President Trump, still dissing the disabled

[DonViejo]

BY JIM KNIPFEL
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Wednesday, July 12, 2017, 5:00 AM

On Feb. 9, 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump tweeted, “No-one has done more for people with disabilities than me.”

Marked by the same outlandish hyperbole and wrongheaded bravado that have become the hallmark of his Twitter account, the post still left one lingering question: What if he really believes that?

It’s been nearly three decades since the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), which guaranteed the disabled the same civil rights protections under the law granted other citizens. As a blind American, perhaps I remain a bit more attuned to these things, so let me provide a quick checklist of the help Trump, his appointees and his GOP colleagues have offered the disabled over the course of the recent past.

Months before the above tweet, Trump publicly mocked Serge Kovaleski, a disabled New York Times reporter, in front of a cheering crowd of thousands at a campaign rally in Myrtle Beach, N.C.

Days after the inauguration, pages on climate change and civil rights vanished from the White House website, the latter containing information about the ADA, as well as a pledge from the previous administration to defend it.

During her Senate confirmation hearing, Trump’s choice for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, admitted she was unfamiliar with the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which prohibits discrimination against students on the basis of disability. Shortly after DeVos was confirmed, a page about the ADA likewise disappeared from her department’s website.

While still a senator, future Attorney General Jeff Sessions attacked the IDEA, claiming it was solely responsible for the decline in discipline in American schools. It remains unclear how he reached that conclusion. Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch has likewise expressed his opposition to both the IDEA and the ADA, saying lawsuits are an improper means of defending civil rights.

more
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/president-trump-dissing-disabled-article-1.3318447?cid=bitly

[Funtatlaguy]

1. Don't get it

The mocking of the reporter during the campaign might have been his worst moment.
David Letterman said so at the time.
If only more Americans would have seen that moment as his true self.

[Bleacher Creature]

4. I can only hope that most people didn't see it.

Or that they saw him mimic the NYT reporter, but didn't recognize what he was doing.

Otherwise it means that people voted for a guy after witnessing something that should have been an automatic disqualification for a candidate in prior years.

I'm sure I'm wrong, but thinking that way helps keep me sane.

[mountain grammy]

6. and he denies, denies, denies..

[Heddi]

2. Myrtle Beach is in SC

If the article can't get that much right (it's hardly a tiny backwater no one has heard of), I'm not really interested in anything else they have to say. Simple details, folks.

[MiddleClass]

7. The deplorablness exhibited in the content, gets disregarded because of a mixup between North and So

Go figure,

that's like letting a murder of death row because you misspelled John, as Jon, for his middle name in the arrest report

[Heddi]

9. If they are that careless with basic info

I have no guarantee that there will not be similar mistakes with more important information.

[OnDoutside]

3. In one sense he's right. No one has done more to make it clear the shit disabled people have to put

up with, from dickheads like Trump.

[MiddleClass]

5. Don the Con, proved that political hype beats common decency. All the time

I'm a quadriplegic, and these already attacked Medicaid, Medicare is next, and then social security.

Now I know Paul Ryan – Mike Pence team that this comes from.

Don the con, at all costs, desires a win, but at the cost of the countries most vulnerable?

That takes a special kind of mean way beyond normal conservatism

[GallopingGhost]

8. They're Nazis.

They don't like that label, but tough, it's true. They mock and dismiss the disabled just like their predecessors in Germany.

The website purges ought to be front and center news every night. Too many people don't realize history is repeating itself.