Trump surrogate apologizes for Clinton blackface tweet

Pastor Mark Burns, a prominent surrogate of Donald Trump, apologized on Tuesday after retweeting a digitally manipulated image of Hillary Clinton in blackface, only the latest in a series of tweets shared from his account accusing the Democratic nominee of pandering to black voters.

CNN's Alisyn Camerota prefaced her question with Burns by remarking, "This is allegedly, it claimed to be of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton in black face. This is not true. This has been disproven and debunked time and again. This has surfaced in previous presidential races. So why share it?"


"Well, obviously you know I think in reference to that particular post — of course, I didn't have the correct information knowing that it wasn't Bill Clinton," Burns said in an interview with CNN's "New Day." "And I apologize for that as well, for posting incorrect information. Again, I think that's what the true message of grace is, that you know once you discover new information, you are quickly to change your opinion and get back on the right path. And that's what I'm doing right now to the whole world, is to say, listen, in my sincere heart of hearts, my job as a pastor is to draw people together, not push them away."

Burns added that once he realized "how it was pulling people apart," he regretted retweeting the image, which was still on his Twitter page at the time of the interview.

"But we need to begin to see each other just as Americans and really, really stop focusing on the things that divide us," Burns continued. "And that message was a divisive message. And once I discovered how divisive it was — this is not the campaign talking, this is not somebody yelling in my ear saying you need to take that down or this is Mark Burns all by himself, who truly loves people. And I love this country and I believe in Donald Trump for president."

Asked how his previous retweets, including a cartoon of Clinton in blackface, which has since been deleted, bring the country together, Burns attempted to explain.

"Again, I think at the time I did my initial tweet was to reinforce my position as to point out why this particular candidate Hillary Clinton is not really good for the African-American community, because the Democrat party automatically assumes they own the black vote, they own that voting bloc. And because they already know that voting bloc belongs to them, very little change takes place," Burns said. "How be it, I do know that the Republican Party in general has not as a whole party reached out to the African-American community like they should have, which is why I'm extremely proud of Mr. Trump and how he is going to be, I believe, without question the strongest Republican candidate that is declaring to the African-American community that you're not going to be — I'm not going to leave you where we've left you, but we're going to do whatever we can — all of us, all Americans, have an economic revival and that includes the African-American community."

Burns also offered an apology on his Twitter account.

"I'm so sorry for the offensive #Blackface image of @HillaryClinton but stand by the message that we Blacks ARE being Used by #Dems for VOTES," he wrote.

Joel Benenson, a senior strategist with Clinton's campaign, said later on CNN that Burns' sharing of the images "surrenders the ability to discuss the issues."

"There's an unfortunate pattern here, enormous insensitivity, a string of outrageous comments about people of color in this country, an attempt to in fact dismiss them as if they don't know who really has their interests at heart," Benenson said. "Hillary Clinton is a woman who has support of African-Americans and Latinos and people of color in high numbers because she's fought for racial justice and equality her entire life, starting the helping desegregate schools in the South as a young lawyer."