Transcription
It is the first week of Black History Month in America, and we'll start with the sublime. It's worth reminding ourselves what civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision was for our country. When he stood before the masses in Washington, D.C., gave that iconic historic speech, said that he had a dream that one day, this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed, that all men are created equal. He dreamed of a nation where his children were no longer judged by the color of their skin.
And now for the ludicrous. In stark contrast, this is how Donald Trump decided to launch the first week of Black History Month in America in 2026. He did so by putting his racism on full display. He shared a blatantly flagrantly racist post last night. It led to the rare occurrence of some members of Donald Trump's own political party drawing a line in the sand, which led to an unusual reversal from Donald Trump, but not before the White House first tried to excuse the display of racism.
In one of Donald Trump's late-night truth social sprees, wherein he shared posts filled with conspiracy theories, the kind of spree that would make a figure in entertainment or sports face questions about their faculties, Donald Trump posted away until he got to a racist depiction of President Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama, depicting them as apes. He spread that image to his 10 million followers.
Now, normally around here, we wouldn't present this racist content, but we decided to do so, not just because a sitting president of the United States posted it. He posted this image of a former president, a very popular one, a first lady, but it isn't gonna be our job to edit or whitewash the most repugnant conduct and actions of Donald J. Trump. He shared this image to the world in our name as Americans, and you should see it, all of you, especially people who voted for him.
What's new about this one? Well, few things. I mean, Donald Trump's been launching racist attacks on President Obama and Michelle Obama for years now. Donald Trump championed and amplified the birther conspiracy theory that President Obama was not born in the United States alive. And the New York Times writes this of Donald Trump's latest display of racism towards President Obama and Michelle Obama, quote, "The depiction of Mr. and Mrs. Obama as apes "perpetuates a racist trope used historically "by slave traders and segregationists "to dehumanize black people and justify lynchings. "There's no denying that racist history "depicting black people as apes."
And I know we talk a lot about what Donald Trump knows and doesn't know. There's no idiot defense here because the White House actually defended this. They were good with this. White House press secretary, Caroline Levitt, went on the attack. She tried to justify Donald Trump's posts with this, quote, "This is from an internet meme video "depicting President Trump as the king of the jungle "and Democrats as characters from The Lion King. "Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today "that actually matters to the American public." Like you're deeply on popular agenda. Don't worry, we'll get to that, Caroline. And a little fact check for Lion King lovers. No apes. There are no apes in The Lion King.
The backlash to Trump's post, the swift, and oddly rarely bipartisan, the list of Republicans rebuking Donald Trump's racist posts grew by the hour today. Republican Senator Tim Scott, a staunch defender of Donald Trump, called the post, quote, "The most racist thing I've seen "out of this White House," end quote. Republican Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick writes this, quote, "Racism and hatred have no place in our country ever. "They divide our people "and weaken the foundations of our democracy. "History leaves no doubt when division is inflamed "by those in positions of power. "The consequences are real and lasting. "Whether intentional or careless, "this post is a grave failure of judgment "and is absolutely unacceptable from anyone, "most especially the President of the United States. "A clear and unequivocal apology is owed."
After leaving the post up for 12 hours, Donald Trump then deleted it, and desperate to shift the blame somewhere, anywhere. A White House official says, "A White House staffer, quote, "erroneously, erroneously posted the racist content." That's the case. It is inexplicable then that there's still been zero apology issued to the Obamas. A blatantly racist post amplified by Donald Trump during the first week of Black History Month is where we start today.
Senior White House reporter, Ron Hoyard, is here. He has chronicled an unbelievable, unbelievably shameful list of all the examples of Donald Trump's racist conduct. It took my breath away to see it the way you compiled it, Vaughn. Also joining us, Princeton University professor and political analyst, Eddie Gladys, here. Puck News senior political columnist and national affairs analyst, John Heilman, is here. With me at the table, host of Politics Nation, President of the National Action Network, the Reverend Al Sharpton's here. What are your thoughts on this?
