June 17 will mark the first anniversary of the terrible massacre of nine black worshipers at Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina. The murderer, a young white man named Dylan Roof, told police that he wanted to start some kind of a race war. He was hoping for revenge and anger.
He did not succeed.
South Carolina’s eloquent and gracious governor, Republican Nikki Haley, is using the anniversary of that shooting as a chance to speak out against violent rhetoric.
In particular, she is targeting the language used by her party’s presumptive Presidential nominee, Donald Trump.
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley warns Donald Trump's rhetoric could lead to violence https://t.co/VPIQR0TGJN pic.twitter.com/AABDUhEfm5
— HuffPost (@HuffPost) June 3, 2016
In an interview this week with the Charleston Post and Courier, Gov. Haley said that she wished Donald Trump would use a different type of language on the stump. She criticized his violent and divisive talk. In fact, she tied it directly to the actions of the Emanuel Church shooter:
“I know what that rhetoric can do. I saw it happen.”
Gov. Haley is a conservative. She endorsed Marco Rubio in the Republican primaries. She is the first Indian-American woman to serve as governor of a state, having been born to parents who immigrated here from the Punjab region of India. She has run for office more than once on an anti-tax, fiscally conservative platform.
After the massacre at the church, Gov. Haley urged the State Legislature to remove the Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds, because she felt that the symbol had been hijacked by the shooter. In spite of significant opposition, they removed it anyway.
Gov, Haley feels very strongly about the dangers of divisive symbols and divisive speech.
She told her city’s newspaper that she doesn’t necessarily think of Trump’s supporters as racist or as hateful. Instead, she feels that they are angry at Washington’s lack of progress toward solving the problems that plague their lives. What she objects to is not the anger, but the way that Trump chooses to express it:
“They’re upset with Washington, D.C. They’re upset nothing’s got done. The way he communicates that, I wish were different.”
The governor has seen that violent and angry rhetoric can kill. She isn’t afraid to tell Donald Trump that he is playing with fire, and that he needs to change if he wants her support.
This isn’t the first time that Gov. Haley has been critical of Trump, as you can view in this video:
Featured image a screengrab of Fox News video via YouTube.
