A Republican Congressman Just Said Trump Can’t Be Racist Because a Black Woman Is in His Administration

Also, Lynne Patton was Eric Trump’s wedding planner.

Alex Brandon/AP

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Update, 2:26 pm: Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-Mich.) took issue with Rep. Meadows using Lynne Patton as proof that Trump isn’t racist. “To prop up one person from our entire race of black people and say that nullifies it is totally insulting,” she said

Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer, is testifying before the House oversight committee today. In his leaked opening statement, Cohen—who has been sentenced to three years in prison for tax fraud and lying to Congress about Donald Trump’s real estate dealings in Moscow—accused Trump of being a liar, a con man, and a racist.

Trump began his political career by accusing the first black president of the United States of being born in Kenya. In 2015, he opened his presidential campaign by referring to Mexican immigrants as drug dealers and rapists. As president, he referred to Haiti, El Salvador, and African counties as “shithole countries.” He shut down the government over the refusal by Congress to allocate funds to build a wall on the Mexican border. 

Today, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) tried to disprove Cohen’s allegations of racism by using one of the few black officials in the Trump administration as a prop. Lynne Patton, who once planned events for the Trump family, is now a regional administrator at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, overseeing New York and New Jersey. Over the last two weeks, Patton has been residing in New York’s public housing because, as she told the Washington Post in November, it’s “not okay for me to preside over the largest housing crisis in the nation from the warmth and comfort of my own safe and sanitary apartment while NYCHA residents continue to suffer the most inhumane conditions.”

On Sunday, she announced that this week would be a “bye-week” and she would be moving out because of mandatory HUD meetings.

She also used her time in Washington, DC, to appear at Cohen’s testimony.

“I asked Lynne to come today in her personal capacity,” Meadows told Cohen, who was responsible for bringing Patton into the Trump organization. “You made some very demeaning comments about the president that Ms. Patton doesn’t agree with,” he said as Patton stood quietly behind him. “She says that as a daughter of a man born in Birmingham, Alabama, that there is no way she would work for an individual who was racist,” Meadows concluded, disregarding the fact that many black people have worked for racist employers. 

“How do you reconcile that?” Meadows asked Cohen. (Trotting out a black person to prove someone isn’t racist is an old trope commonly referred to as the “I have a black friend” defense.) The congressman insisted that the president could not be a racist because he had never witnessed it. “I’ve talked to the president over 300 times,” Meadows said. “I have not heard one time a racist comment out of his mouth.” 

Cohen hesitated in his response, but mentioned that he’s the son of a Holocaust survivor and acknowledged that he did not have any recordings of Trump being racist. 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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