2024 Elections

Donald Trump's claim that he can't be a racist because he has "Black friends" was laughed off by former Republican party campaign adviser Tara Setmayer during an appearance on MSNBC on Sunday morning.

Speaking with fill-in host Melissa Murray, Setmayer explained that the very fact that the former president felt the need to address the racism issue is bad news and that his answer made it worse.

"We have said this many times before about how asinine this is coming out of Donald Trump's mouth," she told the host. "If you have to say 'I am not a racist,' trust me, if you're explaining, you're losing. There is a reason people feel this way."


"It starts at the beginning of his business career when he was sued for racial discrimination housing back in New York in the 70s," she elaborated. "And his consistent racism and bigotry throughout decades of his career, it's evident whether it was the books that were written about how he treated black employees at his casinos, whether it was about the Barack Obama birther theories or whether it was about his presidency calling immigrants from African countries 'sh--hole countries.'"

"Whether it was about his treatment of election workers, let's remember [Georgia poll workers] Ruby Freeman and Shaye Mossand what MAGA and Trump did to them? Why don't we ask those folks?"

Watch below or at the link.

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Asked about Donald Trump's claim that he couldn't possibly be a racist because he has "Black friends," MSNBC host Michael Steele was not having it on Sunday morning.

The former Republican National Committee chair, who now is a co-host on MSNBC's "The Weekend" started off by admitting he was going to be polite about it because it is Father's Day, muttering, " I'm going to limit the level of stupid here as much as I can."

Nonetheless, he responded to the assertion by beginning, "When you got to tell me you got so many Black friends it says something about that relationship," before switching gears to, "I think we need to take this for what it really is: more BS from the man who argued for, and will argue to this day, for the execution of five innocent young Black men, the Central Park Five. Who looks at the heritage that Symone [co-host Sanders-Townsend] and I come from from the great continent of Africa as 's-hole' countries? That believe that in the face of the racism and the antagonisms that we still get from Proud Boys and KKK members, that they're 'fine people on both side?'"

"So spare me the Donald Trump has Black friends BS,' he added. "It is Sunday morning and I don't want to have to go to church twice."

He later elaborated, "Just don't sit out there and act like this is groundswell in the community moving toward you because there's not. I think we just need to stop pretending — we are at a point in this campaign where everyone just needs to stop pretending because, when Donald Trump says that Joe Biden has been the worst president for Blacks and Hispanics and has never been anybody so bad, you know it is a lie. Stop pretending it is not."

Watch below or at the link.

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According to reports about Donald Trump's closed-door meeting with Republican lawmakers this past week, the former president proposed an "unfathomably radical" change to the tax system that would benefit the super-rich while causing irreparable damage to the average taxpayer and the U.S. economy.

As MSNBC's Zeeshan Aleem wrote, the former president wants to throw out the current progressive tax system where the rich pay more and replace it with a system where the government would be entirely funded by receipts from tariffs.

As Aleem wrote, that has economists horrified.

RELATED: CEOs laughed at Trump suggestion during D.C. meeting: report

" Trump floated the idea of 'imposing an all tariff policy that would ultimately enable the U.S. to get rid of the income tax.' That is, Trump reportedly discussed abolishing income taxes and making up for all the lost revenue purely through taxes on imported goods," the analyst wrote before adding the result would be "catastrophic for the economy and ordinary Americans."

With Aleem writing the proposal provides "a window into how unserious he [Trump] is about economic policy," he writes that economist Adam Hersh compared the pitch to "dropping a nuclear bomb on a hurricane."

As Hersh explained to MSNBC, "... to make up for the roughly $4.2 trillion in revenue generated through income taxes, the across-the-board tariffs would have to be somewhere around 120% or 130% on incoming goods. In other words, consumers would effectively have to pay an additional sales tax of up to 130% on any imported item. "

The economist added that those numbers could jump even higher as consumers turn away from imported items, which would then lead to an increase in sales taxes to make up for the shortfall to fund the government.

"Trump has displayed significant economic illiteracy in the past. He mainly thinks about global trade as a zero-sum game and tariffs as a means for producing 'winners' and 'losers,'" the analyst wrote before warning, "...in reality his proposal would destroy the wallet of the average American, throw the global economy into discord and provide a huge monetary boon to the wealthy. As is so often the case with Trump, he uses the language of populism to advance plutocracy."

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