Photo: Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump is shutting down claims that he's racist.
In an interview with Semafor published on Friday (June 14), Trump suggested that he can't be racist because he has "so many Black friends."
“I have so many Black friends that if I were a racist, they wouldn’t be friends, they would know better than anybody, and fast,” Trump said. “They would not be with me for two minutes if they thought I was racist — and I’m not racist!”
The "Black friends" Trump referred to could include heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, retired MLB slugger Darryl Strawberry, boxing promoter Don King, and former NFL star and Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker, all of whom have defended the former president in previous remarks.
Trump believes his "strength" is one of the reasons that he's backed by these men.
“They see what I’ve done and they see strength, they want strength, okay,” Trump said. “They want strength, they want security. They want jobs, they want to have their jobs. They don’t want to have millions of people come and take their jobs.”
The former president went further to say he appeals to Black men because they can relate to his legal woes. Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of a felony last month.
“They see what’s happening. And a lot of them feel that similar things have happened to them. I mean, they’ve expressed that to me very plainly and very clear. They see what’s happened to them,” Trump told Semafor.
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