PBS host rips ‘complicit Republican Senate’ for enabling Trump’s ‘predatory racism and bigotry’

Elected Republicans were harshly criticized on Saturday for refusing to condemn President Donald Trump's racist attacks on young women of color serving in Congress.

Trump told the four first-term members of Congress known collectively as "The Squad" to "go back" to the countries from which they came -- despite three of the four having been born in America.

"Tonight’s lead, the president is a racist. That’s it. No doubt in my mind," the Rev. Al Sharpton said at the beginning of MSNBC's "Politics Nation" on Saturday.

For analysis, Rev. Al interviewed Alexander Heffner, the host of "The Open Mind" on PBS.

"This is really, Rev, rebirth of a nation, what we’re seeing with this president and this complicit Republican Senate, the refusal to acknowledge that the present trajectory is an immoral one," Heffner explained. "You know, this president is someone who has exploited a paranoid politics."

"Let’s be blatant like you said about this. This paranoia is peddling bigotry," he declared. "It is predatory racism."

"That’s his M.O. -- predatory racism and bigotry that are enabling these attacks. And I’m pleased that you didn’t repeat those heinous Tweets because those Tweets are, in effect, the textbook definition of racism," he continued.

"And there used to be in this country an acknowledgment to what Dr. King said about judging people on the content of their character and those tweets did the exact opposite, they judged on the basis of skin color, on the basis of ethnicity and, of course, the faulty premise that these women are not American," Heffner explained. "These women are American patriots."

"This is birtherism with steroids," Sharpton added.

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