Oh The Irony: Trump Is Leveling Racist Attacks Against Haley After Her Slavery Gaffe

Donald Trump isn’t fazed by the idea of waging racist attacks against anyone. He’s demonstrated this from the beginning, with his “bad hombres” comments, his failed border wall, and his obvious paranoia about immigrants from the Middle East. Now he’s back at it again, leveling a debunked accusation in the hopes of scoring political points, Raw Story reports.

Trump already understands Haley will likely be his closest Republican opponent behind him, so he’s trying to spread doubts about whether she can legally run for the presidency.

This did not sit well with political strategist Dr. Basil Smikle, Ph.D., who appeared on CNN’s Out Front with Erin Burnett. He accused Trump of encouraging hate by attempting to bring back a debunked accusation to gin up political points.

“It’s racist, it’s xenophobic, it manifested his own presidential in doing this against barack obama. does it resonate outside the Republican party? no. but for his core base, it certainly does,” smikle said.

Trump got Monday off to a start by reposting a conservative outlet that suggested Haley was a so-called “anchor baby.” That story read: “In Nikki  Haley’s situation, reports indicate that her parents were not U.S. citizens at the time of her birth in 1972… this disqualifies Haley from presidential or vice-presidential candidacy under the 12th amendment.”

But as The Associated Press and anyone with a brain in their head would know, Haley is indeed a natural-born U.S. citizen, which makes her eligible to serve as president.

The AP confirmed that Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations was born on Jan. 20, 1972, in Bamberg, South Carolina, per information on her official website when she was governor of the state.

But even though the facts are on her side, Smikle still wonders how Haley can rebound after Haley fell into a morass after someone asked her what caused the Civil War during a New Hampshire town hall.

“I think the cause of the civil war was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms, and what people could and couldn’t do,” she responded at the time.

Yeah, that was pretty dumb. How could she ignore slavery, the most significant issue of the time?

She tried to cover her tracks a week later by stating: “I should have said slavery right off the bat….”

Duh.

Smikle thinks this goof could haunt her when she tries to fight back.

“What will be interesting to me is how haley responds,” he said. “I’m interested to see if nikki haley, who can’t say the word ‘slavery,’ actually finds a way to inject her race and ethnicity in any kind of pushback.”

“it probably won’t work for her if she does that, but it’ll be interesting to see,” he concluded.

It’s difficult to say if she’ll fall back on this strategy, but she may have already cooked her own goose and Trump will certainly continue to use this in attempts to score points with his base. I almost feel sorry for her but that really was a stupid goof.

It makes me wonder how competent Haley would be as president. Although she probably wouldn’t be any worse than Trump. Probably.