Kamala Harris: Trump is a racist

“I don’t think you can reach any other conclusion,” presidential candidate Kamala Harris said when an interviewer asked whether she thought President Trump is a racist.

“When you talk about him calling African countries s***hole countries, when you talk about him referring to immigrants as rapists and murderers, I don’t think you can reach any other conclusion,” Harris told reporter Terrell J. Starr in an interview with the Root.

“So you definitely agree that he’s a racist?” Starr asked again.

“I do, yes,” she said. “Yes.”

The junior senator from California is one of two black candidates in the running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020. Asked if she would “have a conversation” about reparations for African-Americans for slavery and Jim Crow, Harris said she would. She added that she supports the wholesale legalization of marijuana and believes that sex work should be decriminalized for consenting adults.

The interview came a day after Trump lashed out at Oscar winner Spike Lee on Twitter for what he called a “racist hit on your President, who has done more for African Americans (Criminal Justice Reform, Lowest Unemployment numbers in History, Tax Cuts,etc.) than almost any other Pres!”

Lee’s Oscars acceptance speech included a call to action for the 2020 election. “Let’s all mobilize,” he said. “Let’s all be on the right side of history. Make the moral choice between love versus hate. Let’s do the right thing!”

Trump’s attitude toward African-Americans is expected to be one of the topics that his longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, will be asked about at his appearances before Congressional committees, according to the New York Times. Cohen, who was to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform on Wednesday, was expected to be asked about Trump’s reported use of racist language during the decade he worked for the Trump Organization.

Last November, Vanity Fair reported on a conversation that Cohen said he had had with Trump about the racial makeup of a 2016 campaign rally. In the interview, Cohen said, “I told Trump that the rally looked vanilla on television. Trump responded, ‘That’s because black people are too stupid to vote for me.’”

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