Tom Steyer on Wednesday stressed the importance of giving every American a chance to succeed when asked about combating discrimination against people with disabilities.
“Mr. Steyer, I am a bilateral deaf student that wears cochlear implants in order to hear. My question for you is how will you end the negative stigma and discrimination against people like me that suffer from disabilities?” a high school student at the CNN town hall asked.
The billionaire businessman responded, “Probably the biggest thing that I believe in is the idea that we're in it together, that we succeed together, and that looking down or not investing and giving a chance to anybody who’s an American is something that to me is deeply wrong.”
Steyer pointed to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which outlaws discrimination and guarantees a free appropriate public education to all children with disabilities. Steyer said the federal government doesn’t fully pay what it says it will to fund the cost of education of individuals with disabilities.
He said it's partly a policy question -- one of getting proper funding for education and allowing people to succeed -- “but beyond that there is a question here about attitude that goes towards people with disabilities, people of different race, people with a different sexual orientation, or however we want to cut the American pie.”
Steyer said President Donald Trump’s “attitude in terms of immigration is a straight-up racist attack on people based on ethnicity and race. I believe that what he does is separate people on all of those measures to try and succeed politically. And I think that every single one of those instances is deeply wrong.”