Hillary Clinton has made Donald Trump’s remarks about a federal judge, among others, the basis for a campaign accusing him of being a racist. It is worth visiting Clinton’s own history of making racially offensive comments for political gain.
1. “Hard-working white Americans” prefer her to Obama. In May 2008, Clinton told the USA Today that while Obama was leading the delegate race, she still had a broader political base. Unfortunately, she made that claim in explicitly racial terms, citing an Associated Press poll “that found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”
2. “Colored People’s Time.” Clinton appeared alongside left-wing New York City mayor Bill de Blasio at the annual Inner Circle Dinner this year, and joined in a racist joke based on a stereotype that black people are late for everything:
Clinton: I just have to say thanks for the endorsement, Bill. Took you long enough. [Laughter]
De Blasio: Sorry Hillary, I was running on C.P. time. [Audience gasps]
Host: I don’t like jokes like that.
As Mediate later noted, the cable news networks mostly ignored the racist joke.
3. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wasn’t really THAT great. As she struggled to stop the Obama insurgency in the 2008 Democratic primary, Clinton tried to diminish Obama’s credentials as a “community organizer,” which had led some to draw connections between him and Dr. King. Clinton argued that it was really a professional politician, President Lyndon Johnson, who made the difference: “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act”
4. “Ah don’t feel no ways TAHHHHHRD.” Clinton, like Vice President Al Gore, and indeed like President Obama himself, has a tendency to imitate what she believes to be an African-American accent when she speaks before black audiences. Obama, who grew up in Hawaii, at least has some cultural competence and experience, honed through practice in inner city Chicago. Clinton manages to sound condescending every time — most notoriously in this cringe-worthy clip from 2008.
5. Obama’s “slumlord,” and “super predators.” Losing traction in 2008, Clinton belatedly attacked Obama’s connection to fraudster and fundraiser Tony Rezko: “I was fighting against those [Reagan] ideas when you were practicing law and representing your contributor, Rezko, in his slum landlord business in inner city Chicago,” she said in a South Carolina debate. The remark was described as racist by Obama fans — as was her 1996 term for chronic criminals, “super predators.”
Bonus: The photograph at top came from the Clinton campaign in 2008 (though not from Clinton herself.) Obama campaign manager David Plouffe called “the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we’ve seen from either party in this election.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. His new e-book, Leadership Secrets of the Kings and Prophets: What the Bible’s Struggles Teach Us About Today, is on sale through Amazon Kindle Direct. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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