Current Democratic Nation Committeewoman and ABC/CNN analyst Donna Brazile participated in Sunday’s PowerHouse Roundtable on ABC’s This Week where she claimed that by peddling racist “dog whistle” politics, Donald Trump has “amplif[ied] everything we have heard on talk radio for the last eight years.”
On the topic of how Trump had been able to skyrocket to the odds-on favorite for the Republican presidential nomination, Brazile expressed her disappointment with “political leaders” for not stopping Trump the moment he announced his candidacy in June and denounced many Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals.
Brazile then took a shot at conservative talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Mark Levin when she called them out for being the originators of Trump’s messaging (even though the latter two have denounced Trump repeatedly and endorsed Senator Ted Cruz for president):
Donald Trump is amplifying everything we have heard on talk radio for the last eight years, Matt. You know that. There's not one AM channel at home in the south or riding up north in the northeast. They’ve been saying this kinda dog whistle, you know, everybody is the problem and people have not taken responsibility.
As for herself as a Democrat, she made clear to everyone that she’s “denounced Donald Trump for not denouncing the kind of vitriol” and added that “he knows exactly what he's doing” with the proposals he’s made and his rhetoric towards supporters and protesters.
“This is a guy who’s now soaking up this hate and he's spilling it back out,” she concluded.
The relevant portion of the transcript from ABC’s This Week on March 13 can be found below.
ABC’s This Week
March 13, 2016
10:44 a.m. Eastern
DONNA BRAZILE: Where in the hell was the political leaders, George, when he made those, what I believe, the insults statements about Mexicans. Donald Trump is amplifying everything we have heard on talk radio for the last eight years, Matt. You know that. There's not one AM channel at home in the south or riding up north in the northeast. They’ve been saying this kinda dog whistle, you know, everybody is the problem and people have not taken responsibility. I denounced Donald Trump for not denouncing the kind of vitriol, the kind of violence he's perpetrated with his angry rhetoric and he knows exactly what he's doing. This is not the Donald Trump who denounced David Duke in 1991. This is a guy who’s now soaking up this hate and he's spilling it back out.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Is there a strategy here?
MATTHEW DOWD: Well, I think Donald Trump does everything by gut and everything viscerally. I think that's what he does. I don't think this is a strategy. I don't want to become the Donald Trump apologist or the media's apologist in the course of this. Voters have the information about Donald Trump. They've had it for a year. It's not as if the media should have done more, asked more questions. They know what Donald Trump said about Mexican Americans and they know what he said about immigrants. They know what he said about Muslims. All the language he's used. He is on TV saying the things he's saying for months and months and months and months. They're not without information. There are a huge segment of voters in this country that feels frustrated.
