There has been a significant backlash against Donald J. Trump's latest racist post on his Truth Social platform, where he shared a video featuring former President Barack Obama and his wife portrayed as apes, and all of this during Black History Month. A few Republicans have denounced it and said that Trump, a raging narcissist, should apologize. Imagine Trump ever apologizing for anything. That's just not going to happen.
Rep. Mike Haridopolos joined CNN's John Berman, and his response to the highly offensive post was to change the subject, as if calling out a racist post was too much for the Florida lawmaker.
"Congressman, I want to ask you about a video that President Trump posted on Truth Social overnight," Berman said. "He's got millions of followers there. The video was about voter ID and election reform. But at the end, and I don't know if you can see this, it included a brief image of the Obamas, an overtly racist image of the former first lady and the president as apes here."
"Now, it was at the end of the video," he continued while seemingly giving Trump an excuse. "I don't know for sure whether the president saw it, but is this the type of message a president of the United States, under any circumstances, should be sending out to millions of people?"
"Well, I've not seen that video yet; you just showed it to me," Haridopolos replied. "But what I've tried to do, and I tried to do it on your show today, the number one thing that we need to do is elevate the conversation. I want to have more transparency in government. So the reason, even though I'm a conservative, I come on CNN, let's have a thoughtful discussion about how we move forward in reforming our election systems."
"We have challenges overseas in Iran, and I hope we can elevate our debate in general in America, because what I saw recently this week in my own Financial Services Committee were Democrats yelling at our own secretary of the treasury because they're worried about losing a primary campaign," he continued while dodging the question.
Berman tried to bring the Republican congressman back to the subject.
"And again, in the theme of elevating the discussion, and I know you weren't aware of that video," Berman said. "I don't think you were before. We just showed it to you. But should it remain on Truth Social? Is that the kind of thing, in the spirit of elevation, you would like to see the president take down?"
Again, Haridopolos dodged the subject.
"Well, I'll take a look at it right after our show," Haridopolos said. "You kind of threw it at me right here, but it's something again. All I can control is what I can control. That's what my mom and dad taught me, and what I try to do is elevate the conversation."
"We had a great hearing, for example, this week with NASA, bipartisan support, making sure we're winning the space race," he added. "I'm proud to be on that committee, led by Dr. Babin, and making sure that we are number one in space and we can have bipartisan cooperation on DHS as well, as you mentioned, with body cameras and more training. After all, we put it in the budget in the House already this year."
Dude, the topic was Trump's racist post, not about NASA. By the way, how are Blacks for Trump doing today? Should we do a welfare check on all three of them or nah? It's interesting to see who created the video Trump shared.
