CNN’s Chris Cuomo spoke with Mayor Pete Buttigieg tonight about President Donald Trump‘s

Buttigieg called Trump “the divider-in-chief” and said his continued divisiveness “is exactly why America is becoming weaker as a country under this president each passing day.”

“The presidency is supposed to stand as a symbol of something that we all have in common. Yet this president has taken every single opportunity to turn us against one another,” he added.

Cuomo asked if Trump is intentionally inflaming things with words like “infested.” Buttigieg said, “Look at the pattern. This is a kind of terminology that he reserves for places and situations where there are a lot of minorities involved. We can debate over how strategic it is, how intentional it is, but on its face, it is racist.”

“You articulate the message well. You see the problem,” Cuomo said, before adding: “When we look at the polls that came out today from Quinnipiac… you struggle with African-Americans, literally, defined almost at 0%. Why?”

Buttigieg said in response, “African-American voters are tired of having been lied to or taken for granted by politicians. When you are new on the scene, when you haven’t been known for years or decades, and when you’re not yourself from a community of color, you’ve got a lot of extra work to do in order to validate what you have to say and earn that trust.”

He talked with Cuomo about the Douglass plan he rolled out recently and said, “[It’s] everything from making sure we invest in minority entrepreneurship to investing in dealing with health inequities.”

Buttigieg it’s also about outreach and “recognizing the black vote is not monolithic.”

Cuomo also questioned Buttigieg about the black community in South Bend and the criticism he has gotten from constituents about his handling of a recent police shooting. You can watch the video above, via CNN.

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