Rep. Lawrence Blasts Rep. Meadows For Bringing Black Trump Staffer to Hearing: ‘Totally Insulting’

Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-MI) opened her questioning of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen Wednesday afternoon with a quick but very harsh rebuke of an earlier line of questioning by her Republican colleague Mark Meadows (R-NC) regarding allegations that President Donald Trump was racist.

Cohen opened his testimony with a very damning statement that specifically called Trump out as racist. “I am ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is,” Cohen said in his statement. “He is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat.”

When Meadows time came to question Cohen, he introduced longtime Trump supporter and current HUD staffer Lynne Patton, who herself is African-American.

Meadows referenced Patton, standing behind him, and asked if Cohen knows her. “I’m responsible for Ms. Patton joining the Trump organization in the job that she currently holds,” Cohen said.

Meadows then asked how someone could be racist if he had hired an African-American on his staff, seemingly parading his own ignorance of tokenism and how the interactions with individual people of color often have nothing to do with racism. Cohen sharply responded to Meadows line of questioning by saying: “Ask Ms. Patton how many people who are black are executives at the Trump organization.” He finished with “the answer is zero.”

Lawrence, herself an African-American, opened her five minutes by calling out Meadows’ rather obvious “black friend” tokenism.

“I just want to put on the record as being a black American and having endured the public comments of racism from the sitting president. As being a black person, I can only imagine what’s being said in private. And to prop up one member of our entire race of black people and say that that nullifies that, is totally insulting and in this environment of expecting a president to be inclusive and to look at his administration speaks volume.”

Watch above via CNN.

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