Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Wednesday that Donald Trump’s retweeting of racially charged imagery renders him unfit for the presidency.
“That sort of thing I think is disqualifying,” he said on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports.” “Absolutely it should be.”
{mosads}“I’m very uncomfortable with anybody running for the presidency of the United States to even be associated with that sort of thing,” Clyburn said. “At least in order to retweet it. We ought to conduct ourselves as adults in this world.
Trump retweeted a collage late Tuesday that linked former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a rival for the GOP presidential nomination, with the Nazis and Hispanic stereotypes.
One photo showed Bush beside a swastika flag. Another depicted him dressed as a mariachi musician.
“Adios Jeb, aka José,” the retweet said, alongside the images attacking Bush. Trump has since deleted the tweet from his account.
Clyburn argued the incident shows Trump is insensitive toward minorities.
“This is not any respect of ethnicity or skin color,” he said of the imagery.
“I think that we see a lot of disrespect by a lot of people,” Clyburn said. “I look at some of the mail I get, some of the faxes that come into my office, [and] I would not dream of sending that kind of stuff out.
“We ought to respect each other and not have that kind of silliness defining us,” he added.
A Trump campaign aide said Wednesday that the billionaire had retweeted the image, “like hundreds of others,” without closely scrutinizing it first.
Bush’s campaign suggested Trump would blame the incident on a low-level staffer.
“T-minus 8 hours until another ‘young intern’ is fired,” tweeted Kristy Campbell, the Bush campaign’s national press secretary.’
Trump has repeatedly accused Bush of being weak on border security and enforcing existing illegal immigration laws.
Bush has countered that Trump’s views are on the matter are too extreme.