'Hell no!' Donna Brazile reams Reince Priebus for defending Trump's racist speech
Democratic strategist Donna Brazile tore into former Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus after he offered a defense of a recent "racist" speech given by Donald Trump to the Black Conservative Federation.
During a Sunday panel discussion on ABC's This Week program, host Martha Raddatz noted Trump had been criticized for saying Black voters like him because he has been charged with crimes.
"Martha, I have to tell you, this is Black History Month," Brazile reacted. "It's the history that we've all made as Americans, a history that we share, and a future that we all want to see together."
"No one that I've heard from, or no one that I understand, wants to go back to Donald Trump, go back to the past, go back to the train wreck, the division, and the chaos," she said. "So it's the history that we not only share, but the history that we want to make together. And under Donald Trump, we didn't make a lot of Black history."
"Reince Priebus, did you consider those comments racist?" Raddatz wondered. "He wasn't on the teleprompter."
ALSO READ: Hypocrisy alert: Senators who scorched Mark Zuckerberg love Meta money
"I don't know," Priebus hedged. "Look, I remember back in 2016 when President Trump went in to say, hey, what the hell do you have to lose? And I was the one saying, oh no, we can't say it like that."
"And, you know, it turned out that he did better in the Black community in 2016 than a lot of previous presidents," he continued. "And today, if you look at the polling, he's looking at recent polling, about 22% in the Black community in the seven battleground states."
Priebus tried to deflect to President Joe Biden's treatment of former President Barack Obama but Brazile interrupted.
"This is about the future," Brazile pointed out. "And what Donald Trump said was racist tropes. And it's insulting and demeaning to basically go to Black people and say, oh, don't you like the fact that I have 91 convictions?"
"Don't you want to see this mug shot?" she asked. "Hell no, we want freedom and justice and equality like everybody else."
For his part, Priebus called Trump's remarks "distractions."
"I think the part of it is he's trying to be entertaining," the former RNC chief said.
Watch the video below from ABC.