Charles Blow Tells Maajid Nawaz About Extraordinary Trump Meeting

27 August 2017, 15:27 | Updated: 27 August 2017, 15:35

Charles Blow Says Trump's Lies Are 'Pathological'

President Trump
President Trump. Picture: CNP/SIPA USA/PA Images

New York Times author Charles Blow has told Maajid Nawaz that Americans are “living in a house of mirrors” under President Trump.

The media commentator said the billionaire's surprise White House victory could be explained by fear among some Americans who felt they were losing their country’s legacy.

African American Nawaz also revealed how he once met Trump at a party where the then businessman bounded up to him to proclaim ‘I’m the most loved white man among black people!’.

“All politicians bend the truth when they are trying to shape narratives. But this is a pathological liar and there is no other way to describe it,” said political expert Mr Blow. “This is a man who lies compulsively about little things and about about big things and that is a strange environment to live with, particularly as a journalist.

“To have - on top of that - him attacking the pillars of truth and science… it kind of bends reality in a way that makes you feel like you are living in a house of mirrors. And then you add on to that the fact that he is a misogynist and a bigot and anti-LGBT rights, then it creates a character that is an affront to the America that I know.”

Speaking about their remarkable meeting a few years prior to the presidency, Mr Blow said, “I met him once at a cocktail party and the first thing he said to me was ‘I’m the most beloved white man among black people. They love me!’. And I was like, ‘What kind of person walks up to someone they don’t know and says that?’ Mr Blow added, “His dance around race is an odd, disturbing one.”

Asked how Trump got into power in the first place, Mr Blow said fear was leading the way. “There is a racial anxiety in America,” he said, ”It was about muslims… it was about Mexican coming across borders and taking jobs. It was about black people in cities rising up and saying ‘black lives matter’. That loss of power, that loss of legacy, all combined in a person who was saying to them ‘I will take you back to a time when those privilege were detained just for you.’

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