CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin: Trump’s Telling GOP Voters He’ll Protect Them From ‘Scary Black People’
During a meeting with evangelical leaders Monday night, President Donald Trump issued a dire warning — Democrats would “will overturn everything that we’ve done and they’ll do it quickly and violently” if they beat Republicans in this year’s midterms. He also told them that “when you look at Antifa and you look at some of these groups, these are violent people.”
Discussing the president’s fearmongering remarks on CNN Tuesday, legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin didn’t beat around the bush as he immediately tied Trump’s claims to racism.
“Let’s be clear also about what’s going on here,” Toobin told anchor Wolf Blitzer. “The theme here is, ‘I’m Donald Trump and I’ll protect you from the scary black people.’”
He continued, “Antifa is widely perceived as an African-American organization and this is just part of the same story of LeBron James and Don Lemon and Maxine Waters and the NFL players and the UCLA basketball players. This is about black versus white. This is about Donald Trump’s appeal to racism and it just happens all the time.”
Senior political analyst Ron Brownstein said he didn’t necessarily disagree with Toobin but felt Trump was trying to present himself as a “wartime president for Red America, only the war is largely against Blue America.”
“Of course, the price on that is it puts enormous pressure on the less partisan piece of the Republican coalition,” he added. “Mostly white collar suburbanites which is where they face the greatest risk this fall, among the voters who look at what is happening and say, ‘This is too much chaos for me. I want more checks and balances.'”
Toobin didn’t seem too convinced.
“I don’t know, Ron,” he said. “I think it is black people and brown people. You know, yours is a sophisticated analysis, but I think it is as ugly as it could be. Let’s not forget Donald Trump is — became a politician by making up a racist lie about the first African-American President of the United States.”
Watch the clip above, via CNN.
