Fox News regular and actress Stacey Dash took the #OscarsSoWhite debate to another level Wednesday morning when she called out Black Entertainment Television’s BET Awards for excluding white performers (which it doesn’t do). Later in the same broadcast, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump was asked about the controversy over this year’s completely white Academy Awards field of acting nominees, and Trump revealed that Dash had torn the scales from his eyes.

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“I saw somebody on your show today saying well, what do we do with BET? Black Entertainment, right?” Trump said, as the hosts indicated it was Dash. “So over there — the whites don’t get any nominations or don’t get — and I thought it was an amazing interview, actually. I never even thought of it from that standpoint.”

Before you start up your #BETAwardsSoBlack hashtag, though, Trump went on to say that he doesn’t think this year’s awards are properly representative, that it’s a “sad” and “difficult situation,” and

in a rare case of the pot calling the kettle black while avoiding actually calling him black, that Al Sharpton just wants publicity:

Well I think it’s a tough situation. I think it’s really sad. And you know, Al is just a guy who wants to get publicity for himself. And I understand him very well. Al would actually probably say that he was a friend of Donald Trump, okay? Maybe not on television, but outside of television.I think it’s a tough situation. I saw somebody on your show today saying well, what do we do with BET? Black Entertainment, right? So over there — the whites don’t get any nominations, or don’t get — and I thought it was an amazing interview, actually. I never even thought of it from that standpoint.But with all of that being said, it would certainly be nice if everybody could be represented properly. And hopefully that’s the case. But perhaps it’s not the case. It’s a — it’s a difficult situation….Over the years I’ve seen, numerous black actors, and African-american actors receive Academy Awards. And I think that’s great. This doesn’t happen to be one of those years. But, it’s a difficult situation.

There have been 14 black actors and actresses who have won Academy Awards in the four major acting categories

since the awards began 88 years ago. Since their establishment in 2001, the BET Awards have featured a handful of white nominees like Eminem (nominated 6 times, won once), Justin Timberlake (nominated 8 times), Robin Thicke (nominated three times), Macklemore (nominated 5 times, won once) and Sam Smith, who won but didn’t show up because he assumed a white person wouldn’t win. The struggle continues.
Tags: Donald Trump, stacey dash