Jonathan Capehart, a black columnist at The Washington Post, claims President Trump Donald John TrumpSteele Dossier sub-source was subject of FBI counterintelligence probe Pelosi slams Trump executive order on pre-existing conditions: It 'isn't worth the paper it's signed on' Trump 'no longer angry' at Romney because of Supreme Court stance MORE called him a “racist” in response to a critical piece he wrote about him.

Capehart shared a PDF on Twitter Monday that he said the president had sent to him, reading: “Jonathan — You are the racist, not I.”

“Jonathan - You are the racist, not I. Get rid of your 'hate.' Best wishes, Donald Trump.”



Yeah, you read that right. https://t.co/XNyzGq13v3 pic.twitter.com/ZJjjbRXDJ2 — Jonathan Capehart (@CapehartJ) August 13, 2018

Capehart said in a column published by the Post on Thursday that he decided to share the note after having a “sense of déjà vu” when CNN host Don Lemon revealed last week that the president branded him a “racist” in 2011.

“I was racist,” Lemon said Tuesday, “because of the way that I challenged him.”

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Lemon was referring to an interview he had with Trump in May 2011, in which he pressed the future president on his views on race and on the controversial "birther" conspiracy theory he promoted about then-President Obama.

After the interview, Lemon recalled Trump vowing “he’d never come back and do an interview with me because I was racist."

Trump criticized Lemon again last week following an interview the CNN host did with NBA superstar LeBron James on the opening of James's new school in Ohio.

Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do. I like Mike! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 4, 2018

Capehart said it was “funny” to hear Lemon’s account because Trump did the same thing to him four years later.

“When I read the item about all this in The Post’s Reliable Source on Thursday, I had a sense of déjà vu,” Capehart wrote.

“Trump announced his candidacy on June 16, 2015. The same day he said Mexico was sending ‘rapists’ over the U.S. southern border,” the columnist continued. “By July 6, I’d seen and heard enough and wrote a post decrying Trump’s retweet (and then deletion) of an offensive dig directed at former Florida governor Jeb Bush.”

“Well, that didn’t go over well with the Queens-born builder. As was his wont, Trump had my piece printed out, then he scribbled out a quick missive atop it and had a PDF sent to me,” Capehart wrote.

The columnist said Trump’s response was laughable then but that, almost two years into the Trump presidency, such a “remark remains stunning.”

“There have been so many instances of Trump’s racism that I don’t have time to look for them all,” Capehart wrote. “But his wretched response to the white-nationalist mayhem unleashed on Charlottesville a year ago this Sunday remains the most egregious.”

“Trump ceded the moral authority of the Oval Office to drive a wedge into the nation’s festering racial wounds,” Capehart added. “He failed to use the tragedy to unite and heal our country. I haven’t been on this earth as long as Trump, but this much I (and Lemon) know: If your response to being legitimately called a racist is to hurl it back at your accuser, you most definitely are.”