In an interview on 60 Minutes that aired Sunday night, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was asked if she believed President Trump is racist. She responded with a simple, “Yeah, no question.”
In the interview, during which she also joked she wanted people to continue to underestimate her and defended her “Green New Deal,” Anderson Cooper asked why Ocasio-Cortez rarely talks about Trump. She responded by calling him a “symptom of a problem.” She went on: “The president certainly didn’t invent racism. But he’s certainly given a voice to it and expanded it and created a platform for those things.”
Cooper then asked her directly if she believed Trump was racist. “Yeah,” she answered. “No question.” When asked to explain, she referenced Trump’s infamous “on both sides” response to the violence at the 2017 Unite the Right rally:
When you look at the words that he uses, which are historic dog whistles of white supremacy. When you look at how he reacted to the Charlottesville incident, where neo-Nazis murdered a woman, versus how he manufactures crises like immigrants seeking legal refuge on our borders, it’s—it’s night and day.
The White House responded to Ocasio-Cortez’ statements by accusing her of “sheer ignorance” that “can’t cover the fact that President Trump supported and passed historic criminal justice reform.” The statement to 60 Minutes added that Trump “has repeatedly condemned racism and bigotry in all forms.”
