CNN's Jim Acosta says ‘the White House can’t whitewash the white nationalism’ of the Trump era

CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta told Anderson Cooper on Friday that President Donald Trump can't "whitewash" white nationalism.

"President Trump reached out to the New Zealand prime minister, saying the United States stands 'ready to help.' The killer's manifesto, meantime, mentions President Trump, calling him 'a symbol of white renewed identity and common purpose,'" Cooper noted.

Acosta joined him from the White House for analysis.

"What was also striking Anderson, in that manifesto was that the killer was using terms like 'invaders' and 'invasion' when talking about immigration and the immigration issue -- almost the same kind of language that the president was using today when he was vetoing that legislation up on Capitol Hill, rebuking his use of a national emergency declaration to build his wall on the border," Acosta explained.

"So the White House can't whitewash the white nationalism every time, Anderson," Acosta continued.

"The president claimed today that white nationalism is not a rising threat in his opinion around the world," Cooper noted.

"That's right. and that obviously stood out as just being contrary to the facts," Acosta noted. "As we know from recent studies and even FBI statistics in just the last couple of years, that all shows that white nationalism, that right-wing extremism is on the rise not only here in the United States but around the world."

“If you look at what’s happened here in the U.S. in the last few years, whether it’s the neo-Nazi violence on the streets of Charlottesville, the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh last year, Anderson, even the attempted pipe bomb attack on CNN and other Democratic targets––Anderson, that is right-wing extremism violence, and the kind that is on the rise here in the U.S. and around the world, whether or not the president likes to admit to it or not," he concluded.

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