Donald Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, said the president was sending a chilling message to white supremacist groups when he told them to “stand back and stand by” during Tuesday night’s debate.
“It wasn’t a shoutout,” she said on “The Dean Obeidallah Show” on Wednesday. “It was an order ― and we need to see it in those terms and we should be terrified by that.”
Indeed, the groups took it as such, responding online with “Standing down and standing by sir” and turning the phrase into a slogan for T-shirts and bumper stickers.
Mary Trump said the president doesn’t care that these groups are violent or that their members are racists.
“He only cares that they support him,” she said. “And that’s the only criteria that matters.”
Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist who published a tell-all book dishing on the president this summer, also named two other reasons he won’t denounce these groups.
“First of all, he’s a white supremacist. So he would have to denounce himself, which will never happen,” she said. “Secondly, denouncing white supremacy doesn’t get him anywhere with his base, and that’s the only people he’s talking to anymore.”
See her full comments below: