Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said in an interview aired Sunday that there is “no question” President Donald Trump is a racist.
“The President certainly didn’t invent racism, but he’s certainly given a voice to it, and expanded it, and created a platform for those things,” the newly sworn-in congresswoman told “60 Minutes’” Anderson Cooper.
“Do you believe President Trump is a racist?” Cooper asked.
“Yeah, yeah, no question,” Ocasio-Cortez responded.
Cooper asked how she could “say that?”
Ocasio-Cortez contrasted how Trump responded to neo-Nazis rallying in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017 (there were “very fine people on both sides,” Trump said of the neo-Nazis and counterprotesters, after a neo-Nazi murdered Heather Heyer) with what she called the “manufactured” crisis of the administration’s treatment of asylum-seekers at the southern border.
“When you look at the words that he uses, which are historic dog whistles of white supremacy, when you look at how he reacted to the Charlottesville incident, where neo-Nazis murdered a woman, versus how he manufactures crises like immigrants seeking legal refuge on our borders, it’s night and day,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“60 Minutes” reported that a White House spokesperson called the congresswoman’s response “sheer ignorance” and added: “President Trump supported and passed historic criminal justice reform and has repeatedly condemned racism and bigotry in all forms.”
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