North Carolina resident Isaiah Baskins’ two-month-old daughter was born with a heart condition and has already undergone two surgeries. So when he took her to see a doctor at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center on April 14, he was already stressed.
His wife decided to take their infant into the appointment while he watched his two older sons in the hospital’s family waiting room. That’s when a white volunteer approached him and his sons.
“Get your black kids out of here,” she yelled, according to his attorney. “Do you even have a job? Do you know what a job is, n — -? This is what Donald Trump’s talking about, people like you.”
Black Family Says White Hospital Volunteer Assaulted Them, Used The N-Word, And Invoked Donald…Politics by CREDIT: Screenshot from video Isaiah Baskins, a father of three, was at North Carolina’s Wake Forest…thinkprogress.orgAfter the former volunteer, Donna Bridger, invoked Trump, Baskins pulled out his cellphone and recorded the rest of the interaction.
“It was a very stressful situation because I was already in the hospital because my daughter had heart surgery twice, so when this happened, it was unexpected,” he told ThinkProgress. “I was embarrassed. My children were scared.”
“I felt like I was back in 1950 or 1967, you know?” he continued. “I never thought this would actually happen to me or my family. I’ve seen it on TV, seen it in movies, but I never thought it would happen to my family.”
Watch the video:
Inform Player SuiteEdit descriptionlaunch.newsinc.comThe video shows the volunteer yelling racial slurs at Baskins and his family, telling them repeatedly to “shut your mouth up” and aggressively pushing them out of the waiting room.
“No amount of words can actually describe what happened,” he said. “I don’t know how somebody can treat somebody’s children like that, you know?”
When Baskins posted the video on his YouTube page in April, it went viral. Local media highlighted the video and the volunteer’s racist and aggressive behavior. But at the time, her support for Trump went unmentioned.
When Justin Bamberg, Baskins’ attorney, heard about her political views, he said he better understood her motivations.
“[Trump’s] blatant hate-filled speech toward certain groups of people is empowering others and making them feel bolder about being able to do and say and act a certain way toward others,” Bamberg told ThinkProgress.
I don’t know how somebody can treat somebody’s children like that.
Baskins said that when he first heard the woman mention Trump’s name, he didn’t understand the connection. “It was referring to me but I’m still trying to figure out what Donald Trump had to do with me,” he said. “Basically I thought she was just trying to degrade me.”
But as more and more violent and hateful incidents occur across the country, motivated by Trump’s racism and bigotry, the connection has become clear, he said.
“I can’t blame him for something that’s already going on, but he added fuel to the fire,” Baskins said. “I believe that he is a very racist person and has a lot of people following behind him doing very reckless things to endanger people’s livelihood or their safety. I think he’s sparking a certain number of people and having those guys following him, they don’t care about their actions… They feel like they’re above the law.”
Trump has also refused to condemn the violence that continues to spread in his name. In fact, he has encouraged it. Earlier this year, he said he was looking into whether he would pay the legal fees for a white supporter who sucker-punched a black protester at a campaign rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
“It’s very upsetting,” Baskins said. “I believe it just needs to stop.”
In the two months since the incident, the hospital volunteer has been charged with simple assault and will appear in court this week. Baskins said he appreciates that so many people watched the video of the incident, even if some were critical of how he engaged with the volunteer.
“Some people said I handled the situation in a bad manner, but I handled it to the best of my ability,” he said. “You’re put in a situation that you don’t know you’re going to be in — I was there for my daughter and her doctor’s appointment to make sure she was alright, and it was so unexpected.”
He said the incident was especially hard on his two sons, who are one and three-years-old.
“They were shaken up,” he said. “They don’t feel too comfortable at the hospital. They’re not old enough to understand what’s going on, but it can lead to depression on them.”
As long as Trump is in the spotlight, Baskins said he expects other people will have to suffer from the same type of attacks as his family. “The more votes, the more delegates he wins, the bigger his head gets.”
If the volunteer is sent to jail, though, Baskins said he would feel like some measure of justice has been served.
“To be honest with you, if it were me, you know where I’d be right now,” he said. “In jail.”