Donald Trump and Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump look on during the fourth day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 18, 2024, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. | Source: Scott Olson / Getty
Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, made an appearance on The Breakfast Club Monday and got her Karen-derwear all in a bunch when Charlamagne Tha God laughed at her for claiming her demonstrably racist father-in-law isn’t racist and that she has “never seen” him “say a racist thing.” Honestly though, Charlamagne and the other hosts should have been cracking up throughout the interview. The way Lara asked for examples of Trump’s racism and then pivoted to how Trump has so many Black friends once those examples were given was a comical display of political spin. The way she tried to distance him from the ad he took out in four newspapers calling for the state-sanctioned murder of the Exonerated Five definitely needed to come with a laugh track. The way she tried to make Trump out to be an orangey-white savior of the Black community…well, actually, that bit has been done to death by Trump himself — but y’all get the point.
“It’s hysterical!” Charlamagne tha God laughs in Lara Trump’s face when she says Donald Trump isn’t racist. (Video: The Breakfast Club) pic.twitter.com/WEnLCMM8im
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) October 22, 2024
Host DJ Envy brought up a number of instances that show Trump’s racism, including the Central Park Five ad and his birther campaign against former President Barack Obama. Predictably, Lara dismissed it all as “ridiculous.”
“I’ve known this man for 16 years,” she said. “And, you know, you can go to each of those incidents, and you know, there was, there was never any, any proof of anything… However, I will say that you have to look at somebody and what they actually have done, and Donald Trump really was very beneficial to the Black community when he was in the White House. I will say I’ve never seen this man say a racist thing. I think the attacks are fairly…”
That’s when Charlamagne let out a chuckle, which Lara didn’t appreciate.
“Why is that funny?”
“I’m just laughing,” Charlamagne replied. “It’s hysterical. But, I mean, people act like there’s no such thing as Google or we don’t have TV, radio.”
“What is it that you think that he’s said?” Lara asked.
I hate when Trump supporters ask what Trump has said that was racist because it’s never a serious question. White people have a way of playing dumb when it comes to any racist statement that doesn’t explicitly include racial slurs. So, when they ask what racist or bigoted thing Trump has said, they’re really just looking for an opportunity to be obtuse and start gaslighting Black people — and Lara was no different.
A clip was played showing Trump’s 2016 rally speech in which he generalized Mexican migrants and rapists and drug dealers. The hosts could have gone further than that. They could have noted that Trump also repeatedly compared South American migrants to Hannibal Lecter, and called them “animals” who are “not human.” They could have mentioned how he wished the U.S. received more white immigrants from “nice” European countries. They could have brought up Trump and JD Vance’s hate speech campaign against Haitian migrants in Ohio.
None of it would have mattered though, because Lara’s response would have been the same.
“If you’re an American citizen, Donald Trump doesn’t care [about] your religion. He doesn’t care what you look like,” Lara said later in the interview, ignoring the fact that the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, who Trump spread pet-eating rumors about are in the country legally, which Trump acknowledged before promising to deport them anyway.
Of course, Lara couldn’t acknowledge the racism in Trump’s treatment of both documented and undocumented migrants, because then she might have to answer for her own racism, which she displayed when she announced her promise to stop “illegal citizens” from voting, despite her inability to show a shred of evidence that they are doing so. (Election data has shown time and time again that they aren’t.)
But Lara’s shtick wasn’t so much about defending Trump with any substantial counter-argument as much as it was about claiming he has been taken out of context over and over again, and presenting him as a friend to the Black community and everyone else.
“This is a man who was beloved by so many people in this country, and he was friends with everybody. Jesse Jackson, by the way… [Trump] let them stay rent-free in one of his buildings—the Rainbow Coalition—because he felt like at the time that was a very important thing,” she said.
Again, everybody should have laughed at that point. At the very least, host Jess Hilarious called her out on her “but…but…but…he has Black friends” deflection.
“Please don’t do that ‘he had black friends.’ That’s not going to work out,” Hilarious said. However, Lara just dug her heels in and continued her Miss Millie-like “Trump has always been good to you people” diatribe.
“You can go pick apart somebody all you want. It is a traditional talking point to attack Republicans, to call them racist,” she said. “But when you look at the things that he wants for this country, he wants every person to be successful. He wants Black Americans to be successful, Hispanic Americans to be successful, women to be successful.”
“I hate that the constant knee jerk is ‘Donald Trump is a racist, Donald Trump is a racist.’ I can tell you he wants every person to be successful. He’ll work for every American equally. He did that the first term when he was president, and he’ll do it again,” she continued.
First of all, Republicans are called racist because of the party’s policies and rhetoric, not because it’s “traditional.” Likewise, Trump isn’t being called racist as a “knee-jerk” reaction. Trump’s hate speech against migrants is demonstrably racist and xenophobic. His questioning of Kamala Harris’ racial identity was racist. His insistence that Black people are flocking to him because of his mugshot is both untrue and racist. He was racist when he told Black and brown congresswomen to “go back where they came from”, despite them all being born and/or raised in America. He was racist when he said, “Laziness is a trait in Blacks.”
As for Lara’s claim that Trump “wants every person to be successful,” well, I’ve already written about that particular piece of Republican malarky:
In reality, Trump spearheaded the propaganda-reliant attack on critical race theory, issued an executive order banning diversity training in the workplace during his presidency, and has promised to end all DEI programs across America if he’s elected again. Trump has tried to appeal to Black voters by likening his felony convictions to the systemic racism Black people face in the justice system, and then he has turned around and told white voters that systemic racism against Black people doesn’t exist while promising policies to combat fictional racism against white people.
Trump isn’t offering “everyone an opportunity” when he makes it clear that Black people should be limited to designated “Black jobs,” which he claims are being stolen by illegal immigrants despite economic data indicating that is not the case. (Just like crime data does not indicate that undocumented migrants are causing significant rises in crime and election data does not indicate that they are voting in U.S. elections.)
Was Trump fighting for “everyone” when he exclusively aimed his 2020 election fraud lie at predominately Black and Latino voting districts, threatening to disenfranchise more Black and brown voters than any other racial group by a large margin?
Lara went on to continue her father-in-law’s tradition of lying about Black people’s economic gains during his presidency by taking credit for economic gains that began under the Obama administration. She noted that he made strides in criminal justice reform, citing the thousands of Black people who were released from prison as part of Trump’s First Step Act, ignoring the fact that the bulk of those prisoners were released due to the policy that Trump simply remixed, which was Obama’s Fair Sentencing Act.
Meanwhile, she defended Trump when it was brought up that the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against him and his father over anti-Black housing discrimination in the ’70s.
“There was never any proof of anything with the houses; they settled that. There was no admission of anything there,” she said.
Yeah, Trump settled the lawsuit without admitting guilt, but that doesn’t make it untrue. And, of course, there’s only an absence of evidence of the discrimination if you ignore the multitude of Black people who claimed to be a victim of it, testimony that revealed that the applications filed by black apartment seekers were marked with a “C’’ for “colored,” and Trump’s dog-whistling claim that the government was trying to force him to rent to “welfare recipients.”
Again, a person who is asking for proof that Trump is racist is not asking a serious question, and Lara Trump should not be taken seriously. The hosts at The Breakfast Club should have been laughing at her the entire episode.
Anyway, you can watch the full episode below.
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