Lara Trump Defends Hyde-Smith: Dems ‘Always Scream Racism’ Against GOP

Lara Trump on "Varney and Co." Nov. 26, 2018
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Trump daughter-in-law and senior adviser to President Trump’s 2020 campaign Lara Trump on Monday defended Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, the Republican incumbent in the Mississippi Senate race, whose recent comments about “public hanging” have caused her to lose donors and prompted outcry heading into the runoff election on Tuesday.

“This is nothing new,” Lara Trump told Fox Business on Monday. “The Democrats always scream racism at a Republican contender in any field across the country. … Listen, Cindy Hyde-Smith apologized for these remarks and I think if you actually watch the way it happened I think a lot was taken out of context and really blown up out of proportion.”

Trump’s defense of Hyde-Smith comes just as her father-in-law prepares to travel to Mississippi and headline two separate rallies for the embattled Republican incumbent, who has lost funding and faced criticism for “public hanging” that’s been widely considered racist.

While lavishing praise on one of her supporters, Hyde Smith told a crowd gathered that she liked this particular supporter so much that “if he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” The comment was met with swift backlash — especially given Mississippi’s history of violent public hangings of black people — and Hyde-Smith has since apologized.

Since then, bits of her past have resurfaced that have furthered criticism of the remarks, like a photo of her wearing a Confederate solider’s hat and a local report about her attendance at a private all-white school in the 1970s to avoid new anti-segregation laws for public schools.

Hyde-Smith was appointed to replace former Sen. Thad Cochran in April. She faces Democrat Mike Espy, a former congressman and agriculture secretary who would become Mississippi’s first black senator since the Reconstruction era if he wins.

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