Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Joel B. Pollak took on the rest of the panel in the latest episode of Politicon’s How The Heck Are We Gonna Get Along! podcast, hosted by Clay Aiken, over a claim that President Donald Trump is a “virulent racist.”
Pollak was joined by former Obama administration spokesperson Bill Burton, The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur, and former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) for a discussion on “social media culture” and “race relations.”
During a segment addressing former Vice President Joe Biden’s claim that black Americans who voted for Trump “ain’t black,” Burton and Uygur disparaged Trump as a “virulent racist.” Aiken suggested that the president had praised white racial nationalists after the political demonstrations and riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
“I don’t think there’s a case to be made that Donald Trump is a ‘virulent racist,'” replied Pollak, challenging the others to provide evidence for their claims.
Trump’s comments on the Charlottesville unrest in 2017 “[crossed] the line over into racism,” said Aiken.
“Donald Trump said some things that a lot of people immediately considered were racist, he said — the first time — there were a lot of good people on both sides, and admittedly, people went up in arms and they were very upset about that.”
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In contrast, Pollak recalled Trump’s condemnation of “neo-Nazis” and “white nationalists” in Charlottesville.
Pollak said to Aiken, “I think you should go back and look again at what [Donald Trump] said because I don’t want to nitpick the exact quote with you, but you’ve got it wrong in terms of what he said on the Saturday and what he said [afterward].”
“You also missed the part where [Donald Trump] condemned totally — that’s his phrase, ‘condemn totally’ — the neo-Nazis and white supremacists.”
Pollak continued, “What’s striking to me is how Trump’s condemnation of neo-Nazis and white supremacists … is just not remembered by the media.”
Burton later said, “When we look back at this moment in five, ten, twenty years from now, and we look at Donald Trump, starting with where he got his start in real estate which was all the housing discrimination cases that he lost because the Justice Department sued him, the Central Park jogger case … the kind words that he’s had for David Duke, his pardon for Joe Arpaio — one of the great racists in American history — what he did with President Obama and his citizenship, what he said about any number of groups, do you want to look back at this moment and be the guy who’s like, ‘Oh yeah, Donald Trump, he’s not racist. He was standing up for the good people on both sides in Charlottesville, but that was only because he knew some, like, nice people who were siding with Confederate generals.'”
“This is not a moment you’ll be proud of in the future,” Burton said to Pollak, claiming that neo-Nazis “know that [Donald Trump] is on their side.”
Burton could not provide evidence of Trump expressing “kind words” for David Duke when challenged to do so by Pollak.
False claims become articles of faith across segments of the public through the process of repetition by news media, Pollak noted.
Pollak said, “I think [Donald Trump] has been fair-minded on issues of race and has gone further than any other Republican.”
Aiken asked Pollak, “Do you feel that Donald Trump has a weakness when it comes to race relations? Do you really feel he’s been better at race relations than previous presidents have been? I’m trying to figure out where on the spectrum you think he lies. … I think it may be a little bit laughable to imply that Donald Trump has had a healthy record on race relations. Where do you feel he lies on the spectrum?”
Pollak replied, “Well, I don’t know if I’d put [Donald Trump] on a spectrum. I think that if you look at the polling data, race relations have improved over the last couple of years. I would say that he has not achieved what people hope a president would achieve on race relations. I think the country is more divided, but I think that’s not entirely his fault.”
Pollak went on, “I think that [Donald Trump’s] skill set is well-suited to providing policies that help people across a broad spectrum. Prior to the coronavirus, he was very proud of the low unemployment rates in black, and Hispanic, and Asian American communities and talked about it a lot. He did criminal justice reform. He pardoned Jack Johnson. He did a lot of things that I think were substantive, but I think that simply his combative style — if you just take the race out of it — I think Donald Trump’s style has exacerbated an already existing division, and that’s complicated.”
On Thursday, after the taping of the podcast, Burton misquoted Pollak on Twitter, and accused him of “defen[ding] … Trump’s racism.”
Walsh, who is now campaigning for Democrats in the 2020 election, described himself as a “conservative.”
Walsh said, “I am a conservative, and I am going to work my butt off to get Joe Biden elected because I think Donald Trump is an existential threat to this country. … I think the Republicans need to lose the Senate. All these Senate Republicans who have enabled this threat in the White House, they need to lose as well. So I’m going to be campaigning hard for Democrats, this year.”
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