After meeting with one black Republican, Trump says he was right to side with racists

Speaking to reporters onboard Air Force One as he left Texas, Trump said he “had a great talk” with Scott.

“Tim Scott has been a friend of mine for a long time,” Trump claimed. He went on to say, “A lot of people are saying — in fact a lot of people have actually written, ‘Gee, Trump might have a point.’ I said, you got some very bad people on the other side also, which is true.”

Condemnation of Trump’s comments was nearly universal, from his own party as well as the United Nations and Germany.

After the attack, Trump referred to anti-Semites who were protesting in opposition to the removal of a Confederate statue as “very fine people.” Despite the murder of Heather Heyer at the hands of one of those white supremacist, Trump said “both sides” were responsible for the violence.

Trump clearly does not believe his vocal support for white supremacists was wrong, and has continued to insist he handled the situation perfectly.

His team has also been caught lying about the meeting with Scott. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told the media that Scott had not criticized Trump about his response to the attack when the two men met head-to-head. But The New York Times reported that Scott gave Trump a “pointed history lesson on America’s ‘300-year’ legacy of racism,” while characterizing his fumbled response to the terror attack as “sterile.”

The White House also referred to Scott in a press release about the meeting as “Tom.”

After the meeting, Scott spoke to reporters and indicated that Trump had not absorbed the message, remarking, “Anyone who expects an epiphany or a transformation to happen overnight because somebody walks in the room, I think, doesn’t understand human nature.”

With his new, self-serving remarks and continued defense of his comments in defense of white supremacy, Trump has shown that he continues to be as bigoted as his record predicted he would be.

No wonder he wants people fired for telling the truth about him.