Donald Trump is “the least racist person,” at least in his own estimation.
Asked by Washington Post reporter Marc Fisher on Friday about the perception that he may harbor negative attitudes towards minorities and immigrants, Trump insisted that he would never display bias based on race or ethnicity.
“I am not a racist,” Trump said. “In fact, I am the least racist person that you’ve ever encountered.”
The presumptive GOP nominee held up an edition of the black weekly owned by notorious boxing promoter Don King, Call & Post, announcing the magazine’s endorsement of him as proof of his support among black voters.
The legendarily flamboyant King has been dogged by one controversy or another throughout his decades-long association with the sweet science, including multiple legal disputes with boxers who claimed he cheated them.
“Isn’t that funny?” Trump said. “You know, Don endorsed me. You wanna take that back with you? You know, this could be a story, it just came out. He just delivered it to my office. But isn’t that funny? This is Don King. Now, Don King knows racism probably better than anybody. He’s not endorsing a racist, okay?”
King denied supporting Trump in an interview with the Daily News outside of Muhammad Ali’s funeral on Friday, saying he’s “endorsing the people.”
Pressed to reckon with whether his comments about the “Mexican” heritage of an Indiana-born federal judge, “criminal” undocumented immigrants and banning Muslims might inspire some people to question his attitudes towards race, Trump said he wasn’t worried.
“I’m not concerned,” he told the Post. “And actually, I’m not concerned because I don’t think people believe it.
