On ABC's This Week, PBS host Travis Smiley took a shot at the media for continually lumping Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders together, and at Trump for being an “unrepentant, irascible religious and racial arsonist." Which of course had Trump responding to him on Twitter and playing the "I know you are but what am I?" game:
Smiley had a chance to take another crack at Trump on CNN this Monday and once again let Trump have it for the manner in which he's conducting his campaign and his blatant racism, along with the media for failing to go after him for not condemning the white supremacist group that was out there making robo-calls for him this week: Trump’s attack on Tavis Smiley backfires when PBS host skewers him for pandering to racists:
Tavis Smiley, author and public television talk show host, hit back at Donald Trump for calling him a racist, noting that the GOP presidential candidate had failed to condemn the white supremacists who support his 2016 campaign. [...]
When asked about his comment by CNN host Don Lemon on Monday night, Smiley repeated it and also said the news media is asking the wrong questions when it comes to Trump’s prominence among American voters.
“What troubles me quite frankly is that we keep talking about… Trump rising in the polls as if somehow this is happening miraculously,” Smiley said.” It’s happening in part because, as your lead-in shows with these now white supremacists supporting him — it’s happening because he’s appealing to a certain base voter in this country. He’s appealing to the dark side, the night side of America and that’s why he’s rising in the polls. And we ought not cover him without condemning him for doing that.”
Smiley then chided Trump about his tweet.
“First of all, for a guy with a Wharton degree, he’s got to do better than ‘hater and racist,'” Smiley said. “Can we just remove the word ‘hater’ from our lexicon?”
He then question how Trump could conclude that Smiley was a racist after failing to condemn a white supremacist group for making campaign robocalls for his campaign.
Here's more on that from Mediaite:
Smiley held firm on calling Trump out by saying that he was speaking the journalistically-objective truth that Trump is an an “unrepentant, irascible, religious and racial arsonist.” He went on to say that even though the mogul keeps rising in the polls, he has established his voter base on negative and volatile talking points that journalists should be obligated to point out while covering him.
“I don’t know how I’m a racist. I’m not the one who went after Muslims, I’m not the one who went after undocumented workers,” Smiley said. “My comment yesterday was not singularly directed to Mr. Trump, it’s at the media. I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired of watching us cover this campaign without with calling him on the carpet.”
“It says something about America that he is resonating in the way that he is, and I can’t get in the minds of the voters,” Smiley said. “I just hope that at some point we will come to our senses and that we will see that this is how these slippery slopes begin.”