I think that you raised in your buildup something that's very important. People need to understand, Donald Trump began his political career with racism. I mean, we fought with him in New York for many years. Marched on him when he called for the execution of five young men who were falsely accused of raping a white woman, was found guilty of discrimination in housing. But when he decided he wanted to be Democrat sometime, would go to social events with all of us, he decided to enter politics by saying, Barack Obama is not one of us. The racial overtones, undertones, whatever way you wanna call it, is how he entered the political arena. So we are only seeing the manifestation of what he said it was all along. He won the White House with us against them. He ran an administration. Don't forget in his first term is when we went through George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, all of that, he was president and did nothing about it other than to go in front of a church across the street from the White House and said when the shooting starts, the looting starts, the shooting starts and threaten the protesters. So it's like full circle. Now we see in the beginning of Black History Month, 2026, the President of the United States puts out a depiction of the former president and first lady who raised the hopes of many in this nation that we had crossed some line and made some advancement as a society and he comes with something that only the Confederate President Jefferson Davis would have done if there was Twitter then. And there's no way around this when Tim Scott would even denounce him and you can't get a public apology and somebody, if you claim somebody in the White House that it, how does someone have access to what the president can put out? And why aren't they fired? Why aren't they being walked out like you walked out Alma Rosa in your first term? You walked her out. Well, walk somebody out of the White House if that somebody exists. The reason I don't think you can walk them out is you have to open up the Oval Office and walk him out.
I think that's exactly right. I think it also isn't a mask off moment. It is sort of the substance of the administration is state sanctioned racial profiling, asking people for their papers. I mean, that's what's happening in America, in Minneapolis, but all over the country. You have state sponsored racial profiling. Minneapolis, if you're a certain color or speak a certain language, you're an automatic suspect, even if you're two years old. And you also see where they're now saying, oh, let's nationalize elections. We're going to take all of your rights away. All of this inside of one year and a few days of being in office. Clearly the first thing he did when he got in office this time, declare war on diversity, equity and inclusion, DEI. That became the top of his agenda. So this is not out of context. This is not a one-off. He came in saying this and he came in trying to in many ways execute this as president of the United States. And he was able to get up a lot of that of his following to go along with that until they themselves are saying that he was picking their pockets while he was talking about blacks. And I'm not saying that everyone, I say it often and it's been said before. I'm not saying everyone that voted for Donald Trump's a racist, but every racist voted for Donald Trump because they felt comfortable there.
Let me ask you this question. 'Cause I feel like we could talk for two hours about Donald Trump, but what about all the people funding Donald Trump's excesses? You've got companies including Comcast paid for the destruction of the East Wing. You've got tech executives standing shoulder to shoulder. Tim Cook was in a tux the day after one of the deadly ice shootings in Minnesota. I mean, what do you think it says about the titans of industry that they're standing shoulder to shoulder with Donald Trump?
It says that they have a tolerance or an engagement themselves, one or the other. At best they tolerate it. They either like this. Yes, at best they tolerate it, at worst they engage it and entertain it. And they ought not be allowed to have government contracts, government dealings, city, state or federal or our consumer dollars. That's why some of us have engaged in trying to resurrect the boycott type of infrastructure, picking off some of these companies. You wanna finance this, you shouldn't finance it at our dollars. I don't care if you don't love me, but you're not gonna use my money to institute and implement hate. You don't ever have to love me, but I'm not gonna finance you having this kind of discriminatory atmosphere or fund somebody that is blatant and openly saying that. And one thing we've not seen is one statement, one tweet from one of the corporate giants that deal with government. We've even seen Tim Scott, I'll repeat, where are the ones that are making all of this money off of this administration that sit around the table with him and cut deals? Where is one CEO standing up saying, this is unacceptable and we can no longer participate financially with you if this is your behavior? Where's that? Oh, I'm sorry, they're probably going to see his movie out about Milano.
We're tracking new footage tonight of this image here. We are seeing something you don't usually see, the convicted Epstein associate, Jelaine Maxwell, in another way that we have seen the law working late, delayed, slowly, as I've told you in our special reports, and yet ultimately working. Now, what we're seeing is Epstein being discussed from a 2016 deposition.
As far as I'm aware, a professional masseuse showed up for a massage. There is nothing inappropriate or incorrect about that, and your mischaracterization of it, I think, is unfortunate.
How many teenagers did he have that were professional masseuses that worked in his home? Jets of Foreman Foundation. How many? First of all, I'm not aware of teenagers who worked in his home.
At that time, she was defending him. The DOJ had this material, and we have reported on how the new files show not only how Epstein built his web, but how often he was able to corrupt elite power centers, sometimes in both parties, to evade the long arm of the law. Drawing on the new files and new evidence we've only just gotten in the last few days, let's look deeper at the timeline. In 2007, prosecutors internally said they had the goods, that they had enough material, evidence, testimony on Epstein for an actual sex trafficking case of not one or two, but actually a dozen teenage girls. And they wrote, and this is new that we've learned this, a 56-page draft indictment. So back then, some inside government were ready to charge Epstein for that whole terrible alleged conspiracy. But here's what I wanna show you tonight, and this is newly revealed. That was the draft indictment, but it was discarded. The Bush DOJ never allowed it to be filed, and that was the big case. Instead, the top prosecutor, later a notorious name, Trump official Alex Acosta, at the time, he let Epstein off the hook with that controversial secret deal. And that meant just one year in prison for the lesser count of soliciting prostitution. Acosta and others have argued that this was basically the case they had, that these things are complicated. Well, it's taken all this time, but I can report for you tonight that now the new Epstein files released from Friday shows that's false, that there was a whole written draft indictment of the bigger case, and they just discarded it. So what happened? Some prosecutors had that case written up ready to go. We've now seen it, but their bosses, this later Trump ally Acosta, or perhaps bosses in Washington, discarded it. The DOJ, since then, I should mention, has only indicted one person related to what's been documented as this sprawling conspiracy. And so I'm gonna get into this because we are learning new things. For the first time, the new Friday files show the DOJ was eyeing other suspects. It's a mob-style chart, and the feds made this of Epstein's inner circle. So let's take a look at this right now as part of our special report. I just can tell you, this is a rare view inside a normally secret federal probe. You almost never see this type of thing before, during, or after a case, and the federal laws protect that. What's different here, of course, is Congress changed the laws for this particular mess of Epstein and the secrecy. So we have questions stoked here about why the feds, under first Trump and then the Biden DOJ, did not apparently pursue and indict most of these men, or the others who knew or partook in what the government also calls a broad sex trafficking ring. Which is it? A giant sex trafficking ring with someone at the center and other men involved in crimes, knowing and otherwise? Or not? And if it's not, then what were the feds doing with their chart and their leads? What are the feds doing? Who has gotten off the hook? And how is this pressure building in ways that have completely come out of control of elite institutions? We've seen people ousted, sidelined, even fired just in the last week. Through, we're joined by Gretchen Carlson, a veteran journalist, advocate, and expert on these issues, co-founder of Lift Our Voices. Welcome back.
Great to see you, Ari. Great to have you. I showed some of the reporting we've done, and to let audiences in on how it works, if you get 30 documents, you go through 'em. You get 100 documents, you might lean more on a print outlets coverage, and you go through 'em. When you get three million documents, everything then becomes this delusion. I'll put our timeline back up. This was new reporting we've done, but also leaning on the documents and other materials where I showed before the break, that draft sex trafficking indictment is newly detailed, although there were reports about how much they backed off then. These new emails from Trump officials like Lutnick and Musk are revealed as of Friday, and we go on through that timeline. I wonder what you think about this overdue reckoning as people learn what's really in the files.
Yeah, I think two things. I think that this was pre-MeToo, and so I think that it was easy to pass this off, much more so than it would be post-MeToo to be able to get away with that. So that's my first thought. My second thought is that this is affecting both sides of the aisle, and so there was a reason to try to quash it no matter who was the president at the particular time.
It's such an important point you raise that while we don't need to only sift it politically, we are in a two-party system where the DOJ and these powerful forces are usually under one of the parties. And to your point, Epstein cultivated both parties. He had a top Obama-Biden era lawyer, Kathy Rumler, which we reported on. He had outreach to others. Alan Dershowitz is a complex figure, but he did spend many decades sort of on the center-left of law, of course, later representing Trump. And so, again, to your point, when you look back at what he was doing 20 years ago, it was cultivating those figures, as well as Ken Starr, Alex Acosta, and these others. As someone who's been at the intersection of law and journalism, does it bum you out? Is it depressing that it worked for so long, and what does that teach us about fixing it now?
