Sophia Nelson, a lawyer who formerly worked on legal and advisory teams for several prominent Republicans, unloaded on the GOP's record on race relations in an interview with ABC News this week.
Nelson, who worked on advisory teams for both former Presidents Bush before later becoming an independent, told ABC that President Donald Trump's election has been the culmination of toxic racial attitudes that she's seen growing within the GOP for years.
"What did you think the evolution of your party was going to be when you basically don’t really understand women and women’s rights?" Nelson asked of the GOP. "When you don’t have any agenda for people of color or African-Americans, which used to be your most natural constituency, from Lincoln all the way until the 1960s? And you’ve built the party on Nixon’s 'Southern Strategy'?"
Nelson lamented that this strategy had left her former party in dire straits with people of color -- and had made it the party of white identity politics.
"Look at the numbers in the Republican Party," Nelson lamented. "They’re terrible for people of color and African-Americans in particular. It’s abysmal. It’s horrible. It’s embarrassing."
She also said that Trump's instinct to pour gas on every fire was further eroding what little support for the GOP still existing in black communities -- and she slammed his ham-fisted efforts to plead for national unity as insincere.
"It’s one thing to give a speech and to have talking points and to say ‘we care,’ but love is a verb, as my grandmother used to say. It’s action," she said.. "So don’t tell me that you care about communities of color, but you have rallies where people of color are getting punched in the face."
Watch the full interview below.
