https://youtu.be/P3IrgZ_qrlA?t=20s
Barack Obama is partially to blame for President Donald Trump’s failure to condemn racism in America, former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum argued during a CNN panel discussion on Sunday.
The conversation unfolded when Linda Chavez, a former aide to President Ronald Reagan, griped about the alleged double-standard for conservative comediennes like Roseann Barr, whose show was recently axed by ABC after she made racist remarks about an ex-Obama aide on social media.
Chavez then brought up TBS comedic host Samantha Bee, who she claimed was “speaking for liberals and their values” when she used the sexually explicit “c-word” to describe the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump.
Karine Jean-Pierre, spokesperson for MoveOn.org, quickly reminded Chavez that President Trump has also made equally nasty comments in the past and reportedly once referred to former acting Attorney General Sally Yates using the same offensive word. She also noted the president’s repeated attacks against women of color, Latinos and immigrants.
“…Racism was here before Donald Trump and sadly it will be here after,” Jean-Pierre said. “But what he has done, he has normalized it. He’s given license to people to make it okay, to say, ‘You want to put out your racism, make it loud and be public about it? Go ahead –because he’s doing it.’ And that is the problem that we’re in.”
Santorum begged to differ, however, arguing that “most Americans” wanted the president to “be real and be out there.”
“The reality is that this president uses crude words and acts crudely sometimes,” Santorum said. “And I think most Americans, even Republicans, have problems with that. And we see Democrats who do the same thing.”
Jean-Pierre chimed in once more to argue that Trump “tapped into” America’s racism in order to win the election. She noted how the president kicked off his campaign promoting “birtherism,” and pointed to Trump’s tepid response to the white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va. last summer, after which he claimed there were “fine people on both sides.”
“What’s being ignored here is the role that Barack Obama played in all this,” Santorum shot back. “…I mean, you can’t just go from, ‘We elected our first Black president and all of the sudden we get Donald Trump.’ There was something in between.”
The former Republican candidate went on to argue that Obama only exacerbated racism by defending victims of police brutality — many of whom are people of color.
“Every time there was a controversy when someone of color was involved, he took the side — many times against the police,” Santorum said. “He did it over and over and over again.”
Watch more of the discussion above.
