The majority of the Trump family seems to be in an extended battle to claim the title of the dumb one; Donald Trump Jr., who ostensibly is off running the family business so that his papa does not have to stop profiting from his business interests while presidenting, offers up this cut-and-paste version of the usual argument that my rich racist dad can't be racist because he has black friends.
“You know, it’s amazing – all the rappers, all his African-American friends, from Jesse Jackson to Al Sharpton, have pictures with him their whole life. It was only till he got into politics that all of a sudden, ‘Oh he’s the most terrible human being.’ He wasn’t so terrible a couple years ago when you’re at his events. It wasn’t so terrible then when you’re hitting him up for charity dollars and he’s sponsoring things and sponsoring scholarships and doing XYZ for you guys. That wasn’t a problem. But now, all of a sudden, you’re a conservative, so we must take this stance.”
It's intriguing that Jr. here is pretending nobody thought Donald Trump was a terrible human being until, say, 2016. Donald Trump has been one of America's most terrible human beings for, literally, decades. His pretentious money-grubbing efforts to bilk the rubes with everything from mail-order stakes to bottled water to phony university degrees were mocked for years; his ridiculous and omnipresent self-promotions; his signature television program celebrated his comical mean-spiritedness and spray-tanned capriciousness. The man is famous for being terrible; it is his thing. Donald Trump was famous for being terrible a full half-century ago, when he and his father were getting sued by the government for rampant racial discrimination in their real estate holdings; he was famous for demanding in a full-page newspaper ad that wrongly convicted New York men be executed because Donald Trump, terrible person, decreed it; the man has both made a career of being publicly terrible and done it as his side hobby as well.
Here is a picture of my black friend, who I met one time at a charity event is weak sauce. You're at least supposed to pipe up with the name of a "black friend" who will still return your phone calls.