It teaches us that power rules and sex rules. I mean, unfortunately, when I read through these documents now as well, it's completely disheartening to know that sex has always ruled, right? I mean, it doesn't matter what political party you're in. When somebody wants to treat you poorly, they don't ask you, are you a Republican, an Independent, or a Democrat? I mean, we're finding that out when we look at this. And I think that, honestly, the Me Too movement has changed all of this, because this would never have happened post 2016. That he would not have gotten that two-part deal back in 2008. And no administration, well, I shouldn't say that, maybe some administrations, but for the most part, most administrations would not allow this to be covered up. I think one of the most important things, though, that we should be talking about tonight is that members of this House Committee are gonna get a chance to go in and see these unredacted files next week. And so much of the criticism, since they started releasing this on a Friday a week ago, was that they redacted a lot of names of these powerful, potential men. Well, now you're gonna have members of Congress who are gonna be able to go in there, and they're gonna be able to see this, and they're gonna be able to come out and say what they saw. And they're also gonna be having potentially public hearings. So I don't think this story is over, Ari. I think that they tried to come out a week ago and say that, okay, we've released everything, and that's it, and nobody asked any more questions. You know what?
Do you think, yeah, do you think, as part of the oversight, Congress and the Democrats could do it themselves, should hold more hearings? I mean, they could do the January 6th model. You could hold prime time hearings. You could go through this. People sometimes forget that effective hearings, effective congressional oversight, usually is built on a bunch of research. This was a research bonanza. It took years. It was overdue. But now there's more material than you'd normally have for any hearing.
Yeah, well, the people that you show in your timeline, Congress has said that they're gonna subpoena them for these hearings. So, I mean, one of the men committed suicide in a prison in France, but the other people who are there, they are going to subpoena them. Bill Clinton tonight, former president, has said, "Let's do this public hearing. "Let's do it on camera." And so, I think that this, as much as we try to say that a week ago, or at least the Trump administration has tried to say that a week ago, this was a document dump on a Friday afternoon, and let's be done with this, and that he attacks female reporters who continue to ask him about this, legitimate questions about this, I think this story is far from over, Ari, because if they have these public hearings, these members of Congress will have seen these unredacted files. And they're gonna tell, I think they're gonna tell the American public the truth.
So joining us now, MSNOW Senior National and Political Reporter, Jacob Soboroff, MSNOW National Reporter, Rosa Flores, and Politico White House reporter to talk about the immigration policy broadly, my award. Jacob, first to you, give us a story of this father and daughter.
Elvis Tipan Echeverria is a 25-year-old Katie from Ecuador, and he came here two years ago with his little girl, Chloe, and on January 22nd, they were driving around going to get some fruit, and they got followed back to their house into this alley. It turns out, we just happened to be driving by, myself and Connor Barak, our photographer, looked over to the left, we saw all these ice watchers that you see on your screen right there. We didn't know who was there. I mean, it looked like a massive targeted operation for, as they say, the so-called worst of the worst. They deployed flashbang grenades, the whistles were blowing by the ice watchers. You can see in my hand, I have a gas mask, worried about what was gonna ultimately happen there. There were people from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, as well as the Border Patrol. On the scene, it turns out they were going after a father and his two-year-old daughter without any information about who they were or any particular targeted reason why. He says it was racial profiling because he was Latino and he also believes, like Liam Ramos' parents, Elvis does, that they targeted him and asked Chloe to be given to her mother, Nicole, and this is a video obtained exclusively by RK Guerrero for MS Now, to bait the mother outside and to arrest her too. She ultimately didn't come out, but I did wanna ask Elvis what he thought about the tactics that were being used when I spoke to him earlier this week. He's now locked up in a county jail in Minnesota. This is what he said. (video game beeping) Do you think that they were asking you to call your wife because they wanted to take her too, or would they have given Chloe to her and allowed them both to stay in the house? (speaking in foreign language) Obviously, it was to detain her because she's Latina. They wouldn't have let her take our girl. They wanted all three of us. Katie, I'd encourage everybody to scan the QR code directly below me on the screen right now because you can watch our full seven-minute documentary about what transpired here. It comes at a time when there are more kids than ever in immigration custody under the Trump administration. And while two stories about children allegedly being used as bait to bring families out doesn't mean that it's a policy or necessarily a practice, these are two stories within a single week's time that took place in different parts of Minneapolis when we were there, and we felt it was important to dive deeper and to talk to Elvis himself specifically about what happened there. Yeah, you also wonder if it's happening elsewhere. We just haven't known about it. We haven't seen video of it. What's gonna happen to the family now? Unfortunately, Elvis has signed his deportation order and he's gonna bring his wife Nicole and Chloe back to Ecuador with him because