Charlamagne tha God responded on Monday to Donald Trump’s attack on him, calling out the administration’s “authoritarian strategy” while reiterating that the president has failed to focus on what he promised during the campaign.
The Breakfast Club co-host appeared on Lara Trump’s Fox News show on Saturday, telling the president’s daughter-in-law that he thinks traditional conservatives would “take the Republican party back,” while pointing to Trump’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case.
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“They know this is the issue that has gotten the base riled up. The MAGA base isn’t letting this issue go, and for the first time, they know they can probably take their party back and not piss off the MAGA base,” Charlamagne said on the show.
That set the president off. In a mengthy Truth Social post, Trump responded by calling Charlamagne “a low IQ individual” and a “racist sleazebag.”
On his show on Monday, Charlamagne went through each of the points that Trump made in his Truth Social post.
He noted that “sleazebag” meant “a disgusting or despicable person.”
“Depending on who you ask, that may apply to me,” Charlamagne quipped. “Okay, I personally prefer friendly neighborhood a-hole.”
“He said, ‘I’m a low IQ individual.’ I don’t know. I’ve never taken an IQ test. He said I have no idea what words are coming out of my mouth. Absolutely true. Okay, I’ve been surprising myself my whole life, like, damn, ‘I actually said that.’”
Charlamagne then went to other claims in Trump’s Truth Social post, challenging the president’s contention that he ended five wars, as well as his claim that the U.S. strikes on Iran had wiped out its nuclear capabilities.
As for Trump’s claim that he had closed the border, Charlamagne said, “You have definitely made the border harder to cross, but saying it’s closed is false and ignores everyone coming over seeking legal asylum. By the way, I want border security. I just want you to keep your promise of deporting illegals and criminals. But since Homeland Security started to work to deport more people, immigrants with legal status or no criminal history are being detained and deported too. That’s not right.”
Charlamagne then went on to dispute Trump’s claim that he has created the “greatest economy, where prices and inflation have come way down.” He pointed to Trump’s response to a weak jobs report on Friday, in which the president fired the head of the agency responsible for gathering the economic figures.
“We are in a strange time right now, a time we have never seen because authoritarian strategy is being used against anyone who speaks out against this administration,” Charlamagne said. “We saw what happened Friday, President Trump orders the firing of labor statistic chief, after data shows unemployment rates are higher. I don’t know if you know President Trump, but by firing this woman, you added to the unemployment rate. But that, along with his reaction to what I said on Lara Trump, shows how authoritarians will attempt to bully people into pushing false narratives.”
He also noted that on Lara Trump’s show, he didn’t mention race once, but Trump still called him a “racist.”
Trump, Charlamagne noted on Monday, “issued an executive order directing oversight of institutions like the Smithsonian, to remove suppress narratives about systemic racism in black history. They want to reframe cultural memory to eliminate discussions of historical racial injustice that, along with the termination of diversity and civil rights programs, are considered very racist by a lot of civil rights advocates. I didn’t even bring that up [on Lara Trump’s show], okay? I was just talking to your base, letting your base know that you haven’t kept the promises you made in regards to the economy. In fact, you’ve made things worse.”
He noted Trump’s enlistment of Elon Musk to make widespread cuts across the federal government, leading to the firing of federal workers.
“President Trump, now you’re doing exactly what the Biden administration did, trying to convince America the economy is all good when it’s not — maybe for people in a certain tax bracket, but for majority of your constituents who aren’t in the 1% it’s not all good,” he said. “So you can hire a new labor statistics chief to lie about the numbers. It won’t stop the reality of people being unemployed. You can tell falsehoods about inflation being down. It won’t stop the reality of the price of consumer goods being high because of tariffs you implemented.”
Charlamagne finished by saying, “I don’t care who’s in the White House. I want America to succeed. Believe it or not, I’m rooting for you, but I need you focused. And right now you’re not focused.”
“I need you to keep the promises of a great economy and the promises of transparency with the Epstein files. And I don’t want us as a people to be distracted.”
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The post Charlamagne Tha God Responds To Trump, Calls Out His “Authoritarian Strategy,” But Adds, “I’m Rooting For You, But I Need You Focused” appeared first on Deadline.
