White House senior adviser Jared Kushner has earned heavy criticism for a seemingly insensitive comment stating that black Americans can be successful under Donald Trump’s policies, but only if they “want to be.”
“President Trump’s policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they’re complaining about, but he can’t want them to be successful more than that they want to be successful,” Kushner said in a viral clip grabbed from a Monday morning Fox & Friends interview.
Kushner also said more high profile black Americans, including rapper Ice Cube, want to work with the president because he gets “results,” unlike politicians who he said have been in positions of power for decades, but have not addressed issues in black communities.
Jared Kushner on the Black community: “President Trump’s policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they’re complaining about, but he can’t want them to be successful more than that they want to be successful.” pic.twitter.com/SX9vWiAfag
The comment that black people must “want” to be successful was quickly seized upon by Trump critics and called out by liberals on social media as “condescending” and an example of “casual racism.”
“Born on third base, thinks he hit a triple,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Virginia) tweeted, adding, “we will remember his casual racism.”
“Jared Kushner is a condescending douchebag,” actor and liberal activist George Takei tweeted to an even shorter clip from the interview.
Jared Kushner is a condescending douchebag. https://t.co/J8y3KzDxtJ
You have to hand it to Jared Kushner, because that’s the only way he’s ever achieved or accomplished anything his whole life.
NEWS: Jared Kushner says Black people must “want to be successful” in order for his father-in-law’s policies to help them.(Kushner was born into wealth, of course.)https://t.co/dgIUs6ChF6
In his fuller comments, Kushner slammed Democratic activists for “virtue signaling” on issues affecting black communities following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
“You saw a lot of people who were just virtue signaling. They’d go on Instagram and cry or they would put a slogan on their jersey or write something on a basketball court and, quite frankly, that was doing more to polarize the country than it was to bring people forward,” he said. He added that Trump’s ‘Platinum Plan’, which would designate the Ku Klux Klan as a terrorist organization and invest billions in black-owned businesses, is a practical solution to help black Americans.
Ice Cube, who consulted on the Platinum Plan, said he previously requested to meet with both the Trump administration and Biden’s campaign, but was told the former vice president would only meet with him after the election.
When @icecube approached both presidential campaigns with ideas for empowering Black Americans, Biden’s campaign told him to wait until “after the election.”President Trump’s campaign “listened, heard what I had to say, and pumped up their plan and presented it to the people.” pic.twitter.com/X9aG4kLCkf
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