Senator Bill Nelson likens political climate, tribalism to Rwandan genocide in race baiting message with Kamala Harris
While the press was quick to compare President Trump to Hitler after winning in 2016, but now Florida senate candidate Bill Nelson says the heated divide between the right and the left is much like the tenor of Rwanda ahead of their horrific genocide.
Florida Senator Bill Nelson
Nelson made his comparison to Rwanda on Sunday while speaking at the Convent Missionary Baptist Church in Florida, where he was accompanied by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA).
“When a place gets so tribal that the two tribes won’t have anything to do with each other … that jealousy turns into hate,” Nelson said. “And we saw what happened to the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda, it turned into a genocide. A million-people hacked to death within a few months. And we have got to watch what’s happening here.”
Rwanda was home to shocking genocide in the 1990’s, when the Hutu majority government systematically murdered an estimated 1,000,000 members of the minority Tutsi and Twa population. Following this horrific ordeal, the armed Rwandan Patriotic Front took control of the country and turned another 2,000,000 Hutus into displaced refugees. It is considered one of the worst mass slaughters in history, being that it occurred over just three months.
His campaign spokesman Dan McLaughlin told reporters to see it as an illustration of the worst-case scenario and NOT a direct correlation.
“Sen. Nelson and his wife, Grace, have spoken about events in Rwanda for years, because of his wife’s personal relationships there and his own trip to the country,” McLaughlin told reporters. “He uses Rwanda as an extreme example of what could happen when a nation becomes totally divided. He wasn’t likening the current political climate in America to what was happening right before the Rwandan genocide.”
Nelson’s current re-election campaign against Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a race that has now become increasingly tight, according to the latest polls, which show him above Scott by just one point.
The race baiting also came from Harris, who told the congregation: “We can honor the ancestors by voting right.”
