President Donald Trump snapped at a reporter on Tuesday who asked why Black people still die at the hands of the police, saying that “more” white people die.
“So are white people. So are white people,” he said during a CBS News interview, his first with one of the major networks in months. “What a terrible question to ask. So are white people, more white people, by the way. More white people.”
President Trump tells @CBS_Herridge that “more White people” are dying at the hands of police than Black people. Watch excerpts on CBSN, more tonight on @CBSEveningNews and tomorrow on @CBSThisMorning https://t.co/NeBLT0LG0p pic.twitter.com/XIwyARJBBl
— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 14, 2020
More white people do die at the hands of the police — but only because they outnumber Black people by about 160 million in the United States. But in reality, a Black person is 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than a white person in this country, according to the Washington Post.
Trump has embraced “both-sideserism” before, most famously about the white nationalists who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. After a woman was killed when a man drove into a crowd of counter-protesters, Trump said there were “fine people on both sides” of the rally, equating the neo-Nazis and counter-protesters.
Now, as protests have broken out across the country in response to the police killing of George Floyd, Trump has frequently conjured up the right-wing idea of “antifa,” a loose movement of anti-fascist protesters, as “thugs” to juxtapose with law enforcement.
Accordingly, Trump’s scores on his approach to racial issues is dismal. An ABC News/Ipsos poll from last week showed 67 percent of respondents disapproving of his handling of race relations.
