President Donald Trump—a man who was sued by the Justice Department in 1973 for racial discrimination, who called for the death penalty against the Central Park Five, who claimed for years that the first black president of the United States wasn’t born in this country, who labeled Mexicans rapists and criminals during his first 2016 presidential campaign speech, who insinuated that a Muslim-American Gold Star wife wasn’t “allowed” to speak and who reportedly said that Haitians “all have AIDS”—would like you to know that he’s not racist.
As USA Today reports, Trump was asked if he was a racist—a perfectly normal question to ask an American president in 2018—and he responded: “I am not a racist. I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed.”
As his lengthy record shows, that statement could be true only if that particular reporter had only ever interviewed literal African slave owners. And even then, it might be up for debate.
The Washington Post reports that Trump “spoke evenly, without obvious anger” and “did not appear surprised by the question.” He was arriving for dinner with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy at (where else?) his golf club in West Palm Beach, Fla.
He also denied making his “shithole countries” comments during a meeting Thursday with congressional lawmakers about whether to include Haiti, El Salvador and African countries in an immigration bill. But Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican, and Sen. Dick Durbin, a Democrat, who were both sitting in on that meeting, confirmed that the comments originally reported by the Washington Post were correct.
Read more at USA Today and the Washington Post.