NY Times Editorial Board: 'The President Is A Racist'
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) -- The New York Times editorial board has issued a stinging rebuke of President Trump and what they call his racially-charged tone and commentary.
They wrote, "For a fleeting moment Tuesday, President Trump seemed to signal he would do the right thing on immigration."
But they added, "Alas, it was all a charade. The real Donald Trump was back two days later with his now notorious "shithole" remark, asking why the United States should accept people from places like Haiti or Africa instead of nice Nordic countries like Norway, and then tweeting his tiresome demands for a 'Great Wall' along the Mexican border."
The president is often at odds with the media, particularly the New York Times, which he often brands "fake news."
On Saturday, ignoring the Time's condemnation, the president again tweeted about fake news, but this time under the guise of criticizing the inside-White House book "Fire and Fury" by Michael Wolff. He said Wolff was "deranged."
The Times in their editorial questioned the president's own mental fitness and said his flip-flop on the subject of immigration was just the latest in a series of events that has left everyone, perhaps even himself, confused.
They wrote, "Where to begin? How about with a simple observation: The president of the United States is a racist."
While the president on Friday tried to dial back his comments about countries being "shitholes," Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, among others, said the president's comments were "hate-filled...and he said them repeatedly."
The president denied making any disparaging remarks about Haitians.
The editorial board saved their most blistering line to follow.
"Mr. Trump is not just racist, ignorant, incompetent and undignified. He's also a liar."
In furthering their attack, they published a list of Trump transgressions and actions to further their case for his being a racist.
The editorial board wrote, "Anyone who has followed Mr. Trump over the years knows this. We knew it in the 1970s, when he and his father were twice sued by the justice department for refusing to rent apartments to black people. We knew it in 1989, when he took out a full-page newspaper ad calling for the execution of five black and Latino teenagers charged with the brutal rape of a white woman in Central Park. (The so-called Central Park Five were convicted but later exonerated by DNA and other evidence, but Mr. Trump never apologized, and he continued to argue as late as 2016 that the men were guilty.) "
They added, "We knew it when he built a presidential campaign by demonizing Mexicans and Muslims while promoting the lie that America's first black president wasn't born here. Or when, last summer, he defended marchers in a neo-Nazi parade as "very fine people."
The editorial board also mentioned that in an Oval Office meeting last month, the president said that the 15,000 Haitians now living in the United States "all have AIDS," and that Nigerian immigrants would never "go back to their huts" in Africa once they had seen the United States."
And finally, they asked, "See a pattern yet?"
Stories about Trump's racial insensitivity are becoming reported with more frequency.
Newsweek reported on Friday that at a meeting with congressional black leaders last March, the president seemed to express surprise that the majority of people on social programs are white.
And Michael Steele, the RNC's first black committee chair, said the fact Trump is racist is "incontrovertible."
