What makes a great politician?

[David Lockmiller]

The Guardian reported today (January 15, 2018) the following Trump statement (and there is a video):

As Trump headed to dinner at his golf club in Florida on Sunday, he was confronted by a reporter: “What do you say to people who say you’re a racist?”

The president said: “No, no, I’m not a racist. I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed, that I can tell you.”

For those who may be interested in the accuracy of this statement by the President of the United States, I would suggest reading the following well-documented opinion piece that was published in today’s (January 15, 2018) New York Times: Donald Trump’s Racism - The Definitive List.

I thought one of the more interesting parts of this “definitive” list, was the section labeled “Denigrating Native Americans” and in particular the following two paragraphs:

In a 1993 radio interview, he suggested that Native Americans in Connecticut were faking their ancestry. “I think I might have more Indian blood than a lot of the so-called Indians that are trying to open up the reservations.”

In a November 2017 meeting with Navajo veterans of World War II, Trump mocked Senator Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas.”

I think an appropriate Indian name for the sitting President of the United States, who believes that he “might have more Indian blood than a lot of the so-called Indians,” would be “Sitting Bull.”

This New York Times opinion piece itself has a hyperlink reference to an October, 2016 New York Times article titled “Why Trump Doubled Down on the Central Park Five.”

According to this article, in 1989, Donald Trump spent $85,000 for full-page ads in four New York newspapers, urging the death penalty for five black and Latino teenagers accused of raping a white woman in Central Park. There is a copy of the 1989 ad in the hyperlink New York Times opinion piece referenced above.

In October 2016, a month before the presidential election, Republican Presidential candidate Trump argued once again in an interview with CNN that the convicted young men were guilty. However, this Trump interview with CNN took place 14 years after the sentences of the Central Park Five were vacated, based on DNA evidence and the detailed and accurate confession of a serial rapist named Matias Reyes.

In the month following this CNN interview, Donald J. Trump was elected President of the United States.