‘Morning Joe’ Panel Slams Trump’s ‘Sick And Grotesque’ Claims About Black Voters

“Let’s be clear: Donald Trump is using the stereotype of Blacks being criminals,” Rev. Al Sharpton said.

Panelists on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” voiced disgust Monday over Donald Trump’s suggestion that his criminal indictments are increasing his appeal to Black people.

On Friday, at a gala for the Black Conservative Federation, the former president railed against his four criminal indictments, adding, “A lot of people said that that’s why the Black people like me because they’ve been hurt so badly and discriminated against.”

Rev. Al Sharpton, an MSNBC analyst and longtime civil rights activist, called Trump’s comments the “epitome of an insult.”

Sharpton said, “First of all, let’s be clear: Donald Trump is using the stereotype of Blacks being criminals, and therefore, we would gravitate towards somebody in a mug shot. He’s in a mug shot for trying to interfere with an election. Blacks were arrested to get the right to vote.”

Sharpton noted that prosecutors leading two of the criminal cases against Trump are Black and that “Trump himself has been part of these kinds of unfair prosecutions of Blacks,” pointing to the 1989 attack ads he took out calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty amid the arrests of the now-exonerated Central Park Five.