'Agitated,' 'rude' and 'racist': Ex-GOP chairman tears into Trump's NABJ fiasco
July 31, 2024
Former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele laid into former President Donald Trump for his contentious Q&A session with the National Association of Black Journalists on Wednesday.
The whole affair, said Steele, demonstrated his inability to face any level of accountability, and the degree to which he is unaccustomed to having to answer tough questions.
"He was agitated, he was rude, he was racist, and, yes, he was weird," said Steele. "Just a few weeks ago, it looked like Trump was cruising to a victory against an aging Joe Biden and making major inroads with minority voters. Now, he is facing an uphill battle against Vice President Kamala Harris, and his appearance today was a crucial opportunity to flip the script. Instead, Trump made things worse. When he was asked about Republicans blasting Harris as a 'DEI hire,' he did not double down. No, he created a new kind of racist Kamala trutherism on the fly."
Read also: 'Bending themselves into pretzels': Internet shreds Fox News' defense of Trump NABJ Q&A
Specifically, Trump went on to claim that Harris isn't really Black because her mother is Indian — a claim he and his fervent supporters are now pushing even harder. And that isn't even where it ended, said Steele.
"In addition to defending immunity for killer cops, saying he would pardon January 6 rioters and begin calling himself the best president for Black Americans since Abraham Lincoln, Trump also suggested Kamala Harris could not pass a cognitive test and he went on to deflect questions about his running mate, J.D. Vance, from another interviewer with flat-out lies," said Steele, playing clips of all of these altercations.
"Look, it is the job of journalists to ask hard, uncomfortable questions and convention organizers worked with PolitiFact to try to fact-check Trump's rambling in real time on social media," said Steele. "All he had to offer was disrespect to his questioners along with usual self-serving lies. Here's the point. Is there any redeeming value to denigrating Donald Trump like this? Is that juice really worth the squeeze?"
Watch the video below or at the link here.
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