Ex-White House aide Cliff Sims says Trump can be 'racially insensitive at times,' but isn't racist

Cliff Sims, former aide to President Trump and author of a new book about life inside the White House, may have disagreed with Trump about some things, but not his tepid response to the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

During an interview with The New Yorker's Isaac Chotiner on Tuesday, Sims was asked about the part in his book, Team of Vipers, that described how Trump reacted to Charlottesville. Trump said there were "some very fine people on both sides," and Sims wrote that this wasn't enough to make him reconsider working at the White House.


"I really don't think there's a racist bone in his body," Sims told Chotiner. He recalled members of the Congressional Black Caucus coming to meet with Trump, and he said he saw them "realize the same thing a lot of people do, which is: Man, you kinda just can't help [but] like the guy when you get in the room with him." Chotiner pressed him about other Trump remarks, including when he called several countries "shitholes" and said a Mexican judge couldn't be fair to him.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

"I think my take on that is very similar to Sen. Tim Scott, the only black [Republican] United States senator's take on it, which is that he can definitely be racially insensitive at times, and the Charlottesville issue really is a picture of something that I think is maybe unique to the Trump presidency, where we are all watching the same movie, and yet we are seeing completely different things on the screen." Chotiner continued, asking him about birtherism and whether he would have left the White House had he still been there when children were being separated from their parents at the border. "I don't know," Sims said. "Maybe. Maybe." Read Chotiner's entire interview at The New Yorker.