Yang says ‘no choice’ but to call Trump a white supremacist

by Faris Bseiso, CNN by by Faris Bseiso, CNN

2020 Democratic hopeful Andrew Yang said Friday that there is “no choice” but to call President Donald Trump a white supremacist, becoming the latest of the Democratic field to label the President with that term.

In an interview on “New Day,” Yang said “if someone acts and speaks in a certain way then you have no choice but to say that’s what he is,” when asked by CNN’s John Berman if he would call the President a white supremacist.

The comment comes after other Democratic presidential candidates have called the President a white supremacist in the wake of the two mass shootings, one involving a white supremacist suspect who is believed to have authored a racist, anti-immigrant document targeting Hispanics, as well as Trump’s recent series of racist comments that included his calls for four minority congresswomen to “go back” to the countries from which they came. Three of the four lawmakers are natural-born US citizens.

“In this case, I mean, it’s very clear the President’s actions and words have conveyed a strong sense to many Americans that he has white supremacist beliefs and that’s the only standard we can go by,” Yang said.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand have both said Trump is a white supremacist, making their rebukes of the President some of the strongest from the crowded field of Democratic presidential candidates.

Other candidates, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, have agreed with the characterization of the President as a white nationalist. Rep. Tim Ryan, another 2020 hopeful, told CNN’s Jake Tapper that “the white nationalists think (Trump’s) a white nationalist. And that’s the crux of the problem.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden, who was quick to connect Trump’s racist rhetoric to the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, stopped short of calling the President a white supremacist outright at the Iowa State Fair on Thursday.

“Why are you so hooked on that? You just want me to say the words so I sound like everybody else,” Biden told a reporter. “I’m not everybody else — I’m Joe Biden. I’ve always been who I am. I’m staying the way I am. He is encouraging white supremacists — you can determine what that means.”