Rep. Pete King (R-NY) pulled off some serious verbal gymnastics on Friday while defending Donald Trump, condemning his “racist” remarks about a federal judge but insisting Trump himself would never discriminate based on race.
“There’s not a hint of racism,” King said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“What he said last week was racist but I make a distinction between a remark that is racist and a person who – he’s almost 70-years-old,” he continued. “He’s been in the public light and the private light all those years and nothing has come up that I’m aware of, of any type of racism at all.”
.@RepPeteKing on Trump: I don’t accept that he’s a racist… what he said last week was racist https://t.co/fx6irUDNuA
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) June 10, 2016
In interview after interview last week, Trump insisted that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s “Mexican” heritage rendered him unfit to oversee a case involving Trump University. According to Trump, his plan to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border meant that the Indiana-born Curiel could not be fair to him.
Dozens of prominent Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, rushed to denounce the remarks as racist.
Trump released a statement saying his comments about Curiel’s heritage had been “misconstrued.”
That’s like saying: Sure, the terrorists King claims to hate so much committed terrorist acts, but they’re not really terrorists.
Hey, you have to understand he’s from a different era; when it wasn’t considered racist to try to bully a federal judge by making reference to his ethnicity!
Yeah, that should do it, Pete.
So he’s also not sexist, not a liar, not stupid, etc…
Where has Peter King been for the entire primary season? Trump has made a number of racist and racially insensitive comments all along the way. You can only judge whether one is a racist by words and actions and on that basis, there’s little doubt that Trump is one.