Washington Post Reports Trump Privately Says Black People Are to Blame For Inequality and Jews Are ‘Only In It For Themselves’

Ludovic Marin, Getty Images

A stunning new report from The Washington Post states that President Donald Trump has privately maintained a number of viewpoints that can at best be called controversial, but perhaps more accurately racist, about a number of minority groups in the United States.

The article is written by Greg Miller, which cites comments made by what he broadly describes as “current and former U.S. officials.” The article opens with the following three paragraphs:

In unguarded moments with senior aides, President Trump has maintained that Black Americans have mainly themselves to blame in their struggle for equality, hindered more by lack of initiative than societal impediments, according to current and former U.S. officials.

After phone calls with Jewish lawmakers, Trump has muttered that Jews “are only in it for themselves” and “stick together” in an ethnic allegiance that exceeds other loyalties, officials said.

Trump’s private musings about Hispanics match the vitriol he has displayed in public, and his antipathy to Africa is so ingrained that when first lady Melania Trump planned a 2018 trip to that continent he railed that he “could never understand why she would want to go there.”

The article, published under the “National Security” section of The Washington Post later specificities sources as “senior U.S. official” in claiming that none interviewed “could recall Trump uttering a racial or ethnic slur while in office. Nor did any consider him an adherent of white supremacy or white nationalism, extreme ideologies that generally sanction violence to protect White interests or establish a racially pure ethno-state.”

But the article makes clear the position from which it’s being written.  “There is now a substantial record of [Trump’s] actions as president that have compounded the perceptions of racism created by his words,” Miller writes. It goes on to note “Over 3½ years in office, he has presided over a sweeping U.S. government retreat from the front lines of civil rights, endangering decades of progress against voter suppression, housing discrimination and police misconduct.”

Allegations made in this article will surely be used by the president’s critics, just as surely, it will be dismissed by his defenders due to the unnamed sources.  The report ends by noting that it is “based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former officials, including some who have had daily interactions with the president, as well as experts on race and members of white supremacist groups.” Many of the sources shared accounts on the condition of anonymity, “citing a desire to provide candid accounts of events and conversations they witnessed without fear of retribution.”

Read the entire article here.

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