President Trump Declares 'I Am Not A Racist'
PALM BEACH (CBS:A/AP) -- President Donald Trump declared Sunday "I am not a racist."
This came after a week of print and television commentary that said just the opposite.
The president, following remarks he made about Haiti and Africa, was branded a racist by a plethora of TV commentators including Don Lemon, Joy Reid and Anderson Cooper and the editorial board of the New York Times. to name a few.
Joining in the chorus denouncing the president, republicans like Lindsay Graham and Michael Steele.
Trump was accused of describing African countries and Haiti as "shitholes" during an Oval Office meeting last week with a bipartisan group of six senators. People briefed on the conversation also say that during the meeting the president also questioned the need to admit more Haitians to the U.S. He also reportedly said he would prefer if more people from Norway immigrated to the U.S.
RELATED LINK -- NY Times Editorial Board: 'The President Is A Racist'
Trump addressed the firestorm briefly Sunday as he arrived for dinner at one of his Florida golf clubs with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California.
Asked what he thinks about people who think he's racist, Trump said: "I am not a racist." He told reporters: "I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed. That I can tell you."
The New York Times editorial board would beg to differ. They outlined a history and pattern of concerning comments and experiences.
There was no equivocation. They branded him a racist.
The editorial board wrote, "Anyone who has followed Mr. Trump over the years knows this. We knew it in the 1970s, when he and his father were twice sued by the justice department for refusing to rent apartments to black people. We knew it in 1989, when he took out a full-page newspaper ad calling for the execution of five black and Latino teenagers charged with the brutal rape of a white woman in Central Park. (The so-called Central Park Five were convicted but later exonerated by DNA and other evidence, but Mr. Trump never apologized, and he continued to argue as late as 2016 that the men were guilty.) "
They added, "We knew it when he built a presidential campaign by demonizing Mexicans and Muslims while promoting the lie that America's first black president wasn't born here. Or when, last summer, he defended marchers in a neo-Nazi parade as "very fine people."
(© Copyright 2018. CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
