Democratic National Committee Deputy Chairman Rep. Keith Ellison Monday said President Donald Trump himself is the "best person to clarify" his opinion about white supremacists.
"I'm not saying he is one," the Minnesota lawmaker told CNN's "New Day" program. "If he is not sympathetic to them, the best person to clarify this is the president himself. He himself can say 'I absolutely denounce these people.'"
Ellison said the president could have "a national convening" about moving forward as a country, but "that's not what we're seeing.'
Last week, Ellison told The Washington Post that he believes Trump has "some level of sympathy" for white supremacists, but he told CNN's Alisyn Camerota Monday that the president has not done enough to distance himself from their positions.
"I'm saying that the positions that they [white supremacists] have articulated are positions that he does not feel an urgent need to denounce and distance himself from," Ellison said.
But instead, he said, "we're seeing him be morally ambiguous and I think that this is something that is of serious concern. If he really believes them and is a true believer, or if he is just opportunistically exploiting them to support him, the net effect is people who fought the Nazis, people who fought the Klan, who are standing up for core American values, still end up getting hurt and diminished in the process," Ellison added.
And such "moral ambivalence" will not pull the country together around shared values, said Ellison.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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