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The White House's Striking Equivocation on a Trump N-Word Tape

The president’s spokeswoman has risked her credibility for him time and again, but on Tuesday she wouldn’t give a direct answer about whether he was recorded using a racist slur.

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/567544/

Sanders denied charges that Trump’s attacks on Manigault-Newman—whom he has called a “lowlife,” “dog,” and more—were racially tinged, saying the president says vicious things about all people, not minorities. “I think if you did a comparison, he probably has a lot more nasty things out there about some other people,” Sanders said.

She also claimed accusations of racism were politically motivated, saying that there had been no such accusations against Trump until he entered politics. In fact, such allegations have dogged Trump throughout his career. His first appearance in The New York Times, in 1973, came when the Department of Justice accused the Trump Organization of discriminating against black tenants. Between then and the start of his political career, there were numerous instances of race baiting, most notably his call for the executions of the Central Park Five. Then he launched his political career on the twin planks of denying Barack Obama’s citizenship and warning of Mexican criminal immigration. As my colleague Adam Serwer writes, the nation doesn’t need a tape of Trump using a racist slur to discern his view about minorities.

Given Sanders’s history of easily debunked falsehoods, including claiming Trump had never been accused of racism before, reporters would not have taken her all that seriously if she had flatly denied the existence of a Trump tape. But her refusal to do so is more telling. Tuesday’s press briefing doesn’t give the public any more hard information about whether a tape exists, but the fact that someone who works closely with the president isn’t willing to rule it out says a great deal about how staffers view him.