Rep. Hakeem Jeffries on Wednesday did not back down from comments he made Monday likening President Trump to the head of the Ku Klux Klan.
Speaking at a Martin Luther King Jr. event on Monday, the New York congressman criticized the president by saying, ” We have a hater in the White House, the birther-in-chief, the grand wizard of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”
During an interview on CNN Wednesday, Mr. Jeffries said he wasn’t sorry and stressed that there needs to be a larger conversation about race.
“We’ve got to have the opportunity for at least one day a year to have a candid, if sometimes uncomfortable, conversation about race,” he said.
When pressed, Mr. Jeffries, the Democratic Caucus chairman, would not explicitly call the president a racist and insisted that he used a “colorful phrase” on Monday.
Mr. Jeffries also gave several examples of “troubling” behavior including the president’s comments about the Central Park Five, the Obama birther conspiracy, “s—-hole countries” and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“I do not believe that the president is a card-carrying member of the KKK, but he has presided and engaged in directly a series of racially insensitive remarks,” he said.
• Gabriella Muñoz can be reached at gmunoz@washingtontimes.com.
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