as he says, and you can see it in the film and read about it in our article, that he doesn't wanna ever put her through this again to have six masked, heavily armed agents surrounding them, breaking the window, cut her hand during this operation. It'll be a lifetime of trauma as one senior federal social worker said to me during family separation. Childhood trauma leads to a century of suffering and he doesn't want her to experience anything like this ever again, so they're going back to Ecuador. So why did they leave Ecuador to begin with? Are they going back and are they gonna feel okay being there? He says he's worried about going back and he doesn't know ultimately what's gonna happen to them. They left to come for a better life and he had an act of asylum case, is my understanding, that was ongoing. The federal government has said to us that he was being pursued because he had a felony reentry charge. That means he was deported once and came back again and what I can tell you is that Elvis has denied that he ever came to the United States more than once and that he's ever been deported before and I guess what I would say about that is we have heard so much from this administration about the people that they say are not only the worst of the worst but that they are going after, that it's hard to give them the benefit of the doubt at this point, Trisha McLaughlin denied that. She said we don't use children as bait but all I can do is present the facts on the ground as I know them and I can tell you that Elvis is not looking forward to going back to Ecuador because he came to the United States to seek a better life in the first place.
All right, Rosa, you encountered something interesting down there in Texas. The administration had gone on about how they ended the policy of catch and release that it was a bad policy, blame the Biden administration for using it. What did you discover?
Well, what's fascinating, Katie, is that under the Biden administration, we've heard Republicans talk about catch and release. Well, what our reporting is showing that is apparently happening under the Trump administration is catch, detain and then release of two different populations, people who have recently crossed the border, who are arrested at the border, detained and then released, and people in the interior of the country. We've all seen the viral videos of individuals being arrested, detained and now released. Now our reporting shows that for the past few weeks, the Trump administration has been dropping off up to 100 migrants to Laredo per day. Again, for the past few weeks, we've been reporting on this. Now, the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, has been very critical of the Biden administration for these practices, for dropping off migrants in cities in this state. So in holding him accountable, I asked him, "Well, what about the Trump administration doing the same thing now?" Here's what I asked. Take a listen. Governor, we've learned that the federal government has been dropping off migrants here in Laredo for the past few weeks. And I'm wondering if the Trump administration has coordinated with you about those drop-offs. I've had no information or conversation, whatever, about dropping them off here. All I can tell you is this, not knowing the extent of what you're talking about, even not knowing that, I can tell you for a fact, there are fewer being dropped off now than there were two years ago under the prior administration. Now, Kenny, I followed up and asked the governor, "Are you going to extend the same criticism that you had for the Biden administration now to the Trump administration for doing the exact same thing?" He dodged the question and he said again, that he didn't know anything about these drop-offs. I should add that we reached out to ICE and CVP about our reporting and have not heard back. We reached out to DHS and we did hear back, but they didn't answer any of our specific questions, Katie. Do you have numbers on how many people are being taken, detained, and then dropped off? From our reporting, and the latest that we have is actually from US Congressman Henry Cuellar, and that is up to 100 migrants have been dropped off every single day in Laredo for the past few weeks. Now, when we were there, we were there for a few hours, Katie, seven migrants were dropped off. And the thing that stood out to me the most was there was an Afghan woman, a mother of four children who had been arrested by ICE twice in the past few months. So she was arrested, detained, released, and ended up at that shelter in Laredo. And then later she was again in the interior arrested, detained, and then released. She was pretty much exhausted by this process, Katie, saying that she was just tired of the federal government re-arresting her. Yeah, so I guess, how are they getting over here? We've been told the border is completely closed, no longer porous, so what's happening at the border? I'm having a little trouble hearing you, but I believe you're asking me about the arrests on the border. What's happening there is what we've always seen in the past, and that is people are still crossing the border, several thousand people are still crossing the border, they're getting processed by immigration authorities, and then transferred to ICE, Katie. That is the key. Back in the Biden administration, when everybody was talking about catch and release, and the Biden administration was criticized for that practice, it was border patrol who was arresting at the border and then releasing into border communities. What's different under the Trump administration is that we're seeing this extra step. They are getting arrested at the border when they cross, they're detained for a while, and then at least some individuals are being released. Not just because we've learned this from officials and from individuals in Laredo who have told us about this, but we talked to migrants themselves in those two buckets, people who had recently crossed into the United States, and also individuals who had been arrested in the interior of the country.
