Lynne Patton, a top Trump housing official who is black, fired back at Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib for accusing her of being a prop for racists.
Freedom Caucus Chair Mark Meadows, responding to convicted criminal Michael Cohen’s assertions that the President is racist, introduced Patton during the hearing.
“[Patton] says that as a daughter of a man born in Birmingham, Alabama, that there is no way that she would work for an individual who was racist,” Meadows told Cohen. “She disagrees with you.”
Tlaib took issue with the display, referring to Patton as nothing more than a prop.
“The fact someone would actually use a prop, a black woman in this chamber, in this committee is alone racist in itself,” she claimed.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib condemns what she calls a “racist act” by Rep. Mark Meadows, and things go off the rails…
“I am not calling the gentleman, Mr. Meadows, a racist, for doing so, I’m saying that, in itself, it is a racist act.” https://t.co/oEziZtsEZd pic.twitter.com/hLfSWs7Ulb
— Yahoo News (@YahooNews) February 27, 2019
Patton Slams Tlaib
Patton had no intentions of letting the Michigan Representative’s accusations fly without challenging them, and whoa – did she ever unleash.
“Today a race card was played,” she said on Instagram. “But not by Congressman Mark Meadows.”
The real race card was played “by those on the House Oversight Committee who sadly placed more credence on the word of a self-confessed convicted perjurer, than that of a highly-educated black woman who rose up the ranks of one of the most recognized global real-estate companies in the world, spoke before 25 million people at the Republican National Convention and now successfully oversees the largest HUD program office in the country.”
“That is not the resume of a prop,” she added.
“I was not there to represent an entire race of people. I was there to represent one man,” Patton later said in an interview with “Fox & Friends.”
She continued by citing President Trump’s economic resume and the work he’s done to improve conditions important to the black community.
Patton Has Long Been an Ally of Trump
The viral video Patton is referencing in her Instagram post was one which she narrated defending the Trump family against accusations that Donald Trump is racist.
“As a black female executive at The Trump Organization, I can no longer remain silent about the repeated and reprehensible attempts to align my boss and his family with racist hate-mongering groups, campaigns, and messaging,” she said.
In it, she also stressed that the Trump Organization had hired “more minority and female executives than any other company for which I’ve worked.”
In an interview with The Hill, Patton continued to slam the Democrat party’s star witness and defend President Trump.
“I’ve known Michael Cohen for 10-plus years. I’ve known the president for probably the same amount of time,” she said. “Michael Cohen knows I know the truth and the truth is, is that it doesn’t take 15 years to realize somebody is a racist, unless of course, they are not.”
