Biographer: Trump will try to 'stir up people' with racist lies to muddy the charges

Former President Donald Trump has responded to his indictment by a Manhattan grand jury by going after the prosecutor, who is Black, with a torrent of racist abuse.

This is to be expected, said Trump biographer David Cay Johnston to MSNBC's Joy Reid on Friday.

"You know ... he's called D.A. Bragg an 'animal,'" said Reid. "He's done the anti-Semitic trope of calling on the name of George Soros and pretending he's a puppet of the Jewish financier, much like the 1950s racists used to do with civil rights workers. He formally attacked a Mexican judge who presided over a case, Judge Curiel, called him a 'hater', saying he's not impartial because he's a Mexican. And this current judge, who's Latino, Juan Manuel Merchan, wrote a screed about him as well. None of this feels coincidental given who Donald Trump is. He's always played around with white supremacy as a game. What do you expect him to deteriorate into as this case goes forward?"

"Well, he's going to do everything he can to stir up people with his lies," said Johnston. "For example, this afternoon, George Soros said 'I've never met and I've never given a penny to Alvin Bragg.' And all of these things Donald Trump does are fundamentally built on lies."

In spite of that, Johnston warned, he is concerned that Trump is successfully managing to twist the terms of the debate over his alleged wrongdoing.

"We should also be very concerned that's the tenor of the discussion," said Johnston. "Even in a piece today by Peter Baker, the superb New York Times White House correspondent, says, 'Our democracy is threatened by prosecuting Trump,' without giving one word to the thought that, gee, maybe our democracy will be strengthened and revived because we follow the idea of, we are all equal under the law."

Watch the segment below or at this link.

David Cay Johnston on Trump's efforts to "stir up" people www.youtube.com