Trump Does About-Face On Racially Charged Attacks On Judge’s Heritage (VIDEO)

Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

Although he spent weeks attacking a federal judge of Mexican heritage for alleged bias over his immigration policies, Donald Trump said Thursday that he wouldn’t ask Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s only Latina, to recuse herself in the same situation.

Trump said in a sit-down interview with NBC News that he hadn’t seen the recent Supreme Court decision, which blocked President Obama’s immigration policy by a 4-4 vote. But he said he wouldn’t ask Sotomayor recuse herself because of her heritage if his immigration policy ended up in the high court.

“I want people without conflict, and you have to assume they don’t have a conflict,” Trump said.

When NBC’s Lester Holt asked Trump if his attacks on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is handling two lawsuits over Trump’s failed educational venture, were a distraction, Trump dodged the question. He said the case would be an “easy victory.”

“Look, I have a case I’m going to win. We’re going to win the case, that’s all there is to it,” he told Holt.

The presumptive Republican nominee also backtracked on his oft-repeated claim that Democrat Hillary Clinton slept through the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, a conservative trope that has been thoroughly debunked.

Those attacks were “going on for a long period of time,” Trump said. “She was sleep at the wheel, whether she was sleeping or not, who knows if she was sleeping.”

When Holt reminded him that he had accused Clinton of sleeping through the terrorist attacks, Trump fired back: “She might’ve been sleeping!”

Watch the full interview below via NBC News:

Latest Livewire
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: