On the Aug. 25 edition of “CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin,” Donald Trump spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany draws heavy criticism for using a Martin Luther King Jr. quote to defend the Republican presidential nominee.
The discussion focused on the Clinton campaign’s response to Trump’s recent attempts to corral Black voters.
In the segment, McEnany comments on Hillary Clinton’s Thursday Reno, Nevada speech that linked Trump to white nationalists and the Alt-Right movement.
She starts the clip by running through Clinton’s history of racial missteps throughout her political career.
The spokesperson brings up Clinton’s use of the term “super predator” in the 1990s to describe Black children.
In addition, she mentions the Democratic presidential nominee’s relationship with politician Robert Byrd, who allegedly ran a Ku Klux Klan chapter.
“Like Martin Luther King said, we have to learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish together as fools,” she quotes. “Hillary Clinton’s speech did nothing to help us live together as one united country.”
In response, Democratic strategist Symone Sanders and pro-Clinton super PAC leader Guy Cecil scoffed.
Then, Cecil unloads on the Trump surrogate for using MLK as a political pawn.
“I always enjoy when a Trump supporter wants to ignore his record and then quote Martin Luther King,” he said. “Martin Luther King would not have kicked African-Americans off of a casino floor because a gambler wanted him to. He would never have put a ‘C’ on the top of rental applications [nor] prevented African-Americans from renting from him …The idea that Donald Trump should get pats on the back because he sat at a table with six African-Americans…”
