Donald Trump Jr. Insists His Father Isn't Racist Because He Hung Out With Rappers

Donald Trump Jr. is now trying to argue that his father President Donald Trump isn't a racist, telling the Daily Caller News Foundation that he was never called a racist before he ran for president. His biggest argument against Trump's bigotry is that he hung out with rappers.

“You know it’s amazing—all the rappers, all his African-American friends, from Jesse Jackson or [Rev.] Al Sharpton, have pictures with him,” he said. In the past, Ja Rule, Diddy, Odd Future, Snoop Dogg, and Lil Jon have all taken photos with Trump, during his days as a business executive. Kanye West also met with Trump in Dec. 2016 when he was president-elect. Kanye even claimed that he would have voted for Trump.

But Jay Zdenounced Trump for his “shithole countries” remark, and Sharpton has been consistently critical of Trump’s position on civil rights. Sharpton wrote an op-ed on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, blaming Trump for energizing racist beliefs.

Trump Jr. also explained how the tables turned when his father ran for president and became “the most terrible human being.” He continued, “But now, all of a sudden, you’re a conservative, so we must take this stance… again, it’s another backfire. You can only do so much before people start to see through the nonsense.”

Trump Jr. believes that denouncing his father as racist is a “smear” and a diversion from those who are “actually oppressed.”

“Certainly, racism exists, but if it’s your response to any argument you can’t win. You actually do a disservice to those people actually afflicted by it, to those people who are actually oppressed and hurt by real racism, real sexism,” he said. He added that repeatedly calling President Trump racist is “numbing” people to reality.

Donald Trump himself previously insisted, “I’m not a racist. I’m the least racist person you will ever interview.” The New York Times would also definitely disagree: In January, the Times published what they called “a definitive list” of every single racist comment Trump has made through his entire career as a public figure, proving that Trump didn’t just magically become racist when he became the president. He’s always been that way.