Nutter: Angry 'carnival barker' Trump elected
Nutter, who backed Hillary Clinton in 2008 and worked as a surrogate for her this year, appearing regularly on CNN to speak on her behalf, said he’s shocked and disheartened by the inherent racism he thinks Trump's election showcases.
Former Mayor Michael Nutter isn't pulling any punches about what the election results have revealed to him.
Nutter, who backed Clinton in 2008 and worked as a surrogate for her this year, appearing regularly on CNN to speak on her behalf, said he's shocked and disheartened by the inherent racism and deep divisions he thinks Trump's election showcases.
"He was just a candidate. He didn't elect himself, but he tapped into this very dark underbelly of fear and hatred and loathing of people who are considered 'others'," Nutter said. "And he stoked those flames, added kerosene to those fires, and a bunch of those folks finally took their sheets off and came home to the Republican Party and the nasty rhetoric of Donald Trump," he said in a reference to the Ku Klux Klan.
Nutter spoke to the Inquirer about being at the Javitz Center in Manhattan as the votes came in Tuesday night, with a glass ceiling installed above the center that was never metaphorically broken.
"I wanted to be there for what would have been one of the most historic and momentous political occasions in history … " he said, his voice trailing off.
Last December, after Trump proposed a ban on Muslims and a pig's head was left on the doorstep of a mosque in North Philadelphia, Nutter called the candidate an "asshole," and a "madman." (He later apologized for the language).
Trump responded by attacking Nutter on Twitter – or a Twitter account he thought belonged to Nutter - calling the then-mayor a "low life." Now Nutter can't believe his former Twitter foe is president-elect.
"There is no way in the world that I ever thought under any set of circumstances at that time that a reality-TV-show person, a carnival barker, a completely unqualified person, could ... win enough electoral college votes to become president."
Nutter, who is finishing up a teaching term at Columbia, said he's had several conversations with his students and his daughter, who attends the university, since the results.
"The only thing required for evil to prevail is for men and women of good will to do nothing. So what I said to my students, my daughter, was – they're all millennials, the largest cohort of the population in the United States right now – 'This is a call to action, this is your clarion call this is your moment right now to have an impact on the world because we're also seeing the worst demonstration of the consequence of people not voting. Elections have consequences.' "
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