In his book published in September 2020, Michael Cohen, who was Trump’s attorney for over ten years, claimed that Trump made racist comments on numerous occasions. In September 2020, Trump directed federal government agencies to discontinue anti-bias and racial sensitivity training for their employees. When asked whether he thought the Confederate flag was offensive, Trump replied, “When people proudly hang their Confederate flags, they’re not talking about racism. They love their flag, it represents the South.” In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, numerous Confederate monuments and symbols were removed across the country due to their association with slavery and racism.
In August 2016, Trump campaigned in Maine, which has a large immigrant Somali population. In an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Trump doubled-down on the assertion, insisting that “there were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations”. At a rally in Birmingham, Alabama on November 21, 2015, Trump falsely claimed that he had seen television reports about “thousands and thousands” of Arab Americans in New Jersey celebrating as the World Trade Center collapsed during the 9/11 attacks. On August 19, 2015, two white men (who later pled guilty to the attack) assaulted a man who was sleeping outside a subway station in Boston.
Independence Day speech
Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said at a news briefing, “There is no other word one can use but racist. You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as ‘shitholes’, whose entire populations, who are not white, are therefore not welcome.” Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) stated that Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), present at the meeting, had confirmed that Trump indeed called El Salvador, Haiti and some African nations “shithole countries”. Speaking on PBS NewsHour, Mark Shields commented, “It’s one thing when Donald Trump uses Pocahontas to attack or taunt one senator, Elizabeth Warren. This, quite frankly, is beyond that. I mean, this is racial. It’s racist. It is.”
First 2020 presidential debate
More recently, his political alvexo forex broker rise was built on promulgating the lie that the nation’s first black president was born in Kenya. He had a history of making racist comments as a New York real-estate developer in the 1970s and ‘80s. A November 2016 Post-ABC poll found that 50% of Americans thought Trump was biased against black people; the figure was 75% among black Americans.
Charlottesville rally
Analysis of pre- and post-election surveys from the American National Election Studies, as well as numerous other surveys and studies, show that since the rise of Trump in the Republican Party, attitudes towards racism have become a more significant factor than economic issues in determining voters’ party allegiance. According to an October 2017 Politico/Morning Consult poll, 45% of voters thought Trump was a racist while 40% thought he was not. According to an August 2016 Suffolk University poll, 7% of those planning to vote for Trump thought he was racist. The authors document that in the first year of Trump’s presidency, there were 83 racial actions and 173 environmental actions; meanwhile there were 271 instances of racial speech and 22 instances of environmental speech. Pulido et al. published a study in 2018 comparing racism and environmental deregulation during the first year of Trump’s presidency.
On June 20, 2020, in a speech in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Trump used language widely described as racist, referring to COVID-19 as “Kung Flu”, a phrase that then Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway had previously described as “wrong”, “highly offensive” and “very hurtful”. Limbaugh had made numerous statements widely described as racist in his career as a radio personality. Despite widespread calls for his resignation (including by over 100 members of Congress), Trump continued to support Miller and did not condemn his advocacy of white supremacy. The Trump administration has included several officials with ties to white nationalism.
Reactions by the Congressional Black Caucus
Neo-Nazi James Mason expressed that the election of Donald Trump gave him hope, commenting that “in order to Make America Great Again, you have to make it white again”. Richard Spencer, who runs the white nationalist National Policy Institute, said, “Before Trump, our identity ideas, national ideas, they had no place to go”. Trump stated that he had previously disavowed Duke in a tweet posted with a video on his Twitter account. On February 24, 2016, David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon, expressed vocal support for Trump’s campaign on his radio show. Though perceived as anti-immigrant, Trump is himself the son of an immigrant mother and has twice married wives who were immigrants.
Inter-presidency and 2024 campaign
But that’s a very serious, you’re saying that, they’re saying that she doesn’t qualify because she wasn’t born in this country. I would have assumed the Democrats would have checked that out before she gets chosen to run for vice-president. The reporter commented “there are claims circulating in social media that Kamala Harris is not eligible to be… to run for vice president because she was an anchor baby, I think” and asked Trump “do you or can you definitively say whether or not Kamala Harris is eligible, meets the legal requirements, to run as vice president?”
Speaking shortly after Trump’s election in 2016, John McWhorter discussed the fact that 8% of black voters and around 25% of Latinos voted for Donald Trump, saying “many would see it as ‘conservative’ for a person of color to vote for a racist, as if it were still a time when racism was socially acceptable.” In his view, people of color who voted for Trump were willing to look beyond Trump’s racism to the promise of economic improvement. Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said “What Trump is doing has popped up periodically, but in modern times, no president has been so racially insensitive and shown outright disdain for people who aren’t white.” Various friends, members of his administration and people who have known him, including some black Americans, have stated that Trump is not racist. Maxine Waters released a video response wherein she said, “He claims that he’s bringing people together but make no mistake, he is a dangerous, unprincipled, divisive, and shameful racist.” Other black lawmakers attended the address wearing kente stoles as a show of support following Trump’s “shithole” comments about African and other countries. According to Mark Potok at the SPLC, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign speeches “demonizing statements about Latinos and Muslims have electrified the radical right, leading to glowing endorsements from white nationalist leaders such as Jared Taylor and former Klansman David Duke”.
Racial views of Donald Trump
In March 2017, six members of the Congressional Black Caucus met with Trump to discuss the caucus’s reply to Trump’s campaign-rally question to African Americans, “What do you have to lose?” (by voting for him). Journalist Jonathan Capehart commented, “Does he think that all black people know each other and she’s going to go run off and set up a meeting for him?” Trump replied, “Well, I would. I tell you what. Do you want to set up the meeting?” When Ryan said she was just a reporter, Trump pursued, “Are they friends of yours?” The New York Times wrote that Trump was “apparently oblivious to the racial undertones of posing such a query to a black journalist”.
