D. L. Hughley: Trump’s ‘Supporters Definitely Don’t Think Racism Is a Disqualifier’

Tuesday on MSNBC’s “The Beat,” comedian D. L. Hughley said President Donald Trump’s supporters didn’t think racism was “a disqualifier.”

Hughley said, “When you have a president that is lower than norms of civility, when you call people racist names and misogynist names, xenophobic names, you can’t be shocked when people that represent you — you know everyone is talking about how Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the whole red onion thing and how uncivil that was. I remember when the Tea Party used to come to Barack Obama’s rallies and stand outside armed. They started carrying guns. The tone for this kind of discourse has happened for a very long time. So it’s just disingenuous to pretend like you haven’t contributed to it.”

He continued, “I can say this, this president is racist, homophobic, xenophobic, and Islamaphobic. He’s definitely lowered the Blue Book on the presidency. I think we’ll never have presidents in the tradition we had before. You can have political, ideological disagreements but when you have administration officials quoting the same Scriptures that were used to keep black people, slaves—now they’re using it to keep young immigrant children in cages. It’s disingenuous to pretend like you don’t know that. For anybody to say—I can understand supporting somebody, and you’re not quite sure where they will go. Like everybody was ‘he’s going to change in the primaries. He’ll change in the presidency.’ He’s exactly what you said he was. Now it’s not blind, and now you support him. I’m not saying everybody that supports Donald Trump is racist, but his supporters definitely don’t think racism is a disqualifier.”

He added, “The people gave him the benefit of the doubt. You know for such a plain-spoken man, why are so many people trying to explain what he meant? If he speaks his mind, why are there all these interpreters? The bottom line is, if I committed a crime in the car with somebody, the reasonable argument is the person with me is the accomplice. I think anybody who votes for him after all the things he has done—it would have to be a witting accomplice. No way around it.”

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