Okay, all right, Maya, let's talk more broadly about immigration policy within the administration. What is the president talking about when he wants, when he says he wants a softer approach, but also still needs to be tough?
Yeah, I mean, it's a direct response to what we've seen in Minneapolis over the last month. We saw some personnel changes. They obviously moved out border patrol commander, Greg Bovino, who was really known for his flashy tactics. They brought in Tom Homan, who has been saying that his goal there is to deescalate and move away from some of those tactics. He's admitted to some mistakes. We saw them pull out 700 of the agents this week. But I think when you see the president talk about the soft touch while also saying they still need to be tough on immigration, I mean, it's really an encapsulation of the challenge facing Trump. And frankly, Tom Homan in Minnesota, I mean, you have American citizens who have been killed by these agents, the White House was already on edge with polling showing that the president's support of immigration was slipping. Obviously Republican criticism in the last month really hit a high in terms of pushback. And so he's responding to that and the concern that things have gone too far and that they're gonna hurt themselves with these swing voters, Latino voters, independents, moderates, you name it. But then you also have the immigration hawks in the White House and also on the outside saying, you can't retreat here, that this was one of the central campaign promises for the president. And that if he abandons it, the party's base might also stay home. So that's what's really driving that message in the White House.
The first statement that the White House put out today, this morning about this video, was from the White House press secretary where she said that this was fake outrage, faux outrage, and that all the president did was repost a video, a meme video, that depicted him as the king of the jungle and some Democrats as characters from The Lion King. There is not one ape in The Lion King. Not one ape, there's a baboon, Rafiki, but there are no apes in The Lion King. So the reality of the situation is that this, the trope of depicting black people as animals, close to apes, actually did not start as an insult nor as a joke, it started as justification for the rape and pillage and enslavement of African people on the continent, the continent of Africa, you can literally look it up. And it was what the white Europeans perfected that the Americans used to justify chattel slavery. Take that all the way up to the civil rights movement, again, the trope reappeared to justify why black people in this country shouldn't vote. And there's a direct line from what the white Europeans cooked up in the 1700s to this particular White House that now seems to deem anyone who is not a straight white man, a DEI hire and not there because of merit. So know your history. Yes, this is in fact a distraction. That don't mean we're not gonna address it though, 'cause it is Black History Month. Only six days in, dammit. Y'all need to pull it together.
