Andrea Mitchell Wonders If Trump Attacks on Prosecutor and Judge Are Racially Motivated: ‘May or May Not Be Coincidental’

MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell wondered aloud Wednesday if former president Donald Trump’s attacks on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and presiding judge Juan Merchan were racially motivated.

Trump was arraigned Tuesday in Manhattan on 34 counts of falsifying business records. Bragg had hinted that he might pursue criminal charges against Trump during his campaign, and Merchan has ruled against the Trump Organization and its ex-CFO Allen Weisselberg in past cases.

In a speech on Tuesday night, Trump called Bragg “a local failed district attorney” and Merchan a “Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family.”

During a panel discussion about the speech on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, Washington Post reporter Ashley Parker made note of Trump’s past attacks on Gonzalo Curiel, a district court judge who presided over a case involving Trump University and whom the former president claimed might be biased against him because of Curiel’s Mexican heritage.

Mitchell picked up on the point by arguing by observing that “it may or may not be coincidental, but both the DA and the judge are people of color.”

She continued:

Or the judge, as Judge Curiel was, was ethnically Hispanic I believe, Latino. And of course the DA is black, so they’ve certainly become targets of his in any case — and their families.

Since descending the Trump Tower escalator in 2015, the defendant has made coarse rhetoric against figures of all races a common, if lamentable, aspect of his political rhetoric. In 2019, he attacked special counsel Robert Mueller as a “true never-Trumper” who had led a “witch hunt” against him.

During an interview with Savannah Guthrie on Wednesday morning, Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina chuckled and professed not to be “his PR consultant” or his “social media consultant.”

“When I took this case on, to represent the president, I knew who the president was. He’s someone who is vocal. He speaks his mind. Sometimes there’s no filter, it’s direct. But that’s him,” continued Tacopina.

Watch above via MSNBC.