Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Elizabeth Warren Calls Trump a White Supremacist

Video
bars
0:00/0:47
-0:00

transcript

Warren Explains Why She Called Trump a White Supremacist

“He’s a man who cozies up to the white supremacists,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said of President Trump in remarks to reporters in Iowa.

Reporter: “Why was it important for you to come out yesterday and say, unequivocally, that you think the president is a white supremacist?” “So, I was asked a question and I gave an honest answer. He’s a man who cozies up to the white supremacists. He calls them fine fellows. He’s talked about trying to get brown people and black people out of this country. He’s talked about ‘shithole’ countries. You know, this is what he’s done. The wink and a nod. And he can’t have it both ways. He can’t keep trying to stir this up, give aid and comfort, be embraced by the white supremacists and then say, oh, but not me. No, he’s responsible. He’s the president of the United States.”

Video player loading
“He’s a man who cozies up to the white supremacists,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said of President Trump in remarks to reporters in Iowa.CreditCredit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa — Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said on Wednesday night that she believed President Trump was a white supremacist, broadly accusing him of dividing Americans along racial lines and providing direct and tacit support to those who believe white people are superior to other races.

Asked in a brief interview with The New York Times if she thought Mr. Trump was a white supremacist, Ms. Warren responded without hesitation: “Yes.”

“He has given aid and comfort to white supremacists,” Ms. Warren said during a campaign swing in western Iowa. “He’s done the wink and a nod. He has talked about white supremacists as fine people. He’s done everything he can to stir up racial conflict and hatred in this country.”

[Sign up for our politics newsletter and join the conversation around the 2020 presidential race.]

Ms. Warren’s comments amounted to one of the starkest condemnations to date from a leading Democratic presidential candidate about Mr. Trump’s language toward minorities and immigrants. She spoke hours after former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas gave the same assessment of Mr. Trump. Asked by MSNBC if Mr. Trump was a white supremacist, Mr. O’Rourke replied, “He is.”

“He’s dehumanized or sought to dehumanize those who do not look like or pray like the majority here in this country,” Mr. O’Rourke said.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, another leading candidate for the Democratic nomination, also believes Mr. Trump is a white supremacist. Mr. Sanders was asked on CNN on Sunday if he agreed that the president was “a white supremacist or a white nationalist,” and Mr. Sanders replied, “I do.” A senior campaign official confirmed on Thursday that Mr. Sanders believed Mr. Trump was both.

Mr. Trump has a long history of using race for his own gain, and his time in the White House has been no exception.

After pushing the “birther” lie about President Barack Obama, Mr. Trump began his campaign for the presidency by disparaging Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals. As president, he sought to bar people from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States; said there were “very fine people on both sides” of a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va.; and used an obscenity to describe African nations.

He has warned of an “invasion” of migrants at the southern border. And last month, he said that four congresswomen of color should “go back” to the countries they came from; all four of the women are American citizens and only one was born outside the United States.

Mr. Trump has faced condemnations from Democratic presidential candidates in the wake of the mass shooting on Saturday in El Paso. The suspect in the attack is believed to have described it in a manifesto as “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas” — echoing Mr. Trump’s language.

In a speech in Iowa on Wednesday, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. argued that Mr. Trump had “fanned the flames of white supremacy in this nation.”

Mr. Biden has also called Mr. Trump “openly racist.” But when he was asked on CNN earlier this week if he believed Mr. Trump was a white nationalist, Mr. Biden stopped short of saying the president was one.

Another candidate, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, also cast blame on Mr. Trump for encouraging hatred. Mr. Booker made those remarks in a speech at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., where a white supremacist gunman killed nine people in 2015.

[Read more about the speeches by Mr. Biden and Mr. Booker.]

Mr. Trump contends he is not racist and criticized Democrats in a tweet on Wednesday for their remarks, saying their “new weapon is actually their old weapon, one which they never cease to use when they are down, or run out of facts, RACISM!”

Ms. Warren, for her part, said Mr. Trump was intent on dividing people.

“Donald Trump has a central message,” she said. “He says to the American people, if there’s anything wrong in your life, blame them — and ‘them’ means people who aren’t the same color as you, weren’t born where you were born, don’t worship the same way you do.”

Follow Thomas Kaplan on Twitter: @thomaskaplan.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: In Interview, Warren Calls Trump a White Supremacist. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT