Twitter Is Completely Stunned By Trump's Wild Press Conference After The Midterms
The midterm elections are over and now it's time to watch the current White House staff comment on the wins and losses. With the Republicans keeping the Senate and the Democrats taking the House, the country was waiting for President Donald Trump's response. On Nov. 7, he took to the East Room of the White House for one of his rare press conferences, and his first one after the midterms. And it was seriously bizarre: these tweets about Donald Trump's press conference after the midterms are just plain wild.
On Nov. 7, Trump tweeted that he would hold a press conference later in the day "discussing our success in the midterms." At the start, Trump seemed happy over the Republican wins and hopeful about the midterm results. At one point, according to CNN, he even said "I'd like to see bipartisanship, I'd like to see unity." But his demeanor quickly shifted when the floor was open for the press to ask questions. Once the president was being hit up for comment on his immigration policies and rhetoric about immigrants — the Trump administration's ad that ran before the midterms seemingly vilified undocumented immigrants — things started to go a bit awry. Trump became combative and dismissive of the reporters, and the "WTF" tweets began to roll in.
At one point during the conference, PBS News White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor said to Trump, "On the campaign trail you called yourself a nationalist, and some people saw that as emboldening white nationalists." Trump interrupted Alcindor, saying, "that's a racist question," according to USA Today. Elite Daily reached out to the White House for comment on Trump's response to Alcindor's question during Wednesday's press conference, but did not immediately hear back.
It's pretty ironic that Trump would call out Alcindor for asking a "racist" question given Trump's history with minority groups. Right off the bat, Alcindor was asking about the type of rhetoric Trump favors — rhetoric that has been called out for having racist ties. For instance, Trump's "America first" agenda, which is the president's vision for dealing with the rest of the world. However, the phrase "America first" was a slogan of the Ku Klux Klan, according to Snopes. Aside from relying on phrases that have ties to prejudice groups, some of the Trump administration's policies don't help his case. One of the first things Trump did upon entering the White House was institute a travel ban targeting Muslim-majority countries, banning many immigrants from countries like Syria, Iran, and Libya.
There's also the fact, that on top of some of Trump's policies and rhetoric having seemingly-racist undertones, in his time as president, he hasn't denounced white supremacy. Even when a gunman yelling anti-Semitic slurs opened fire on a Pittsburgh synagogue killing 11 people on Oct. 27, the president did not take the opportunity to denounce white nationalism. Instead he said, "If there was an armed guard inside the temple, they would have been able to stop him," according to CNN. Elite Daily reached out to the White House for further comment on President Trump's remarks at the time, but did not hear back.
Given Trump's history with certain minority-targeted policies and white supremacy, his "that's racist" comment added a whole new level of confusion and "excuse me, what?" to Wednesday's press conference.
