Joy Behar of The View called President Trump a “total racist” for refusing to apologize for his stance on the infamous Central Park Five case.
At the time, Trump called for the death penalty of the five black and Hispanic boys accused of raping a Central Park jogger in 1989. The boys were later cleared.
“He’s a total racist, and then you wonder why I get upset with Trump supporters because they’re behind this guy,” Behar said Wednesday.
Behar’s rant
The group of black and Latino boys were convicted in 1990 and later exonerated in 2002 after convicted murder Matias Reyes confessed to raping and assaulting the victim. DNA evidence also linked Reyes to the crime. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio saw to it that the five were awarded a $41 million settlement shortly after he took office in 2014.
The View host Whoopi Goldberg slammed Trump Wednesday for refusing to apologize to the boys, noting, “DNA doesn’t lie,” while Behar accused Trump of having racial motivations behind his reluctance. “But I don’t hear Donald Trump calling for the death penalty for him because he’s white, isn’t he?” Behar said of Reyes.
“Hispanic. He’s Hispanic,” Sunny Hostin interjected.
“Tell the truth now. You guys out there, if these kids were white, would he be calling for the death penalty? Come on,” Behar asked the audience.
“Thank you,” Behar said, after receiving a “no” response. “Never. Just like he carried on over the birther, that Obama was. It’s the same thing. It’s, like, this repetitious publicity against non-whites. That’s where he’s at. He’s a total racist. And then you wonder why I get upset with the Trump supporters. They’re behind this guy.”
Trump: “Why now?”
President Trump inflamed controversy Tuesday when, in a response to CNN reporter April Ryan, he refused to apologize for previously calling for the death penalty for the five boys. Trump purchased full-page ads at the time with headlines that read, “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE.”
“You have people on both sides of that. They admitted their guilt,” Trump said Tuesday. “If you look at Linda Fairstein and if you look at some of the prosecutors, they think that the city should never have settled that case. So we’ll leave it at that.” Trump went on to ask, perhaps semi-rhetorically, “Why do you bring up that question now?”
In the era of woke politics, Trump and Black Lives Matter, the case is receiving renewed attention as an alleged example of racial injustice in policing, especially after the release of a Netflix documentary on the trial entitled When They See Us that prominently features Trump’s comments. The five boys admitted to the crimes, but many argued at the time that the police coerced their confessions.
In the wake of the show’s release, novelist Linda Fairstein, the city’s top sex crimes prosecutor at the time, was dropped by her publisher over her role in the decades-old case. She has voiced strenuous objections to her depiction in the Netflix work.
Giving Biden a pass
Meanwhile, The View took pains to defend another prominent politician dealing with a race controversy of his own this week, namely Democrat primary frontrunner Joe Biden. The former vice president caused a stir Tuesday when he cited his past work with segregationist Democrats as an example of “getting things done.”
“Well guess what? At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today, you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don’t talk to each other anymore.”
The ladies of The View agreed Thursday that Biden was not a racist.
“Joe Biden is not a racist, and I would never call him a racist especially when I believe we have a true racist sitting in the White House,” said host Sunny Hostin Thursday, with Behar and others agreeing.
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