On Tuesday, President Obama and former President George W. Bush spoke movingly about the shooting of five Dallas police officers last week and the racial tensions that led up to those murders. Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump got his chance to weigh in on Tuesday's O'Reilly Factor on Fox News. "Do you believe there's a problem between black and whites in America, generally speaking?" Bill O'Reilly asked Trump. "Sadly, there would seem to be," Trump said. "Hopefully it can be healed. We have a divider as a president ... and it's probably not been much worse at any time."
O'Reilly asked if, were he to be elected in November, Trump has a "plan to lessen racial tensions, and if so, what is it?" "Well, one thing is spirit," Trump said. "I mean, we don't have spirit — the country doesn't have any spirit, Bill ... We need a cheerleader, not a divider. We have a divider. We need a cheerleader." O'Reilly nudged Trump back on track, saying there are "still some black Americans who believe that the system is biased against them," and asked what Trump would say to them. "Well, I've been saying, even against me, the system is rigged," he said, pointing to his run for the Republican nomination. "That's not going to lift anybody's spirits," O'Reilly interjected." "What I'm saying is, they're not necessarily wrong," Trump explained. "I can relate it, really, very much to myself."
"Do you think you understand the African-American experience?" O'Reilly asked. "Well, I'd like to say yes, but you really can't unless you're African-American," Trump said, but "I do understand what goes on in life," and as president he would offer economic solutions. Trump said the on-camera police killings of black men in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Baton Rouge last week "were terrible — I thought it was a terrible, disgusting performance that I saw," and suggested they were due to lack of training, "bad people," or officers choking. "Do you believe that there is a problem in American policing, whereby blacks are treated differently than whites?" O'Reilly asked. "It could be," Trump said, but when O'Reilly asked him about Black Lives Matter, Trump said the group is "dividing America" and "they're hurting themselves." Watch Trump weigh in on America's racial divide, and whether he thinks Obama is purposefully divisive, in the video below. Peter Weber
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