Looney, Duff Condemn Trump’s Racist Video

“If this isn’t rhetoric that crosses the line, what is?”

HARTFORD — Senate President Martin Looney (D-New Haven) and Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff (D-Norwalk) issued the following statement today, at the start of Black History Month, condemning President Donald Trump’s posting of a racist video:

“President Trump’s racist video depicting President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama as monkeys is abhorrent, disgraceful, and has no place in our political discourse. Whenever President Trump seems to have hit bottom, he always seems to find a new way to shock his fellow citizens and embarrass himself. Whether it is blatantly racist behavior like this or him being mentioned hundreds if not thousands of times in the Epstein files, President Trump would not be tolerated in our politics if we had a normal Republican Party.

“We call on Connecticut Republicans to publicly denounce this racist attack on the first Black president and first lady in our nation’s history. Republican leaders are always quick to call for us to ‘take the rhetoric down’ and ‘lower the temperature’—if this isn’t rhetoric that crosses the line, what is? If a leader stays silent when the head of his political party has normalized an explicitly racist attack, he becomes complicit in that racism. We believe our colleagues in Connecticut are better than that, and we call on them to make their integrity known.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Kevin Coughlin | kevin.coughlin@cga.ct.gov | 203-710-0193