When asked on MSNBC’s AM Joy about Trump’s comments about Black people in Bob Woodward’s recordings, Michael Harriot said this on Saturday, Sept 12, 2020:

“I think Donald Trump is just a white man, right? Like, white people really do think they understand race relations. And 75% of white people live around other white people, or in majority-white areas. So, they live in this echo chamber where they really feel like they understand race relations, and someone like Donald Trump, who has probably never spent a significant amount of time around two or more Black people in his entire life, he probably wonders why Black people aren’t applauding him and patting him on the back like all the other acolytes that he’s surrounded himself with. So, he’s just a white man. Listening to him, if you didn’t know it was Donald Trump, it could be any white man who thinks that Black people are too dumb to choose their party on their own, and somehow we all came to the same conclusion that the Democratic Party is better than the Republican Party because we were fooled by some collective hypnosis. And so, I understand what he’s saying because he sounds like any other rich, powerful white man, who’s always been a rich, powerful white man.”