Rising Out of Hatred

by

Eli Saslow

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Rising Out of Hatred makes teaching easy.

Donald Trump Character Analysis

Donald Trump is the 45th president of the United States. A businessman and media personality, Trump rises to fame in politics by repeating the white nationalist lie that Barack Obama isn’t American. He amasses a substantial following on the far right, and following Mitt Romney’s loss in the 2012 election, he laments that white people are the minority, which Rising Out of Hatred suggests is a way of trying to spark anger and fear within the movement. In 2015, Trump announces his candidacy for president. While Derek isn’t sure whether Trump actually believes what he espouses, the books suggests that he gains popularity by using racist rhetoric and railing against immigrants. He wins the Republican primary and goes on to win the election, and according to the book, this establishes white nationalism as mainstream rather than a fringe ideology.

Donald Trump Quotes in Rising Out of Hatred

The Rising Out of Hatred quotes below are all either spoken by Donald Trump or refer to Donald Trump. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Ostracism vs. Open Dialogue Theme Icon
).
Chapter 12 Quotes

What Trump said during those next months was that he wanted to ban Muslims from entering the United States. He said he was the “law and order candidate” in the age of Black Lives Matter. He said he was qualified to be president in large part because of his “beautiful, terrific genes—a wonderful inheritance.” He said his primary goal was to erase the legacy of Barack Obama, the country’s first black president, who Trump continued to insinuate was a foreign-born Muslim. He said America’s inner cities were overrun by “gangs and thugs,” and “right now, if you walk down the street, you get shot”—and then to prove that point he re-tweeted a crime statistic suggesting that 81 percent of white murder victims were killed by blacks. A few days later, after criminologists told Trump that his number was wildly off base—that in fact it was only 14 percent—Trump said, “What? Am I gonna check every statistic?”

Related Characters: Donald Trump (speaker), Barack Obama
Page Number: 250
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

The wave of violence and vile language that has risen since the election is only one immediate piece of evidence that this campaign’s reckless assertion of white identity comes at a huge cost. More and more people are being forced to recognize now what I learned early: Our country is susceptible to some of our worst instincts when the message is packaged correctly.

No checks and balances can redeem what we’ve unleashed. The reality is that half of the voters chose white supremacy...

It’s now our job to argue constantly that what voters did in elevating this man to the White House constitutes the greatest assault on our own people in a generation, and to offer another option…

Those of us on the other side need to be clear that Mr. Trump’s callous disregard for people outside his demographic is intolerable, and will be destructive to the entire nation.

Related Characters: Derek Black (speaker), Donald Trump
Related Symbols: Derek’s Name
Page Number: 267-268
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

During the coming months, Don and Derek would watch as white nationalism continued to explode into mainstream politics. There would be fights over the destruction of Confederate monuments, followed by a succession of marches and rallies led by white nationalists throughout the South. One of those marches would arrive in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, where Richard Spencer, David Duke, and hundreds of neo-Nazis would carry guns and torches into downtown, threatening counterprotesters with chants of “White lives matter” and “You will not replace us,” until one neo-Nazi rammed his car into a crowd, killing one counterprotester and injuring nineteen others. Trump would go on national TV to explain away the violence by blaming “both sides”—what he called the “alt-left” and also “the good people” on the “alt-right”—creating a moral equivalency between racists and antiracists. Don would call Trump’s comments “the high point” of white nationalism during his lifetime. Derek would write another opinion piece for The New York Times to say that Trump’s “frightening statement” had “legitimized” a racist ideology. Don would watch Stormfront's traffic triple overnight, spiking to 300,000 daily page views, signifying what he called the “full awakening of our people.”

Related Characters: Derek Black, Don Black, David Duke, Donald Trump, Richard B. Spencer
Page Number: 282
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Rising Out of Hatred LitChart as a printable PDF.
Rising Out of Hatred PDF

Donald Trump Quotes in Rising Out of Hatred

The Rising Out of Hatred quotes below are all either spoken by Donald Trump or refer to Donald Trump. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Ostracism vs. Open Dialogue Theme Icon
).
Chapter 12 Quotes

What Trump said during those next months was that he wanted to ban Muslims from entering the United States. He said he was the “law and order candidate” in the age of Black Lives Matter. He said he was qualified to be president in large part because of his “beautiful, terrific genes—a wonderful inheritance.” He said his primary goal was to erase the legacy of Barack Obama, the country’s first black president, who Trump continued to insinuate was a foreign-born Muslim. He said America’s inner cities were overrun by “gangs and thugs,” and “right now, if you walk down the street, you get shot”—and then to prove that point he re-tweeted a crime statistic suggesting that 81 percent of white murder victims were killed by blacks. A few days later, after criminologists told Trump that his number was wildly off base—that in fact it was only 14 percent—Trump said, “What? Am I gonna check every statistic?”

Related Characters: Donald Trump (speaker), Barack Obama
Page Number: 250
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

The wave of violence and vile language that has risen since the election is only one immediate piece of evidence that this campaign’s reckless assertion of white identity comes at a huge cost. More and more people are being forced to recognize now what I learned early: Our country is susceptible to some of our worst instincts when the message is packaged correctly.

No checks and balances can redeem what we’ve unleashed. The reality is that half of the voters chose white supremacy...

It’s now our job to argue constantly that what voters did in elevating this man to the White House constitutes the greatest assault on our own people in a generation, and to offer another option…

Those of us on the other side need to be clear that Mr. Trump’s callous disregard for people outside his demographic is intolerable, and will be destructive to the entire nation.

Related Characters: Derek Black (speaker), Donald Trump
Related Symbols: Derek’s Name
Page Number: 267-268
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

During the coming months, Don and Derek would watch as white nationalism continued to explode into mainstream politics. There would be fights over the destruction of Confederate monuments, followed by a succession of marches and rallies led by white nationalists throughout the South. One of those marches would arrive in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, where Richard Spencer, David Duke, and hundreds of neo-Nazis would carry guns and torches into downtown, threatening counterprotesters with chants of “White lives matter” and “You will not replace us,” until one neo-Nazi rammed his car into a crowd, killing one counterprotester and injuring nineteen others. Trump would go on national TV to explain away the violence by blaming “both sides”—what he called the “alt-left” and also “the good people” on the “alt-right”—creating a moral equivalency between racists and antiracists. Don would call Trump’s comments “the high point” of white nationalism during his lifetime. Derek would write another opinion piece for The New York Times to say that Trump’s “frightening statement” had “legitimized” a racist ideology. Don would watch Stormfront's traffic triple overnight, spiking to 300,000 daily page views, signifying what he called the “full awakening of our people.”

Related Characters: Derek Black, Don Black, David Duke, Donald Trump, Richard B. Spencer
Page Number: 282
Explanation and Analysis: