“The president is, as he usually is or often is, disgusting and racist,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler, the New York Democrat who chairs the House Judiciary Committee. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent socialist from Vermont who has now twice sought the Democratic presidential nomination, lamented that the United States had a “racist president who attacks people because they are African Americans.” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries called President Trump the “xenophobe in chief.” Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, said the president was “a racist” who has “polarized the races in this country.”
Except the last comment is not in reference to Trump. Waters was calling President George H.W. Bush a racist as she endorsed Democratic challenger Bill Clinton in 1992. After a colleague criticized the 41st president’s initial reluctance to sign into law what eventually became the Civil Rights Act of 1991, Waters told an audience at the National Press Club, “I would like to concur with that and say … very clearly that I believe George Bush is a racist. I believe he’s a racist for many, many reasons.” She added that Bush “is a mean-spirited man who has no care or concern about what happens to the African American community in this country.”
