Is President Trump racist? | The Tylt

Manigault Newman initially accused President Trump of being a racist on "Meet the Press." In the interview, she tells host Chuck Todd of hearing a tape of the president using the n-word while filming "The Apprentice."

I have heard for two years that it existed and once I heard it for myself, it was confirmed what I feared the most. That Donald Trump is a con and has been masquerading as someone who is actually open to engaging with diverse communities but when he talks that way, the way he did on this tape, it confirmed that he is truly a racist.

In a recent briefing, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president could not be racist, as evident by the people who keep his company.

The Washington Post has collected a few instances of the president himself saying, definitively, he is not a racist. 

“No, no, I’m not a racist. I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed, that I can tell you.”

...“I don't think so. No. I don't think so,” he replied when Don Lemon asked Trump whether he's “bigoted in any way.”

...“Not at all. Probably the least of anybody you've ever met,” Trump told Barbara Walters when asked whether he was a “bigot.”

President Trump has tweeted that he does not say the n-word.

In a 2016 piece, GQ interviewed Darrell Scott, a black evangelical pastor and the CEO of the National Diversity Coalition for Trump, about his support for the now-president:

As further proof that Trump isn’t a misogynistic racist, both Manigault and Scott pointed out The Donald’s diverse executive workforce. When Scott visited Trump Tower, he was struck by how many women, “all of different ethnic groups,” worked for him. Even more admirable, Scott says, is that he doesn’t flaunt them as a campaign selling point—the “but I have a black friend!” of twenty-first-century politics. He doesn’t need to, he says, “because that’s his ordinary world.”

Apparently weary of providing examples of what, to him, is so obvious, Scott lays all his cards on the table.

“Look,” he says, “if he was a racist, he wouldn’t like black people. He wouldn’t like me.”

Writer Jamil Smith argues in Rolling Stone that ultimately, the existence or non-existence of "The Apprentice" tape is inconsequential. President Trump has proven that he's a racist for his entire public career.

Manigault Newman does allege in the book that Trump displayed other racial ugliness, such as dismissing Harriet Tubman for her looks and having to be coached not to say “you people” during his infamous Detroit church visit in 2016. But does Manigault Newman cite Trump’s race-based housing discrimination, his family separation horror, his racist Muslim travel ban or his endorsement of police brutality? No. After ignoring his persecution of the Central Park Five, his birther crusade against President Obama and his manifold expressions of bigotry while in office, she would now have us believe that Trump uttering the word “nigger” is the smoking gun.

Writer Jason Johnson agrees with the conclusions Smith draws in Rolling Stone. In a piece for The Washington Post, he lists other examples he claims prove President Trump's racism. 

Over the course of his career, well before he took office, Trump’s antipathy toward people of color has been plainly evident. In the ’70s, his real estate company was the subject of a federal investigation that found “Trump employees had secretly marked the applications” of minority apartment rental applicants with codes such as “‘C’ for ‘colored.’ ” After black and Latino teenagers were charged with sexually assaulting a white woman in Central Park, he took out full-page ads in New York City newspapers calling for the return of the death penalty, but never backtracked or apologized when the teenagers’ convictions were overturned. He championed birtherism, and wouldn’t disavow the conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya until the end of his 2016 presidential campaign. As president, he’s targeted African American athletes for criticism, whether it’s ranting, “get that son of a bitch off the field,” in reference to professional football players silently protesting police brutality...

President Trump responded to Omarosa's accusations of racism by tweeting: "When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn't work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!" Writer Anushay Hossain argues in a piece for CNN that even Trump's language in this tweet is racist:

Those who study the history and science of human behavior have identified repeatedly the link between animal language and the tearing away of people's basic human rights. From pro-slavery propaganda comparing African Americans to monkeys to Nazi films portraying Jews as rats to Hutus calling Tutsis "cockroaches" during the Rwandan genocide, there is a documented connection between the use of animal terms and imagery and the dehumanizing of a racialized other.

Hossain goes on to say that it's time for the country to fully recognize President Trump's racism.

So why are some of us still in denial about Trump's racism? Is this not the man who found "very fine people" on the side of neo-Nazis and who was sued in the 1970s for refusing to rent to black tenants? Why are we still in denial about Trump's sexism? Is this not the man who called women "pigs" and bragged about grabbing women by their genitalia?

It is insulting enough to have to hear and read Trump's blatantly racist and sexist comments. The very least we can do is stop pondering if we are really hearing and seeing what we are all witnessing: Trump is not racist or sexist. He is both.