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Eric Trump dismisses his dad’s racist comments, says he only cares about money

"My father sees one color -- green."

CREDIT: SCREENGRAB
CREDIT: SCREENGRAB

During an interview on his father’s favorite TV show on Wednesday, Eric Trump dismissed racist comments his dad recently made about African countries, and claimed the only color President Trump cares about is “green.”

“My father sees one color — green,” Trump said on Fox & Friends. “That is all he cares about. He cares about the economy. He does not see race. He is the least racist person I ever met in my entire life.”

Eric’s comments echoed sentiments from his dad, who plugged Eric’s Fox & Friends interview on Twitter. Over the weekend, President Trump claimed to be “the least racist person” — a claim belied by his lengthy and well-documented history of racist remarks, birtherism, and Islamophobia.

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The president’s history of racism has come under renewed scrutiny after he reportedly called African nations “shithole countries” during a meeting with lawmakers about immigration last week — comments that were quickly corroborated by a Democratic senator who was in the room at the time. The White House initially released a statement that didn’t deny Trump made racist remarks, but as the blowback intensified, Trump made a weak attempt at a denial.

Wednesday’s Fox & Friends interview wasn’t the first time in recent months that Eric has defended his father after he made a racist slur. In late November, Eric attempted to defend the president’s use of “Pocahontas” to attack Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) during an Oval Office event meant to honor Native American code talkers. He did so in a tweet suggesting that there’s something comparably problematic about the Disney movie Pocahontas.

In an interview with ThinkProgress, Dr. John Norwood, general secretary of the Alliance of Colonial Era Tribes, pointed out that the Trump family doesn’t get to decide whether “Pocahontas” is a racial slur or not.

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Eric Trump’s interview on Fox & Friends came the day after he appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show. During that interview, Trump and Hannity teamed up to attack journalists, and Eric offered a conspiracy theory about media organizations, saying “it’s controlled out of New York, it’s controlled out of L.A., it’s controlled by six people at the very top.”

Eric and his brother, Don Jr., have emerged as key spokespeople for their father’s administration, despite promising before their dad’s inauguration to run the Trump Organization free from political interference.

“There is kind of a clear separation of church and state that we maintain, and I am deadly serious about that exercise,” Eric Trump told Forbes during an interview shortly after the inauguration. “I do not talk about the government with him, and he does not talk about the business with us. That’s kind of a steadfast pact we made, and it’s something that we honor.”

But during that same interview, Eric acknowledged that he planned to give his dad regular reports about the Trump Organization’s profitability.

That commingling of business and politics was on display again during Wednesday’s Fox & Friends interview, as Eric worked in a gratuitous plug for the business his father still owns and profits from.

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“We’re doing great as a company,” Eric said, in response to a question about business is going. “We have the best hotels in the world, best golf courses, great commercial buildings.