Georgia State Senator Michael Williams said on CNN Saturday he would be fine with President Donald Trump using the N-word if it happened before he was in office.

The Georgia Republican appeared on CNN Saturday morning and was asked by anchor Victor Blackwell — in light of former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman‘s claims President Donald Trump used the N-word — if it would matter if Trump used the slur.

“Yes, it would matter,” Williams replied. “It would matter as an individual. It would not necessarily matter to me as the person that is running our country. The reason I separate those two is… he has his personal beliefs, his personal ideas. I truly believe he is able to separate those from how he is running the country.”

“He did not use the N-word as the office of the president, in that office,” Williams said. “He used it outside his office. Now if he was president and goes on TV and uses the N-word, yes, I would have a major problem with that. But if he did it before he was president?”

The CNN anchor, perplexed, again asked if it was okay for Trump to have used the N-word.

“I don’t have a problem with Donald Trump having used it in the past as my president,” Williams said. “I always say using the N-word should not be accepted in society. Just because he may have done it years ago, not as our president, doesn’t mean we need to continue to berate him because he used it.”

Williams went on to argue that Trump is 72-years-old, and that “50-60 years ago we were not in the society we’re in now.”

“This is not where I expected this conversation to go,” Blackwell said.

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/2vW2TZH