Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney says his boss is “not a white supremacist.” RNA - Mulvaney made the comments on “Fox News Sunday,” while talking about US President Donald Trump’s reaction to the recent anti-Islam terrorist attack in New Zealand.
The country is yet to recover from the impact of the Islamophobic shooting at two mosques in the city of Christchurch, which claimed 50 lives and left many injured.
"I understand and I very much agree that the president is not responsible for this action," said Fox News anchor Chris Wallace. "But has he considered, given the fact that some people seem to feel that he has given them cover, has he considered giving a major speech condemn anti-Muslim, white supremacist bigotry?"
Mulvaney rejected the allegations that Trump has anything to do with the shooter’s manifesto, allegedly praising the US Republican president as "a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose."
"There’s folks that just don’t like the president and everything that goes wrong, they’re going to look to tie that to the president," he said. "You’ve seen the president stand up for religious liberty, individual liberty. The president is not a white supremacist… I’m not sure how many times we have to say that."
The acting White House chief of staff further claimed that the shooter is not a Trump supporter.
"And to simply ask the question every time something like this happens overseas or even domestically, to say 'Oh my goodness. It must somehow be the president’s fault,' speaks to a politicization of everything that I think is undermining sort of the institutions that we have in the country today," he said. "This was a disturbed individual, an evil person. ... To try to tie him to an American politician of either party probably ignores some of the deeper difficulties that this sort of activity exposes," he said.
Since campaigning for the 2016 presidential election, Trump has been accused of stoking racial, ethnic and religious tensions lurking within America.
According to Mulvaney, however, the president’s anti-Islamic rhetoric, as presented by Wallace during the show, cannot be tied to the brutal Christchurch shootings.
"Let’s take what happened in New Zealand yesterday for what it is — a terrible, evil, tragic act — and figure out why those things are becoming more prevalent in the world," he claimed. "Is it Donald Trump? Absolutely not."
847/940