Bernie Sanders calls Trump a racist in MLK Day speech

Possible 2020 candidate says president ‘purposely and aggressively attempted to divide us up’; GOP head calls comments ‘absolutely disgusting and wrong’

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Senator Bernie Sanders again called President Donald Trump a “racist” — this time in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech in a key primary state.

Sanders, a Vermont Independent, is contemplating another presidential run after mounting a surprisingly strong campaign in 2016 for the Democratic nomination, ultimately losing to Hillary Clinton, who was defeated by Trump in the general election.

“In terms of racism, and it gives me no pleasure to say this, we today have a president who is a racist,” Sanders said Monday in South Carolina. “Donald Trump, before he was president, was one of the leaders of the so-called ‘birther movement,’ which sought to portray Barack Obama as an illegitimate president, someone not born in the United States.”

Sanders in his ’16 run was weakest among minorities, but has since gained ground among African-Americans, polls show. South Carolina is the third presidential nomination contest, and its Democratic primary attracts a relatively high percentage of black voters.

Sanders, who will be 79 in 2020, has yet to say whether he will run again.

“Instead of bringing us together as Americans, [Trump] has purposely and aggressively attempted to divide us up by the color of our skin, by our gender, by our nationality, by our religion and by our sexual orientation,” Sanders said.

In addition to Trump’s embrace of birtherism, minorities have faulted Trump for saying Hispanic judges cannot be impartial, for using pejoratives to describe football players who protest what they say is discriminatory policing, for targeting Muslims in his immigration policy and for equivocating in his condemnation of neo-Nazi violence.

Conservatives expressed outrage at Sanders, who has called Trump a racist multiple times, as far back as the 2016 campaign.

“Absolutely disgusting and wrong,” Ronna McDaniel, the Republican Party chairwoman, said on Twitter. “@realDonaldTrump has brought African American and Hispanic unemployment to record lows, passed historic criminal justice reform.”