Black Dems rip Trump as ‘racial arsonist’ over ‘birther’ controversy
Black lawmakers bashed Donald Trump on Friday after the Republican presidential nominee walked away from his long-held theory that President Obama was not born in the U.S.
The lawmakers say Trump’s years-long campaign challenging Obama’s birthplace –– and by extension, his legitimacy to hold the office –– is rooted in racism, bigotry and the centuries-old effort by certain white voices to suppress the success of blacks.
In the harshest terms, they’re accusing Trump of softening his tone in a cynical effort to attract minority voters, while calling on the GOP nominee to apologize to the president.
“Donald Trump is nothing more than a two-bit racial arsonist, who for decades has done nothing but fan the flames of bigotry and hatred,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said during a press briefing outside the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington D.C.
“He owes an apology to President Barack Obama, [and] he owes an apology to the African-American community.”
Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), head of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), piled on, condemning Trump’s “birther” campaign as a race-based “insult to the intellect of the American people.”
“By any definition, Donald Trump is a disgusting fraud,” Butterfield said. “He would not have done that to a Mitt Romney; he would not have done that to a John McCain –– or any other white who was running for president of the United States.”
Trump has long-questioned Obama’s birthplace, and as recently as Wednesday he declined to acknowledge that the president was born in Hawaii.
“I’ll answer that question at the right time,” he told The Washington Post.
Friday, evidently, was the right time. During an event at his posh new hotel in Washington, Trump stood on stage for more than 20 minutes as veterans praised him before briefly addressing the controversy.
“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period,” he said. “Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”
Trump also accused Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, of initiating the “birther” controversy during her failed 2008 run for the White House –– a charge denied by Clinton and debunked by several fact-checkers.
Black Democrats said Trump’s latest comments are merely a desperate effort by a flailing candidate to attract the minority voters he’s alienated throughout the campaign. That effort will fail, they warned.
“He has now been told by his advisors that he’s not going to win the presidency unless he can reach out to African-American voters,” Butterfield said. “His numbers are in the single digits and they will remain in the single digits.”
Rep. Jim Clyburn (S.C.), the third-ranking House Democratic, said Trump’s long-standing effort to question Obama’s citizenship transcends the 2016 presidential race. Rather, it’s part of a much broader campaign to “delegitimize” the accomplishments of the country’s first black president –– and African Americans more generally.
“This man on a mission to heap as much insult on this president to do as much as he possibly can to delegitimize his presidency and to play into a narrative that has been floated in this country for over 200 years,” Clyburn said.
“This is not just about the contest for the presidency.”
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