Is Suggesting That Judges With Mexican Parents Cannot be Impartial Racist? Views Differ
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On Friday’s edition of MSNBC’s “With All Due Respect,” two white guys had a spirited debate over a question that has America stumped: Were the comments Donald Trump made about Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s ethnicity racist? To be fair, it seemed like a conversation only one of them wanted to be having.
The video, flagged by Media Matters, shows Bloomberg journalist Mark Halperin insisting that Trump’s comments were “not racial” because “Mexico is not a race.” His co-host John Heilemann maintains that Trumps’ comments engage in “racial politics” and are designed to “stir up racial animus.”
The co-hosts were responding to remarks Trump has made throughout the week arguing that Curiel should recuse himself from cases involving Trump University, claiming the judge’s “Mexican heritage” is a “conflict of interest.” Curiel was born in Indiana.
With the possible exception of Maureen Dowd’s, no political pundit’s prominence says more about our underachieving and overcompensated elites than Halperin’s.