Hindu-American mega-donor Shalil Kumar blasted the mainstream media for their double standard in the coverage of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton this campaign season.
“The outrage over Donald Trump’s decade-old remarks about women reveal a grotesque media double standard, since the media has not held Hillary Clinton to account for a more recent pattern of racist comments about Muslims, African-Americans, and Kumar’s fellow Indian-Americans,” Shalil Kumar, president and founder of the Republican Hindu Coalition, tells The Daily Caller News Foundation.
The idea for founding the Republican Hindu Coalition came after visiting the Republican Jewish Coalition conference in 2015, Kumar tells TheDCNF, adding that the impetus for his group “began when I attended that conference in 2015, and I saw this group making real policy stances and talking about the issues that matter.”
“There are a lot of similarities when you look at the demographics between Indian Americans and Jewish Americans. Watching the Republican Jewish Coalition work, I saw the potential for the Indian community to make real policy change. Our community is usually focused on professional development, not public policy,” Kumar explains to TheDCNF.
Kumar had real success in the first year of operation and received backing from major players in the GOP. “Within thirty seconds of pitching this idea to former Speaker Newt Gingrich, he wanted to co-chair. Congressman Pete Sessions has also been an ardent supporter of our cause,” Kumar tells TheDCNF.
Kumar isn’t incorrect in his assertion that Clinton made more than a few racially charged comments in her time in the public limelight.
After former President Bill Clinton lost his bid for a Senate seat, Hillary allegedly called Paul Fray, Bill’s campaign manager, a “f*cking Jew bastard!” Hillary denied the claim, but Jerry Oppenheimer, author of the book that revealed this information, came out saying three witnesses publicly corroborated his claim.
Kumar notes that the liberal media from “the New York Times to Politico to the Huffington Post,” covered Clinton’s racial comments and history of “dog whistles,” back in 2008. Today, in Kumar’s opinion, they seem to be all too silent.
“If we are going to start holding candidates to task for remarks from years ago, let’s start with Hillary Clinton. As an Indian American and immigrant to this country, I am particularly offended by her mockery of Mahatma Gandhi,” Kumar says.
Hillary, while serving as a U.S. Senator, said of Muhatma Ghandi: “He ran a gas station down in St. Louis for a couple of years. Mr. Gandhi, do you still go to the gas station?”
Making such a racially charged remark, eliciting the American racial stereotype of an Indian gas station attendant, was a politically unpopular move as there are over three million Indian-Americans inside the United States.
At the bequest of the press, Clinton responded to her comments with: “I have admired the work and life of Mahatma Gandhi and have spoken publicly about that many times … I truly regret if a lame attempt at humor suggested otherwise.”
A video surfaced last Friday of Donald Trump making lewd remarks about what he does to women, wherein he described grabbing women by the genitals. Trump infamously said, “when you’re a star, they let you do it.”
In response to the video, Trump came out with the following remarks: “I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize … I’ve never said I’m a perfect person, nor pretended to be someone that I’m not. I’ve said and done things I regret, and the words released today on this more than a decade-old video are one of them. Anyone who knows me knows these words don’t reflect who I am.”
“Donald Trump has apologized for what he said a decade ago about women, why aren’t the media forcing Hillary Clinton to do the same for her long record of offensive racist comments?,” Kumar adds.
To raise awareness of what Kumar sees as an inherent media bias, Kumar is rallying Hindu Americans and Indians to Trump with his organization, the Republican Hindu Coalition, by throwing a massive Bollywood-themed concert event with Trump Saturday in New Jersey.
Donald Trump will also speak at this event, and released a video (shown below) announcing the New Jersey event.
The concert is a charity event and all proceeds go to the “victims of terror,” a key but little known project of the Republican Hindu Coalition.
Kumar also notes that this is the “first time in the history of India, the US, and the Hindu civilization, that a presidential candidate for the most powerful country is coming to a Hindu event three weeks before the election. He (Trump) has particularly chosen this community.”
The Republican Hindu Coalition firmly believes it can bring as many as 50,000 Indian-American votes for Trump.
This is a lofty goal, as some 61 percent of Hindus in the United States either are Democrats or lean Democratic, according to a Pew Research poll.
At this event, Trump will also allegedly announce a 25-person Indian Advisory Board.
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