Cornel West told CNN that Donald Trump has a lot of authenticity but “no real integrity.”
West, appearing on “At This Hour” Thursday, also stated that there is a “need for spiritual sensitivity, the need for integrity, the need to understand, and when we really tell the truth, then we have to allow suffering to speak.”
John Berman: So is every officer involved shooting at this point in and of itself necessarily objectionable and a cause for protest?
Cornel West: Well, I think the real challenge here is, and I’m thinking especially of that wonderful moment with Jimmy Carter with that need for spiritual sensitivity, the need for integrity, the need to understand, and when we really tell the truth, then we have to allow suffering to speak. We’re going to see this over and over again until we have quality education, jobs with a living wage, black self love on behalf of my own folk and an acknowledgment of the degree to which we can’t have 1 percent of the population owning 42 percent of the wealth and the social neglect and economic abandonment of these precious brothers and sisters with guns and with drugs. It’s a larger situation. Individual responsibility is crucial, but again back to Jimmy Carter, look at his sensitivity to the vulnerable. Juxtapose Jimmy Carter with our dear brother Donald Trump. A lot of authenticity in Donald Trump, I love it — no real integrity, no real sensitivity to Mexican brothers and sisters and others. We need a national atmosphere which is the opposite of what we have now, a national atmosphere of the spirit of Jimmy Carter that says, “I could be wrong, but I’m concerned about the least of these.” We’ve got to ensure that the most powerful are rendered accountable. I mean Jimmy Carter had the courage to do that even in the Middle East escalating anti-Semitism in the world but also a very ugly Israeli occupation. How do you walk that tightrope? We don’t have leaders like that.