Well, not too much more to say after that because it is a perfect summation, professor, of where the country finds itself right now. My take on this today was really, really a hard one because this is what Donald Trump thinks of black people. Yes. I appreciate the history lesson. I appreciate the connection 'cause it's very important. But at the end of the day, this is what this man as president of the United States thinks of black people. Irrespective of their title, position, their accomplishments, their successes, their failures, who they are, who they aren't. You are black and that's enough for me. His history, his first public discourse on the subject of race occurred in 1973, '74 when he was sued by the Department of Justice for discriminating. Why? Because he didn't want black people to live in the apartments that his name was on. So this for me is just a continuation of the Donald Trump story that many of us have been trying to get both black and whites inside the party to understand and stop shilling for this person the way you have. Because guess what? You own this stain now too. You own this. So as great people coming out today, professor, and saying, "This is the most racist. Oh my God, where were you when there was shithole countries? Where were you when there was the talking about black people and black women in particular, calling them piggies, calling them names? Where were you then?" I don't believe this is the most racist thing Tim Scott's heard in the White House. Thank you. That's just the first thing. I don't believe that. I don't believe that's the worst thing. I have been to South Carolina. I know some of the things that are said in this White House. I don't think it's the most racist thing Donald Trump has ever said. We still don't know what might be on the cutting room floor from the apprentice, but I have heard stories 'cause I've talked to people who actually worked on the apprentice. So none of this ever shocks me. It also, because it's Black History Month, and because of the Epstein files, and because of the economy, I don't allow him to elicit my outrage. There you go. Because I'm infinitely more disgusted that this man is bankrupting people. I am infinitely more disgusted this man is taking away healthcare. I am infinitely more disgusted that this guy does not care about the fact that he socialized with alleged child rapists and molesters for years and years and years. This is just part and parcel of what Donald Trump has always been. And I'm also never impressed by Republicans who now, when the heat is finally hitting them about ICE, about the economy, about everything else, now they can suddenly say, "Well, I guess we can sort of admit he's racist." He's always been racist. That's not new. It's not new. And I can pat my head and rub my tummy, and I don't have to be able to look at his racism and have that distract from the other ways that he is destroying this country.
Well, it's not new, and it's not just in the language or in the rhetoric. It's also steeped so deeply into the policies of this administration. I mean, I think back to the way Donald Trump originally came to power with birtherism, which, yes, is fundamentally racist, but is also this questioning about who is deserving of being American, who is considered legitimate in their American identity and in their power as American. And there is an absolute through line there to his attacks on voting, to his attacks on the 14th Amendment, to what we are watching play out in Minneapolis and all across this country as his deportation force goes into American cities, and is in many cases taking American citizens and detaining them because the Supreme Court of the United States has condoned racial profiling. So Michelle, draw for me a line from what we are hearing from this White House and what they're actually doing.
Well, and I think, you know, to bring it back to Minneapolis, I mean, the reason that they went in there in the first place was not because there was some sort of crisis of undocumented immigrants. There are fewer undocumented people in Minnesota than in the average state in this country. They went in there because of this demonization campaign against Somalis in particular, right? And then that's also why they went into Lewiston, Maine. Lewiston, Maine, for a long time, was held up as this immigration success story, a town that had been revitalized by immigration after kind of being hard on its luck, after the mills closed. Again, they go specifically into Lewiston, Maine. Then there was news earlier this week, I was in Springfield, Ohio, because there was plans to go into Springfield, Ohio, a town that's been revitalized by Haitian immigrants and that's been targeted over and over by this administration. They've tried to take away TPS status for Haitians, you know, who are here legally because they have temporary protected status. Everybody knows that Haiti is not a safe place for people to return to, and nevertheless, they've tried to claim in court that it is, that somehow the crisis there is over. So the way that they're doing mass deportation is by ethnic group, which is, you know, I mean, there's a name for that, right? And so I just think the reason that Donald Trump is president is because he channeled white rage towards Barack Obama with his birtherism conspiracy. And it's been, I mean, not just racism, you know, Donald Trump also channels a lot of misogyny, but racism has been absolutely a through line in his two presidencies now. And the reason that this moment, I think, is interesting is that there's so much denial among Republicans who will insist that kind of Donald Trump isn't what we can all see that he is. And then every so often something happens where that denial becomes unsustainable. And they all, you know, it happened kind of after January 6, it's happened at a couple other moments. It never lasts, but there's always this moment where you can see him clearly, and even they have to somehow respond to, you know, the obscenity of having this man in the White House.