- In August 2016 Colin Kaepernick, an NFL quarterback, began sitting (later kneeling) during the playing of the U.S. national anthem as a protest of police brutality and racial inequality suffered by Black Americans.
- In her latest work, published in 2018, she reports on her conversations with young people as related to the election of Trump as president.
- Richard Cohen blamed the recent surge on the divisive language used by Trump throughout his campaign.
- Trump has trafficked in anti-Semitic caricatures, including the tweeting of a six-pointed star alongside a pile of cash.
- In December 2015, Trump called for a “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” including refusing to readmit Muslim-American citizens who were outside of the country at the time.
- On July 30, Trump said that “thousands” of people have told his administration they were “thankful” for his comments on Baltimore, in particular the black majority of the residents of Baltimore, who he said were “living in hell”.
Support from white nationalists and white supremacists
- McEnany later responded to questions about the tweet stating “The president took down that video, that deletion speaks strongly…the president has repeatedly condemned hate.” It was later reported that President Trump’s aides tried to reach him when the controversy started, but that he was unavailable for several hours because he was golfing at the Trump National Golf Club and had put his phone down.
- Sociologist Margaret Hagerman studies and writes about young people’s views on racism and current events in America.
- In late November 2022, Kanye West (who had recently announced his own candidacy for the 2024 presidential election) visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago, along with white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.
Maggie Brown, daughter of Oscar Brown Jr., stated that Trump’s immigration agenda “deals with separatism, racism, sexism, and it’s kind of thing that’s polar opposite to what Oscar Brown Jr was about.” Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt said “Trump’s snake story is vicious, disgraceful, utterly racist and profoundly un-American.” Austrian language researcher Kateryna Pilyarchuk claims that “Trump has used ‘The Snake’ to whip up racist fervor at raucous rallies.” The comments received widespread domestic and international condemnation; news anchors such as Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon called Trump a racist. Ten days after the rally, in prepared remarks at an American Legion conference, Trump called for the country to unite. Also, when a caucus member told Trump that cuts to welfare programs would hurt her constituents, “not all of whom are black”, the president replied, “Really? Then what are they?”, although most welfare recipients are white.
He often casts heavily black American cities as dystopian war zones. Trump called Obama (who was editor in chief of the Harvard Law Review) “a terrible student, terrible.” An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that @BarackObama’s birth certificate is a fraud. At the White House on Jan. 11, Trump vulgarly called for less immigration from Haiti and Africa and more from Norway. I’ve said on one occasion, even about myself, if I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I really believe they do have an actual advantage.”
George Yancy, a professor at Emory University known for his work on racial issues, concluded that Trump is racist, describing his outlook as “a case of unabashed white supremacist ideas.” Additionally, John Cassidy of The New Yorker concluded, “we have a racist in the Oval Office.” CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta said the Washington Post report combined with statements made in 2016 and 2017 shows “the president seems to harbor racist feelings about people of color from other parts of the world.” Andrew Anglin, the editor of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer stated, “Virtually every alt-right Nazi I know is volunteering for the Trump campaign.” Rocky Suhayda, chairman of the American Nazi Party, said that although Trump “isn’t one of us,” his election would be a “real opportunity” for the white nationalist movement.
In June 2016, at a rally in Redding, California, Trump pointed to a man in the audience—Gregory Cheadle, a real estate broker—and said, “Look at my African American over here. Look at him. Are you the greatest?” Cheadle later declared in 2019 that he was so unhappy with Trump’s “white superiority complex” and the “pro-white” Republican Party’s usage of blacks as “political pawns” that he was leaving the Republican Party. Trump claimed, “the overwhelming amount of violent crime in our cities is committed by blacks and Hispanics,” that “there’s killings on an hourly basis virtually in places like Baltimore and Chicago and many other places,” that “There are places in America that are among the most dangerous in the world. You go to places like Oakland. Or Ferguson. The crime numbers are worse. Seriously,” and retweeted a false claim that 81% of white murder victims were killed by black people (the actual percentage was 15%, according to the FBI for 2014). During the presidential campaign, Trump criticized Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel who oversaw those two cases, alleging bias in his rulings because he is “a Mexican judge. He’s of Mexican heritage.” Although his parents immigrated from Mexico, Judge Curiel is an American citizen, born in East Chicago, Indiana. Filmmaker Ken Burns, who directed the documentary The Central Park Five that helped clear the names of the accused, called Trump’s comments “the height of vulgarity” and “out and out racism”.
Republican presidential rivals were quick to respond on his wavering, and Senator Marco Rubio stated the Duke endorsement made Trump un-electable. Trump and his allies have often pointed to record-low unemployment numbers among blacks and Hispanics during his presidency as evidence that he is not a racist and that his administration is benefiting racial minorities. In a 2019 response to mass shootings he stated “In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy”.
Cheadle also said “we just haven’t had people called the names publicly that we have had with this administration.” According to polling data during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Trump was receiving little support from African Americans. Prior to and during the 2016 campaign, Trump used his political platform to spread disparaging messages against various racial groups. Speaker of the House and a Trump supporter, Republican Paul Ryan commented, “I disavow these comments. Claiming a person can’t do the job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment. I think that should be absolutely disavowed. It’s absolutely unacceptable.” Former Apprentice contestant and former Trump administration communications director Omarosa Manigault Newman stated that Trump used “the N-word and others.” Bill Pruitt, co-producer of Season One of The Apprentice has also stated that Trump used a racial slur during filming of the show.