A video posted on Instagram by the Trump campaign Thursday night partially relied on an op-ed headline to suggest that Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton is a bigot. But the journalist who wrote it has also bashed Trump as racist, and his name was mysteriously blurred out from the video.
Trump and his director of social media and senior adviser Dan Scavino, also quoted the July 23, 2015 “This Week” op-ed’s headline, “Hillary Clinton needs to address the racist undertones of her 2008 campaign” in tweets late Thursday night.
"Hillary Clinton needs to address the racist undertones of her 2008 campaign." #FlashbackFriday pic.twitter.com/MJQp0rcnzH
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 26, 2016
The Week columnist Ryan Cooper told The Daily Caller that it was “deeply weird,” since he was “pretty sure this is the first time I’ve seen my stuff used by someone I have been completely hostile to for the entire campaign.”
Other op-eds by Cooper pondered if Trump was “leading a proto-fascist movement” and accused him of emitting “a constant stream of insane, racist bile.” Just 13 days ago, Cooper wrote, “It is of course beyond question that a big part — probably the large majority — of Trump’s success is built on racism, anti-immigrant paranoia, and xenophobia.”
On Twitter, Cooper joked that he was “dead” because Trump quoted him on Clinton, and — taking a jab at other journalists working for the campaign — added, “aw, dang it…guess I’m a Trump consultant now too.”
“I feel like the fact that Trump is quoting a C-list writer at all speaks to his erratic campaign strategy,” Cooper told TheDC. “But then again, maybe nobody but me even cares about a couple seconds of headline footage.”
Trump often criticizes the media for what he considers biased coverage, but he also often tweets links to articles from the same outlets favorable to his campaign. Clinton’s campaign has also attacked the media for some articles, but cherry-picks stories that shed the former secretary of state in a good light.
Last year, Cooper wrote that “Hillary Clinton’s record on race is not great,” but he told TheDC, “I’d say Clinton ought to address the 2008 campaign at some point, but given the fact that Obama himself is out there campaigning for her, it also seems like a bit of a moot point.”
“As far as racial issues go, I’d much rather she addressed the failure of welfare reform or the 1994 crime bill, which has hit minority communities far harder than anything in the 08 campaign,” Cooper added.
The video was a response to another video, also posted on to social media, by the Clinton campaign blasting Trump over endorsements by white nationalists and a Ku Klux Klan “Imperial Wizard.”
Trump countered back with a tweet referring to Hillary Clinton calling former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd — who helped create a KKK chapter in West Virginia in the 1940s — her “friend and mentor,” after he died in 2010.
“After about a year, I became disinterested, quit paying my dues, and dropped my membership in the organization,” Byrd stated in 1952, but he falsely claimed in “the nine years that have followed, I have never been interested in the Klan.” In 1946, Byrd told an Imperial Grand Wizard that the Klan was “needed today as never before.” Hillary Clinton was born in 1947, which is after Byrd allegedly quit the KKK.
The Trump campaign video also used a clip of a Sept. 3, 2012 New York Post headline about former President Bill Clinton taking a “race jab” at Barack Obama in 2008. However, that journalist, Leonard Greene, didn’t get his byline blurred out in the new Trump video.
“I would *guess* that they intentionally blurred my name, given how critical I’ve been of Trump, but I couldn’t say for sure,” Cooper told The Daily Caller. “Would not surprise me if they didn’t even bother to look that up.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.