Barkley laughs at Haley’s remarks on racism: ‘That was just stupid’

Former basketball player and CNN host Charles Barkley laughed after reviewing a recent clip of Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, in which she said the United States has “never been a racist country.”

During a Tuesday interview on “Fox & Friends,” Haley claimed the U.S. is not a racist country and never has been one.

“Our goal is to make sure that today is better than yesterday,” she said. “Are we perfect? No. But our goal is to always make sure we try and be more perfect every day that we can.”

Haley said she has experienced racism in the past, growing up as a brown girl in rural small-town South Carolina. She said she didn’t want to raise her kids to feel disadvantaged.

On his show “King Charles” with co-host Gayle King, Barkley audibly laughed at Haley’s comments and said Haley would be correct, only if “you forget about slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, antisemitism, Asian hate [that] has been going on in this country.”

King responded, saying she thinks people were surprised that Haley would claim that the U.S. is not a racist country.

Barkley responded that “you can’t be surprised. That was just stupid.”

“America was built on racism,” he said. “You can criticize a country. This is the greatest country in the world, you can still criticize.”

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Barkley continued, saying if people turn on the TV, they will see that racism persists in the country every day. He argued that Haley, who wants to be president of the United States, cannot claim that the country is not racist.”

“America was built on racism. I can say segregation, Jim Crow, slavery. Even now, we got antisemitism through the roof. But in the last couple of years, Asian people [have] been getting mistreated,” he said.

King noted that Haley will host a town hall event in New Hampshire on Thursday with CNN’s Jake Tapper. Barkley said he wanted to fill the seats at her event with an all-Black audience.

“Something tells me there’s not very many Black people in New Hampshire,” King responded.

“I think that the reason she said that everything’s rosy with Black people, is she’d been in New Hampshire and Iowa for the last two months, she ain’t seen no Black people,” Barkley said. “But listen, I’m so disappointed that she said that because it’s 100 percent wrong.”