Liberal blinders fastened tight, the New York Times set up inflammatory race-baiter turned MSNBC host Sharpton as an arbiter of someone else’s racism on Tuesday’s front page. Maggie Haberman and Steve Eder’s report, “Trump’s Rise Divides the Black Celebrities He Calls His Friends,” is just the latest in a depressing series of Sharpton suckups from the New York Times. The Times hastaken enormous pains over the years to ignore Rev. Al’s numerous racial controversies all the while calling him a civil rights “leader.”
(A quick and dirty Sharpton summary: Sharpton is the same "leader" that spread the Tawana Brawley rape hoax, smearing innocent police officers and a prosecutor and being successfully sued for defamation by that prosecutor. Sharpton also referred to New York City Jews as "diamond merchants" during the racial disturbance in Crown Heights. That period included this Sharpton gem: “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.” In Harlem in 1995, Sharpton cursed the white Jewish owner of Freddy's Fashion Mart as a "white interloper" in a protest that escalated when a racist protester entered the store, shot four employees and set the building on fire, killing seven employees.)
For all the talk of black celebrities hostile to Trump, Haberman and Eder relied on just two for the bulk of their criticism, “hip-hop mogul” Russell Simmons and professional race-baiter Al Sharpton. That was after the Times reporters compared Trump to segregationist governor George Wallace (Ted Cruz also got a Wallace comparison in a Monday article by Matt Flegenheimer, “In Nod to Trump, Cruz, On Tour, Sharpens Tone.”)
Mr. Trump’s rise in the contest for the Republican presidential nomination -- which has also prompted accusations that he is using racially charged language and has drawn comparisons to the segregationist George Wallace -- has created some discord among African-American celebrities whom Mr. Trump has called friends. The billionaire developer has long courted personalities from sports and entertainment -- including the boxer Mike Tyson, the former N.B.A. star Dennis Rodman, and the rapper and producer Sean Combs -- and has made them part of his world in strikingly personal ways.
Some of Mr. Trump’s African-American friends and acquaintances say they are mystified by the candidate’s sweeping attacks on minority groups. In addition to his comments about Muslims, he has said Mexico sends “rapists” and other criminals to the United States, has exaggerated the role of blacks in violent crime and suggested that a Black Lives Matter protester who interrupted one of his campaign rallies “should have been roughed up” by his supporters.
While Mr. Simmons has denounced Mr. Trump, others are sticking by him, saying that they were drawn to him in part because of his unvarnished personality -- and his loyalty -- and that they would not abandon him now.
(Among those supporters was boxing impresario Don King.)
The Rev. Al Sharpton, who has been friendly with Mr. Trump over the years but at times battled with him, was more critical. He suggested the billionaire was drawn to accomplished African-Americans for a different reason: to help his businesses.
“Black celebrities and luminaries live in a world that is much more engaging of Trump, and parallel with Trump’s world, than those of us that have been in politics and civil rights on the ground for as long as Trump has been out there,” Mr. Sharpton said. Mr. Trump has little understanding of the lives of the vast majority of African-Americans, he said.
“It’s not like there’s a Trump building in Harlem,” he added.
The Times reached back into Donald Trump’s childhood to show his alleged racial insensitivity, though the Central Park wilding doesn’t really fit into a racist pattern.
Mr. Trump, 69, is no stranger to racial controversy. He was raised in an exclusive, nearly all-white section of Queens in an era when tribal politics dominated New York, and in the 1970s, the Justice Department accused him and his father of bias against black tenants in buildings they owned. They reached an agreement with the federal government in 1975.
In 1989, Mr. Trump took out full-page advertisements in four New York newspapers calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty after five men -- four of them black -- were arrested on charges of brutalizing and raping a white woman who was jogging in Central Park. Decades later, the five were exonerated.
After a reluctant condemnation of Trump by “civil rights activist” Jesse Jackson, who has long ties to Trump, the Times returned to Sharpton as the voice of sweet reason on racial matters.
Mr. Sharpton said his godfather, the singer James Brown, once told him it was permissible to perform at a property owned by the Trump Organization because Mr. Trump was “trying to evolve” on race. But Mr. Sharpton said he did not know whether Mr. Trump was racist, adding, “I don’t think it matters.”
“What he’s saying appeals to racists,” Mr. Sharpton said. “He’s too smart to not know what he’s doing.”
Again, it takes much nerve for Sharpton to accuse another person of fanning racial flames, and much cowardice for the New York Times not to call him on it.
The Times finished with a compliment to Trump from Don King (perhaps not the most exemplary character witness one could have, but oh well).
These days, Mr. King has Mr. Trump’s back. While acknowledging that Mr. Trump had made mistakes in his campaign, he said Mr. Trump was not a racist, but was merely misunderstood.
