White House senior adviser Jared Kushner sat for a palpably uncomfortable exchange with Axios‘ Jonathan Swan — which aired on HBO Sunday — and was asked to answer for one of President Trump’s most condemned crusades: birtherism.
Kushner initially places the blame on Democrats when asked about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s stance that Trump is a racist.
“You can’t not be a racist for 69 years, then run for president and be a racist,” he said. “And what I’ll say is that when a lot of the Democrats call the President a racist, I think they’re doing a disservice to people who suffer because of real racism in this country.”
Swan then asked Kushner whether birtherism — Trump’s very public offensive against President Barack Obama’s citizenship — was racist.
“Um, look, I wasn’t really involved in that,” Kushner said.
“I know you weren’t. Was it racist?” Swan pressed.
“Like I said, I wasn’t involved in that,” he said. Swan asked again: “I know you weren’t. Was it racist?”
“Look, I know who the President is and I have not seen anything in him that is racist, so again I was not involved in that,” he said. Kushner gave the same “I was not involved in that” retort when asked whether he wished Trump “didn’t do that.”
“That was a long time ago,” Kushner said.
Watch the exchange below:
