“You can easily argue that the president of the United States is a racist with his policies and his rhetoric”

During a conference call Monday, Donald Trump allegedly encouraged his campaign staff and surrogates to continue their aggressive insistence that Judge Gonzalo Curiel – the federal judge overseeing the class action suit involving claims of fraudulence from Trump University – remove himself from the trial because of his inability to be impartial as an American judge of Mexican heritage.

In response to concerns from his team and advisers on how to continue this blatantly racist attack, Trump responded yesterday that they should flip the charges back on the accuser themselves.

“The people asking the questions, those are the racists,” Trump said yesterday.

Ah yes, the “whoever smelt it, dealt it” approach to racism.

Never mind the litany of racist statements I’ve made since declaring my candidacy, never mind that I was sued twice in the 1970s by the Department of Justice for refusing to rent to qualified families of color, never mind that I urged New York State to bring back the death penalty so it could execute five black teenagers for a crime they did not commit (to which I refused to apologize and called their settlement from the City “a joke”), never mind that the entirety of my ascendance into the political mainstream was marked by insisting the president is not a real American, YOU’RE THE REAL RACIST FOR CALLING ME RACIST.

Tuesday morning, it appeared that the first of his intrepid band of followers was testing the attack out. Appearing on CNN, GOP Rep. Lee Zelden (R-N.Y.) begin the interview by implying that Democrats were the real racists for trying to mobilize minority voters.

“When you’re micro-targeting a community, and you are putting blacks together and Hispanics together, and certain economic messages and positions on issues, quite frankly, with the way I define racism, I see it in a lot of policies and statements that have taken place,” Zeldin said.

But it isn’t just the Democratic Party who’s racist, Zeldin claimed. President Obama, the first black president in U.S. history, is actually the racist, the result of him “promoting bigotry.”

“You can easily argue that the president of the United States is a racist with his policies and his rhetoric.,” Zeldin said. “You could go back to presidents of the past.”

This prompted host John Berman – in possibly the most fitting end to a Trump surrogate’s interview in recent memory, if not ever – to elicit a small measure of sympathy for the New York Republican.

“I’ve got to say Congressman, has Donald Trump put you in an incredibly awkward position today, in this campaign?” Berman asked.

Watch the whole interview below: