Senate minority leader Harry Reid issued a statement on Friday calling President-elect Donald Trump “a sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fueled his campaign with bigotry and hate.”
“The election of Donald Trump has emboldened the forces of hate and bigotry in America,” Reid wrote. “White nationalists, Vladimir Putin and ISIS are celebrating Donald Trump’s victory, while innocent, law-abiding Americans are wracked with fear — especially African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Muslim Americans, LGBT Americans and Asian Americans. Watching white nationalists celebrate while innocent Americans cry tears of fear does not feel like America.”
Reid continued: “I have heard more stories in the past 48 hours of Americans living in fear of their own government and their fellow Americans than I can remember hearing in five decades in politics. Hispanic Americans who fear their families will be torn apart, African Americans being heckled on the street, Muslim Americans afraid to wear a headscarf, gay and lesbian couples having slurs hurled at them and feeling afraid to walk down the street holding hands. American children waking up in the middle of the night crying, terrified that Trump will take their parents away. Young girls unable to understand why a man who brags about sexually assaulting women has been elected president.”
Reid is in a rare position that gives him an opportunity to speak out against Trump as he is retiring in early 2017. His home state of Nevada voted for Hillary Clinton on Tuesday night and the Senate minority leader has nothing to lose by speaking his mind, as opposed to other members of the chamber who will have to work with the Trump administration.
Reid’s statement concluded: “If Trump wants to roll back the tide of hate he unleashed, he has a tremendous amount of work to do and he must begin immediately.”
Read the entire statement here.