Step right up for the worst explanation of why Donald Trump is not a racist you could imagine

There's a hedge fund guy named Anthony Scaramucci who was against Trump but is now for Trump and is now raising money for him. For reasons known only to Anthony Scaramucci, he sat down and agreed to be interviewed by Jacob Weisberg, editor-in-chief of the Slate group, which I would not say is particularly friendly towards Donald.  The interview is about 20 minutes long and fascinatingly revealing.



At first there's a lot of boring stuff about how Scaramucci - "The Mooch" to friends, apparently - used to support Scott Walker but now supports Trump because Trump is now the Republican nominee.  Whatever, raccoons dig for trash in packs, I get it.  What I wasn't expecting was The Mooch's explanation about why Donald Trump isn't racist to be breathtakingly racist in and of itself.

The relevant portion starts at around 17:30.

OK. So, so, here’s the thing, here’s what happens.  There’s a gigantic arbitrage spread between what people think of him based on what they’ve read about him and snippets of him in the media world and then when people actually meet him – and my wife said this to me, we did a fundraiser for him in East Hampton two Saturdays ago, at Wilbur Ross’s home.  And we were coming out of the fundraiser and my wife turned to me and she said, “You know, I wish people could see him in this environment, answering the questions, getting a full sentence in about the questions, maybe even a paragraph so it’s not sliced on him and not taken out of context, what he said.”

I'm not saying that anyone who uses the term "arbitrage spread" in normal conversation is a dickhead, but it's like wearing a visor backwards - maybe you're a cool guy who just likes turnin' that visor around, but I doubt it.  Anyway, yes, the problem is that DONALD TRUMP IS NOT GETTING THE CHANCE TO GET HIS MESSAGE OUT.  That is seriously what The Mooch (or The Mooch's wife, I guess) wants us to believe.  Stupid press!  Why won't they let him speak?

Wait, it gets so much worse.

But some things are said in jest, and here’s the thing I don’t like about the society right now, if you don’t mind me being a little bit editorialization.  We say some things in jest in the society.  We do have ethnic jokes.  I have been the butt of ethnic jokes in my life.  And I find them humorful.  OK?  There’s also a show called “The Sopranos” that was on for 10 years that took every Italian-American stereotype that you could imagine and manifested itself for one full hour on national TV.  And I met with the Reverend Al Sharpton one day and I said “Hey, why don’t we do The Jacksons?  And we take every racial African-American stereotype, we talk in ebonics to each other, have spinners on the Escalades, and we shoot at each other with Glocks, and we have a whole prostitution ring going, I mean, and so on and so forth, are you guys gonna be sore about that?”  He admitted that he would be sore about it.  But as an Italian-American, you know, I believe in the First Amendment, and I can deal with the fact that we are typecast in shows like The Sopranos, OK?  I get the joke.  And so, he’s not a bigot, and he’s not a racist.

Hey, idiots!  The Mooch is Italian, and The Sopranos used Italian stereotypes, and it didn't bother The Mooch, so quit crying racism!  The Mooch has overcome how Italians were brought to America as slaves and then enslaved here for 300 years and then after they were freed Italians were subject to Jim Crow and the vilest discrimination and state-sponsored killing and redlining and still have a fraction of the family wealth that other Americans have.  Italians have suffered so much!

This is called a "false equivalency," and people honestly believe shit like this.

I don't even know what to say about The Mooch's show "The Jacksons."  I have a hard time believing he related this concept to Al Sharpton because Al Sharpton probably would have punched him in the fucking face if he said this kind of shit, and with good reason.

Finally, NONE OF THIS PROVES THAT DONALD TRUMP ISN'T A RACIST. The fact that "The Sopranos" trafficked in Italian-American stereotypes and it didn't bother The Mooch one bit and The Mooch had the gall to spout every African-American stereotype that popped into his head at an undoubtedly horrified Al Sharpton does not in any way mean Donald Trump is not a racist.  Saying that a judge was unfit to hear Donald Trump's case in court because of his ethnic background makes Donald Trump a racist, OK?