A Republican voter tried to prove to a reporter at the Iowa State Fair that he’s not racist despite supporting President Donald Trump.
“I went to school, shared my dorm with a colored guy,” the man who described himself as “white” and “old” told MSNBC’s Vaughn Hillyard, as the video (below) shows.
Asked who he “voted” for at the State Fair’s “Cast Your Kernel” poll, he responded, “they call me all kinds of names. Who do you think I would vote for? Come on. I don’t have to fill in the blank, everybody knows: We’re ‘the bad people,'” he lamented, appearing to feign being upset by criticism from the left and others who oppose Trump and his racism.
“What do they call you?” Hillyard asked the Trump supporter.
“I’m ‘a racist,'” he responded to the question. He then tried to disprove the label.
“I went to school. I shared my dorm with a colored guy,” he continued, using a term considered at the very least offensive. “I have nothing against them – I grew up in the East. We grew up, with people,” he added.
“Do you think the President’s a racist?” Hillyard asked.
“No, I don’t. I really don’t,” he insisted.
“When you hear ‘send them back,'” Hillyard pressed, “when you hear him talk about communities of color, do you see why people do call him a racist?”
“Yes and no,” the man replied, “because some of those people he’s talking about have said just as bad things about him that you can’t say on TV.”
Watch:
Hillyard later tweeted the Iowa man’s “take” is “emblematic,” noting that “no longer does the conversation with voters go immediately to health care or tax policy or education (despite the importance of these issues to them). It goes, first, almost every time to race & the rhetoric out of the WH.”
Hat tip: Towleroad