NYT columnist: A tape of Trump saying N-word could make his supporters like him more

The New York Times columnist Charles Blow said he thinks President Trump’s supporters could like him even more if a tape of the president saying the N-word ever surfaces.

“I think if you found a tape of him saying the N-word it might actually increase his support among the people who support him,” Blow told CNN Wednesday. “This is exactly what they want him to do.”

“If you’re still supporting him after Charlottesville, if you’re still supporting him after what he said about Haiti and an African country, if you’re still supporting him after what he said about Mexicans, if you’re still supporting him after he said Islam hates us, then this is what you want from him.”

Blow’s comments come after former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman made a series of claims against the president in her book “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House,” including that there is a tape in which Trump can be heard using the N-word on the set of “The Apprentice.”

Trump has denied that and attacked Omarosa in a series of tweets over the past few days, including calling her a “dog.”

On Monday, Trump tweeted that Mark Burnett, the creator of “The Apprentice,” had called him “to say that there are NO TAPES of the Apprentice where I used such a terrible and disgusting word as attributed by Wacky and Deranged Omarosa. I don’t have that word in my vocabulary, and never have. She made it up.”

In his CNN interview, Blow said that it is “insane” to consider whether the president is a racist to be “a matter of opinion.”

“This is not a debate. This is who he is. This is what they accepted, this is what they want,” Blow said.

Blow also said he believes those who are silent about a person’s racism are condoning that behavior. 

“There’s no separation for me, between the person who has the racist philosophy and the person who supports the person with the racist philosophy,” Blow said.

He continued, “Not all the Germans who stayed silently while they dragged people into gas chambers hated the Jews, but you were silent and then you let it happen. Not everybody in America owned slaves, but too many of them were silent.”

“You have to take a stand,” Blow said. “If you say, well it’s not about me, I don’t believe that, and therefore I can take the policy without the poison, then you are telling yourself a lie.”

To Blow, one can’t say, “I don’t agree with that but I agree with the policies and I want the Supreme Court justices and I want what Jeff Sessions is doing on criminal justice and I want what Ben Carson is doing.”

“In your silence you are complicit and you are silently acquiescing to a hatred,” he concluded.