Yeah, I mean, we wanna time in, Jason. I also wanna add that, like, let's be clear about everybody who's responsible for this, right? It's not just that you have white Americans who are racist, whatever, but Republicans, they can't sell their racism without the act of participation of black and brown people, okay? We can look at Candace Owens, okay? We can look at some of the things that Byron Donald has excused. We can look at some of the things Tim Scott has excused. Nick Fuentes, Enrique Tarot, the head of the Proud Boys, they can't even sell racism without black and brown people helping them, and that's part of the problem. So again, I think it's important for us to highlight what Donald Trump has always been, but we have to make sure that we look at racism and systematic racism and white supremacy and all these sorts of things as a group project, and it gets really lazy if we just say it's Trump and his administration. There are lots of people participating in this kind of problem, and that's what I think America needs to understand, because as long as we just think it's him being a bad outlier and it's his party sort of protecting him, we forget about the fact that this is a pervasive problem, whether you're looking at ICE, whether you're looking at policing, whether you're looking at the Department of Justice or anything else like that, it is a larger issue than just one bad president. He is a symptom, not necessarily the cause of these problems.
Well, the problem is, in America, we have never truly reckoned with how this country came to be in the first place, and so when we discuss white supremacy, we don't talk about it as an ideology, but that is in fact what it is, and because it's an ideology, black people can be white supremacists. Come on now, just like women can be sexist, right? Because there is a belief in the patriarchy, there's an ideology, there's an infrastructure there, but I don't wanna get too analytical tonight.
I will just say that this is a distress. You pride yourself on being analytical, and we live for it, Simone Sanders Townsend. On tonight of all nights, I wanna hear that analysis, and I just wanna tell you, I'm not sure where this happened, one of the producers jumped in my ear. The President of the United States was just asked about this by several reporters at the White House, and he dodged all of those questions, Simone.
I mean, because the actual answer is, you didn't think it was funny? Of course this is what I think, let's move on. Why is this a big deal for you? That's the actual answer, because that's the truth of who he is, but it's just a little too untoward, given the outrage from every corner of the political spectrum today, for him to say that, but there's one thing about this president, he has been wildly consistent in who he is, and so maybe, I think the issue that Jason Johnson and the chairman are raising here, is that there are a number of people that have yet to reckon that not only did they excuse the president's racism and sexism, right, and his love of white supremacist ideology, because that is in fact what the Great Replacement Theory is rooted in, okay? This idea that all, like, now the Republicans are saying, Democrats are shipping in, they're letting in all of these brown people to vote for them, and they're trying to replace us, so we have to send them back to where they're from. That's what Stephen Miller's saying. That is white supremacist ideology, but if we call it that and we say that, then there's a lot of people that think that they're good and moderate, and the good guys, okay, and that are just waiting 'til Donald Trump is out of here, and then we're gonna go back to how it was, there are a lot of people that they need to reckon with they themselves, okay? So I don't know if the people gonna do their work. I will just say the Epstein files ain't going anywhere.
Yeah, the Epstein files aren't going anywhere, and we will continue to talk about them because the victims of the Epstein files deserve this moment more so than Donald Trump wants them to have it. Michelle, I don't wanna mix apples and oranges here, but you really laid out the through-line argument and narrative around how all this comes together. Let me ask you this, and I'm not trying to put a lot on you as a woman, as a white woman, nothing like that. As an American, as you step back and look at this, how do you see America receiving this moment? How do you think this lands? We have outrage and notes from people who have profile and so forth, but someone at the kitchen table tonight, are they talking about this? Is this something? Because my suspicions is this may not land as deeply as we would like it to, and that there may be more people who take comfort and may even laugh at it and think it's a humorous way, and Black History Month was always a waste to begin with.
Well, I think that probably a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump feel that way, and you can see in a certain way this kind of post as fan service towards a certain part of his base. I mean, I do think it has clearly landed enough that the White House has felt like it had to respond, right? They felt like they had to back off, they felt like they had to blame it on some mysterious staffer who goes on kind of posting sprees from the president's account in the middle of the night, which if somebody's authorized to do that, we should probably know about it. But look, this is a very, very unpopular president. I think that this has clearly broken through, it's why so many Republicans felt like they had to respond, like they had to denounce him, even if now some of them are already walking back their denunciations or saying there's nothing to see here. But again, I think it was one of those moments, and there are these moments from time to time when the veil drops and the sort of lies that people have to tell themselves to justify this kind of kamikaze presidency become insupportable.
Yes, my final word on this, Alicia, is straightforward to the camera, to the American people. When we elect a representative, a president, they are an extension of who we are. Tonight I have to ask you, is this who we are? Because this is who our president is.