Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said it is “hard to not conclude” that President Trump is a racist after she praised Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests.
Sturgeon, who leads the left-separatist Scottish National Party (SNP), made the comments on local radio on Thursday, after backing a call for Scots to donate to the bail funds of looters and rioters jailed in the U.S. during the disorder which has accompanied protests against “police racism”.
Answering a question from Radio Clyde and Radio Forth on whether President Donald Trump is a racist, Ms Sturgeon said: “I think sometimes it’s hard to not conclude that.”
“What I always say when I’m asked questions like that is I can’t see inside his head,” she added.
“I’ve been asked that before about comments Boris Johnson has made about Muslims and do I think he’s a racist.”
Speaking again about the U.S. President, she lectured: “If you don’t want to be accused of racism, then don’t use racist language. Don’t sound as if you are equating people who protest against racism with people who take to the streets in order to try to perpetrate racist values and attitudes.”
On Wednesday, Sturgeon expressed “solidarity” with BLM and protests in the U.S., which have erupted into violent and destructive riots across the country.
During First Minister’s Questions in the Scottish Parliament — a devolved assembly roughly equivalent to a state legislature in the United States — the left-liberal politician claimed that Scots were “all looking on with concern and horror at the scenes unfolding in the United States”.
“I believe the President of the United States has a duty to address the underlying causes of the protests — the legitimate protests we are seeing — rather than continuously attacking those protesting,” she said.
Sturgeon also backed Scottish Green Party co-leader Patrick Harvie’s call for Scotland’s people to “donat[e] to the community bail funds to support those who have experienced the authoritarian response that we are witnessing on our screens”.
During her interview with Radio Clyde and Radio Forth, Sturgeon said that Scotland and the wider United Kingdom were not “immune from racism”, complaining that the former has yet to elect a non-white female to its devolved parliament.
“We all have big issues to confront, so, yes, let’s focus on America and let’s put pressure on Donald Trump and America, but let’s not forget that we have our own houses to put in order as well,” she said.
An EU loyalist and arch-globalist, despite her party’s notional commitment to Scotland breaking away from the United Kingdom as a separate, civic nationalist state, Sturgeon has previously described using mass migration to grow the population as Scotland’s “most important national challenge”, explaining that her government is working to persuade the public of the need to import huge numbers of people from abroad.
In addition to her claim that mass migration is necessary for the country’s economy, the Scottish National Party (SNP) politician has also argued that Scots must accept open borders because some of their ancestors may have moved abroad.