’ll see more of these things happening.”
“What I have started realizing, and it’s a scary thought, is that, I disagree with people who say Donald Trump inspired the shooter in New Zealand.”
“For me, I feel like Donald Trump is inspired by the same things as the shooter in New Zealand — they’re products of the same white supremacy. They believe the same things. You know, Donald Trump, and these people run around always saying, ‘Oh he’s not a white supremacist.’ Yeah, but all white supremacists think he’s a white supremacist,” Noah said.
Following the massacre, President Trump expressed his “warmest sympathy and best wishes… to the people of New Zealand after the horrible massacre in the Mosques.”
Just spoke with Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, regarding the horrific events that have taken place over the past 24 hours. I informed the Prime Minister….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2019
The Daily Show host also said that white men in America are being radicalized in the same way ISIS fighters are.
He’s a product of that, and that’s scary, because you know, when you think that he’s the figurehead. It makes it almost easy to just go, ‘If you just get rid of him, then the problem is gone,’ but I honestly believe that Donald Trump is a product of white supremacy. He’s a product of that fear that has been instilled in many white men in America, and in and around the world, who have been led to believe that they’re constantly under assault, and that they’re being replaced, and their place in this world is at risk. You know–believe they’re being replaced, by black people, Mexican people, Jewish people, whoever they’re being told but they–it is a, it is like a, it’s a weird fear, it’s a weird feeling that they have they believe they’re losing, even though they’re winning.
And it’s hard for many of them to see because they are winning. But like, in America, people would always argue ‘Yeah, but you look at how jobs have declined,’ but look at this guy–he’s in one of the best countries in the world to live in, so what is his argument? Genuinely, what is his argument? You start to realize that it isn’t only economic anxiety–there’s a larger narrative that’s being spread online to a lot of white men, in a very similar style that ISIS spreads its message and that is that, ‘Hey, this is your true destiny this is what’s happening to you you should be afraid and this is how you can fight back,’ And I think Donald Trump is as inspired by that message as the shooter was.
Noah frequently uses his platform to attack the president and his supporters. After Trump won the 2016 election, he appeared on CBS This Morning to accuse Trump voters of being motivated by sexism and racism.
“I acknowledge a white working class that is something we can talk about, but we cannot deny that many of Donald Trump’s supporters were earning large amounts of money and doing great for themselves, but there are people who put two things above everything else—and that is whiteness and that is also sex and misogyny,” he said.
The 35-year-old has also compared Trump to cancer.
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