[MUSIC] There was a group on this side, you can call them the left, you've just called them the left. That came violently attacking the other group. So you can say what you want, but that's the way it is. [MUSIC] But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group That were there to protest, the taking down of to them a very, very important statue. [MUSIC] You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that. But I'll say it right now. You had a group on the other side That came charging in without a permit and they were very, very violent. [MUSIC] Are we gonna take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think about Thomas Jefferson? Okay, good. Are we gonna take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner. Now are we gonna take down his statue? So you know what? It's fine. You're changing history, you're changing culture. [MUSIC] I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that what I said was correct. Not make a quick statement. The statement I made on Saturday, the first statement, was a fine statement. But you don't make statements that direct unless you know the facts. It takes a little while to get the facts. You still don't know the facts. And it's a very, very important process to me. And it's a very important statement. So I don't want to go quickly and just make a statement for the sake of making a political statement. I want to know the facts. [SOUND] [BLANK_AUDIO]
After Donald Trump’s disastrous press conference Tuesday, the personal attorney of the president posted a series of pictures of himself posing with Black people.
In a presser intended to cover infrastructure, Trump delivered off the cuff remarks in which he created a false equivalence between White terrorist groups and people fighting against extremism. Minimizing the deadly violence that took place at the weekend’s Unite the Right rally, Trump claimed that there were “very fine people on both sides.”
A day later, Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen tweeted “as the son of a holocaust survivor, I have no tolerance for #racism. Just because I support @POTUS @realDonaldTrump doesn’t make me racist.”
To bring the point home, he supported his statement with a photo collage consisting entirely of Black people.
Among the individuals in the photos were Trump surrogates and supporters, like Omarosa Manigault and conservative video bloggers Diamond and Silk.
If Cohen was aiming to deflect potential criticism of his association with Trump, he did just the opposite. His visual depiction of the “I’m not racist, I have Black friends” quip not only appears defensive, but it is illogical.
Posing with individual Black people does not eliminate the far-reaching, destructive policies promised by the Trump administration in housing, education, and policing that will disproportionately harm people of color.
