The highest ranking African American in Congress has branded the President a racist. Jim Clyburn accused Donald Trump of wanting to start a race war with his response to recent protests.
Clyburn is the third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives. On Wednesday, he offered fierce condemnation of the President.
“In all my public life, I have never put the racist label on anybody until now,” the House Majority Whip said in an interview with The Post and Courier.
“He is an unadulterated racist,” Clyburn said.
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He explained that he first started to think of Trump as a racist when the President referred to Omarosa Manigault-Newman as a “dog”.
Clyburn also criticized Trump’s reaction to the George Floyd protests. He added his voice to those who’ve slammed the President for his desire to use military force.
“What I’ve seen him do in the last several days, this man is trying to ignite a race war in this country,” Clyburn said.
The South Carolina Democrat also criticized Trump in an interview on CBS.
“It seems as if the president considers the exercise of one’s First Amendment rights to be carnage,” he said.
“How we define it, generally, he has contributed to it more than any president in my lifetime. I don’t think any president since maybe Woodrow Wilson.”
President Wilson, a Democrat, was a notorious racist.
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Darragh Roche is a journalist covering U.S. politics and media
