‘This Is Not A Well Man’: Trump Sees Blistering Criticism for Racist, Insensitive Remarks
Republican attacked opponent's ethnicity as well as Biden's successful prisoner swap
Donald Trump found himself excoriated on national TV Thursday, following days in which he made racist and other insensitive comments.
Commentators on MSNBC’s popular Morning Joe program piled on their criticism of the Republican presidential nominee for both for remarks he made of opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris which were flatly racist as well as comments pooh-poohing the extraordinary prisoner swap that President Biden orchestrated Thursday.
Trump was condemned for comments he made Wednesday and subsequently in which he suggested, falsely, that Harris was somehow not truly Black because she is also of South Asian heritage.
And he also was taken to task for denigrating the elaborate prisoner swap among nations that allowed the release of several Americans being held unjustly in Russia, as well as the release of some Russian dissidents.
Trump’s racist attack on Harris — now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee — began Wednesday during an interview with a panel at a meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) in Chicago in which the former president suggested that Harris only recently had “turned Black.”
He also belittled the diplomacy which resulted in the return of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and others wrongly detained by Russia.
“Why is it incapable of Donald Trump to say in the hostage release that, you know, ‘Hey, this is great. Good luck to them. I’m happy they’re home.’ He can’t. And he can’t let Kamala Harris go. He can’t let that go. Why?” asked Mike Barnicle, a retired columnist and regular on Morning Joe. “Not because it’s politics, not just because he’s filled with hate and envy. I think, and I would submit — Gene, I don’t know if you’d agree with me or not — but he is a badly, deeply damaged individual.”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, I would absolutely agree,” replied Eugene Robinson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Washington Post who also is a Morning Joe regular. “There is a deep — you know, beneath all that bluster — who am I to diagnose him, I’m not a psychologist — but there’s clearly some deep insecurity and feeling of inadequacy that causes him to continually lash out and puff himself up and adopt this air of infallibility, which is absurd, but that’s who he is.
“I think he is a really, really damaged person. And, you know, because of that, and a lot of other reasons, he is really dangerous,” Robinson added. “He proved that in four years as president. He would prove it again if he were ever allowed near the White House again. This is not a well man.”
Princeton University professor Eddie Glaude Jr, yet another Morning Joe stalwart, addressed Trump’s attacks on Harris’s ethnicity.
“Calling Donald Trump a racist at this point is like saying, ‘Look, there’s a deer,’ right? It has no real effect, right, in some ways. But let’s be clear, this is — by him saying this, it makes the choice stark,” said Glaude, himself Black. “Are we going to double down on a view of America in which race is used as a divider, where we have these reckless appeals to grievance and hatred, or are we going to finally leave the 19th and 20th century behind? Here we are in 2024, Jon.
“A candidate for the presidency of the United States is making these ignorant comments, right, revealing that he has no understanding of how race works in the United States. He has no understanding of how ethnicity works within Black communities in the United States,” he added. “And people are finding this, at least some people, are finding this appealing. So, we have to respond to it accordingly. It’s ignorant. It’s hateful. It’s racist. But it’s also Donald Trump, and he’s on the ballot. Where are you going to land? What America are you going to choose?”
Meanwhile, Richard Haass — a one-time high-level US diplomat — took Trump to task for criticizing what was a clear US international win.
“Is also, and it is a consistent thing here, is you have someone running for president who is, in some ways, unwilling and unable to put the country first. We see that in the ungenerous reaction to getting these Americans home,” he said. “It is a good thing for the country. Maybe it’s not good for his political campaign, but something else is going on. It’s good for the country. It’s good for these families.”
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